How did US society change in the 1920s?

Annotations:

• HISTORIOGRAPHY Grant, who states that, “This vision of physical upward mobility was also a symbol of a fundamental social and demographic shift.”

1. Cars
2. Steel
3. Robber barons
4. Monopolies
5. Republican policy

Annotations:

• HISTORIOGRAPHY Sheldon Cheney  in his book The New World of Architecture (1930),  “Commercialism is a new God, only too powerful and too appealing, to whom men are now building their highest and most laudatory structures.”

1. Tenements
2. Skyscrapers
3. Elevators

Annotations:

• HISTORIOGRAPHY As Stearns purports,  “By 1930 soap as a grocery item was second only to bread for  American consumers.”

1. Sport
2. Birth control
   1.  Margaret Sanger: political radical before war  Frequently in trouble with the law
3. Chain stores
   1. Delivered cheaper prices because they made bulk purchases and provided no credit or delivery services
      1. e.g. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A and P) used chain idea to revolutionize the grocery trade in the C19th
   2. End of decade chain stores accounted for 16 % of US retail business
4. Electricity
   1. National electricity consumption nearly tripled between 1917 and 1930
5. Cars
6. Radio
7. Cinema
   1.  Attending movies and leisure activities  Average American family attended at least one movie per week by 1920 (Stearns 2001)

1. Prohibition
2. Immigration restrictions
3. Religious Fundamentalism
4. Crime
5. Anti-Communism
6. Anti-Unionism