The decade was called The Roaring 20’s or the Jazz Age. Hollywood movies and television make it look like one big dance party with a few gangsters thrown in for dramatic purposes.

Historians, journalists, and novelists are fascinated with the 1920’s as the beginning of modern America, a decade that helped set the tone for the rest of the century.

At the beginning of the 20’s America was a country with enormous potential, and finished the century as the world’s only superpower. Yet there are two ways of looking at this powerful nation in the 20’s:1. As a wealthy country with a high standard

of living: big cars and large houses.2. As a country with many people living in

poverty and some enduring terrible racism.

The big improvement started because Americans by the early 20’s found themselves tired of crusades, tired to make the world a safer democracy and ignore the quality of their lives;

President Warren G. Harding

thus the nation joined president Warren G. Harding in what he called a return to normality and to the good life by developing the economy.

During that decade America’s economy boomed thus the age of consumerism appeared.

At the same time, many Americans wanted to enjoy themselves as much as they could by listening to the new jazz music, or doing the new dances such as the Charleston or the black bottom. Crowds flocked to watch film stars like Charlie Chaplin and baseball stars like Babe Ruth. The emphasis on having fun and spending money has led the 1920’s being called The Roaring Twenties.

The Roaring 20’s was a decade in which old beliefs and hard work, thrift and personal restrains crumbled beneath the influences of movies, jazz baby's and rulayjam.

During the 1920’s Americans enjoyed the highest standard of life in a world spurred by new inventions and technological innovations.

Shifting from coal to electricity doubled the workers productivity; the United States economy was in the med's of a third industrial revolution.

What the country’s industry made was also life changing as production shifted from things like still and oil to goods and services manufactured directly for consumers: electrical appliances, radios, motion picture and the automobiles.

To realize his dream of making a car for every one, Henry Ford pioneered a moving assembly line that speed up work, saved costs and cut the time it took to make a car from more than 12 hours under 2 hours.

Across America, Companies raised wages to increase their buying

power, they also improved worker’s

benefits offering old age pensions, paid vacations

and insurance. Still few Americans

could afford to buy an automobile outright, so

automobiles makers pioneered another

innovation buying on credit: BUY NOW PAY

LATER!

By 1930’s America owned 8 out of 10 of all the world automobiles. The automobiles were one of the many things which helped to the acceleration od America’s prosperity and ingenuity, cities build new stores, theatres and sky scrapers.

Cities were the centre of the new mass consumers culture, the proving grounds of new form od entertainment and leisure.

To create a consumer out of a citizen required profound changes in peoples values and behavior and the segment that of the nation that changed the most were women.

Women’s life was changing fast in the 20’s. First of all women has for the first time the right to vote, second more women than ever before held paying jobs.

In the 20’s young women enjoyed more fun than young women had ever before. Women were going to high schools and also to college in increasingly numbers.

They were living away from their families, they were dating, they were engaged in sports, they wore loser clothing's instead of corsets, their cut their hair, they drink bath top gin, thus they were called the FLAPPERS.

Inside the home another type of revolution was taking place, the country got electrified during the 20’s.New household appliances were reducing the housework: washing machine, vacuum cleaner, fridge, electric sewing machine, etc.In the 20’s Advertising Industry came of age. Also in the 20’s you had radio for the first time, you could even advertise through radio.Advertising educated Americans about the new wave of products entering the market place improving peoples lives.

A whole set of magazines appeared on the market, magazines directed to the middle class, to the working, to women, etc.

Movies provided a dream world of adventure for the 1920’s consumers. In that time even small town had theatres, people even claimed that they learned a lot from movies (how to kiss, how to smoke cigarettes). Movies were the most powerful and influential media in the 1920’s.

The movies and it’s stars celebrated the exciting commercial night life and the new music of the nation Jazz provided the sound of changing and evolving.

The prosperity of the 1920’s rested on weak foundation: the growing concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands cut back into the industrial production which leaded to the crush of the stock market in 1929 which declined into the worst economic depression.