Historical and Social Background
1. The Roaring Twenties
Prosperity
After the First World War disillusion, people were eager to start a new unrestrained life. In the early 1920s, American businesses flourished and there was a boom in consumer spending among the upper and middle classes. The 1920s was a decade of tremendous economic prosperity: wages increased, technology and advertising developed, domestic electrical appliances became widespread and the automobile industry with Ford’s new car production line transformed the USA into the world’s first consumer society in which millions of people drove their own cars, listened to the radio, enjoyed the movies and went out to night clubs. Furthermore, women got the right of vote in 1920. Those were days of emancipation for them, as “Flappers”, young middle-class emancipated women, discarded traditional clothing fashion and family stereotypes.
The Jazz Age
Some Americans however were repelled by such materialistic values and an all-pervading business culture. Craving for self-expression, they turned their backs on politics or any form of social involvement. There was an outburst of artistic creativity. This was the Jazz Age; the word “jazz” itself describes a type of music that reflects the raw spontaneity of the 20s.
Writers such as Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) or Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) in The Great Gatsby [1925] depicted post-war society and its materialistic values as “artificial and corrupt.” Artists felt consciously part of a new group, outside society, they were called “the lost generation” (a phrase coined by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)). Through the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans showed to the whole world that they had a voice of their own; their art, literature, music and culture influenced modern art.
The Prohibition
The decade expressed itself with considerable self-confidence, even arrogance and disregard for certain moral values, making for the development of gangsterism in the 30s and during the American Prohibition (between 1920-1933), when the entire country outlawed the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The Roaring Twenties ended in an economic collapse with October’s Black Tuesday, 1929, as the Wall Street stock exchange crash ruined the American economy overnight. This led to The Great Depression in the 1930s, an unprecedented national economic disaster that lasted for several years until new economic measures, known as the New Deal, were taken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)’s government.
2. The Great Depression
After unprecedented economic growth and prosperity, the American stock market crashed on October 29, 1929. On October 24, stocks and shares dropped a first time, and five days later the Dow-Jones index lost 49 points. Panic quickly spread uncontrollably and even the strongest shares lost 80% of their values within 24 hours. Millions of share-holders lost their savings, thousands of banks and factories closed down, millions of workers lost their jobs, suddenly unable to pay their bank loans. Several hundred thousands of homeless people were reduced to begging and standing in bread lines. “Brother, can you spare a dime?” became a leitmotiv in those days. The USA’s GNP dropped from 104 billion dollars to 59. Republican President Herbert Hoover, who had been in office for 9 months and was an icon of America’s prosperity, was strongly opposed to state intervention in economy, but he was also unable to cope with the economic disaster. The crisis was at its highest in 1932, when millions of individuals were gnawed by hunger, and the 1932 elections put Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to office in triumph. Roosevelt’s New Deal called for national planning, an unheard-of initiative at the time, and deep reforms. Never before had the American economy experienced such drastic reforms through state intervention in the national and international economy. But eventually industrial production recovered, the unemployment rate dropped, consumers regained confidence, foreign trade grew and consequently, purchasing power increased. Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran the country for 12 years and was re-elected four times. Although criticized by his republican counterparts for his unprecedented state intervention policy in the economy, he started up the American economic machine that was to become one of the most powerful in the world between the two world wars.
3. The New Deal
The New Deal was the name given by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945, President of The United States of America from 1933 to 1945), to a series of programs implemented by his government between 1933 and 1937 to reform the economy during The Great Depression. The New Deal had three components: direct Relief, economic Recovery, and financial Reform; these were also called the “Three Rs”.
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1. Flapper Fashion and Behaviour
Flapper dresses were straight and loose, leaving the arms bare and dropping the waistline to the hips. Flappers wore short skirts that rose just below the knee by 1927, allowing knees to be seen when women danced or walked. This dress code was soon perceived as standing for a category of women who were free and emancipated, women who bobbed their hair, liked to cut it into "boyish" style, and often dyeing it jet black, and who wore a lot of heavy make up with beaded necklaces and bracelets. Called garçonne in French, the flapper style made women look young and boyish.
