Today is Tuesday. We are watching a movie about the 20's and are blogging about it. What made the twenties the "Roaring Twenties"? Henry Ford was a great innovator of the time. Ford created the assembly line. The assembly line was able to increase the time that the car was built by a considerable amount. Ford also paid all of his workers $5 a day. The high wage proved to be very beneficial for the business. People were eager to work for that money, and turnover rates dropped. People also were obtaining more money with which they could use to buy a car or other products.The automobile threw America into a '3rd Industrial Revolution'. Americans were buying cars like never before. Many people were not able to pay for their cars on the spot, so car companies established buying on credit. This credit system soon got thousands of Americans on the road.The country became electrified as the country started to move more towards electricity for power than on coal and oil. Electricity also increased worker productivity in the workplace the by a considerable amount. New products like the refrigerator and electric iron were easy to use products that many families now bought that could improve their lives and ran on electricity.Automobiles allowed the youth of the age to get from place to place without the constant chaperoning of their parents. Some people thought of the vehicle as sacrileges because instead of going to church on Sunday, many people went on Sunday drives. The car also became a "Bedroom on wheels".Women were growing by leaps and bounds during this time. Women were now going out and doing things that had never been seen in public by women. Women were going out and drinking, and smoking, and gambling in speakeasies. Women were wearing outrageous clothing and even casually dated. Women were also competing in sports that could almost compete against men.The advertising of the age also greatly influenced Americans. Americans were being bombarded with new and exciting advertisements that made people think that they absolutely needed all of these new products if they were to survive and be seen out in public. People had lived just fine without these products before, but were now being convinced that they needed them. Catchy slogans and frases were often used to accomplish this.Movies and movie stars were quickly becoming the new role models of the country. People would look to these people to know how to dress with the new fashions, how to walk, talk, and act. Americans were given new heroes and villains to worship or despise.The twenties were also known as the Jazz Age. Jazz was the music of the decade. Jazz was developed by African Americans who used the music to express themselves in an age where they were oppressed. Jazz was seen as an immoral music because it was played in speakeasies and people who would dance to Jazz would dance “immorally”.The Prohibition was a period in America’s history in which all manufacture, consumption, and distribution of alcohol. The hope of the Prohibition was to eliminate crime that flourished from the consumption of alcohol. The Prohibition actually made matters worse.Bootlegging was becoming more and more common until nearly every family in America was involved in some way in illegally making and drinking alcohol.Sports were becoming increasingly popular. Many superstars were taking center stage to influence the youth and reaffirm America’s belief in anything is possible. Babe Ruth was known throughout the United States as the Great Bambino. Boxing was popular as well as gold and tennis.The twenties were a great time of seemingly flourishing wealth and in many cases, unseen financial insecurity. I think it would have been pretty interesting to have lived in the twenties. It would have been sweet to have helped make bootleg alcohol and bathtub gin just for the sake of doing it.
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