Such women - or “flappers” - ostensibly flouted conventions and what was formerly considered good manners for women: they smoked cigarettes through long cigarette holders, went out to jazz clubs, drove their own cars or rode bicycles, danced the provocative new dances which were the fad, the Charleston for example, and last but not least, openly patronized speakeasies during the American Prohibition!
Flappers vanished with the demise of the Roaring Twenties, when the nation was struck by the Great Depression.
2. Gangsterism
Gangster is the common term used to qualify a career criminal who becomes a member of a violent crime organization, such as a gang. Gangsters are involved in crime such as local drug-traffic, prostitution and illegal gambling. They are also known for money extortion, forged currency, intimidation, bribery, corruption and money laundering in political campaigns.
In the 1930s and after the Second World War, the word "gangster" became a popular term referring to a member of the "mafia" or "organized crime group". (See The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino and two films by Cassavetes, Gloria (1980), and Murder of a Chinese Bookmaker(1978)).
Thus, the famous Bonnie Parker (1910–1934) and Clyde Barrow (1909-1934) couple was notorious for robbing and travelling across the central United States during The Great Depression. Mainly remembered as bank robbers, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker preferred to rob small stores or gas stations.
3. The prohibition (1920-1933)
During the Prohibition possessing or drinking liquor, wine or beer was illegal at any time and anywhere in the US.
The prohibition was also called the "dry" movement and began in the 1840s. It was mainly impulsed in rural areas by fundamentalists from religious sects such as the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Congregationalists, Quakers etc. After 1900, prohibition became legal in many Southern states. The "wets", primarily liturgical Protestants (Episcopalians, German Lutherans) and Roman Catholics from urban areas, opposed the idea that morality should be ruled by the federal or state government.
The prohibition Amendment (Eighteenth Amendment) to the national Constitution was passed in 1919. It prohibited the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages in every state. Any beverage containing more than 0.5 % alcohol was defined as alcoholic (standards set by the Volstead Act, 1919). The Eighteenth Amendment was abolished in 1933. It explicitly gave states the right to restrict or ban the purchase and sale of alcohol, but it was never illegal to drink liquor in the United States.
The Prohibition entailed many social problems. A lucrative, and often violent, black market for alcohol flourished with bootleggers (people who illegally produced alcohol). Powerful gangs made fortunes. The most notorious of them, Al Capone aka Scarface, (See Scarface (1932) directed by Howard Hawkes) established a $60 million enterprise of whiskey. They racketeered restaurant owners and corrupted law enforcement agencies. The cost of enforcing prohibition was high for the government while the lack of tax revenues on alcohol (some $500 million annually nationwide) affected its budget. Prohibition had heavy consequences on the brewing industry in the United States, and when it ended in 1933, only half the former breweries reopened. (See The Untouchables, 1959-63, a TV series starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness)
4. The New Deal
Timeline
- October 29, 1929: October’s Black Tuesday, 1929. Wall Street stock exchange crash.
- 1929 to 1933: Unemployment in the U.S. increased from the original 4 % to 25 %, and manufacturing output collapsed by approximately a third. Prices fell, making the burden of the repayments of debts much harder. Heavy industry, mining, lumbering and agriculture were hit. The impact was much less severe in white collar and service sectors, but every city and state was hit hard.
- November 1932: F.D. Roosevelt elected President of The United States. He entered office with no single ideology or definite plan for dealing with the depression. He was willing to try anything. The "First New Deal" was pragmatic and experimental.
- 1933: March 9 to June 19: The Hundred Days consisted in straightening out the economy with new measures, namely the reorganization of industries, substantial help to farmers, bank restoration, and creation of national employment agencies.
- 1935: The Works Progress Administration (WPA). In 1935 the Social Security Act gave birth to the Welfare State with unemployment and retirement benefits, and the Jack Wagner Act encouraged labor unions (1935).
- The 1937 recession: Production declined sharply, as did profits and employment. Unemployment jumped from 14.3 % in 1937 to 19.0 % in 1938. Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression, reluctantly abandoning his efforts to balance the budget and launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938, an effort to increase mass purchasing power. The Recession of 1937 sent the economy back to 1934 levels of unemployment.
- September 1, 1939: Beginning of the Second World War
- December 7, 1941: The attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan brought The United States into the Second World War.
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