[Professor]
The Booming Twenties
This was a time of change. The ‘Booming Twenties’ or the ‘Roaring Twenties’ brought along a paradigm shift in culture, morality and economy. There was widespread social, cultural and ethical dynamism during this decade. It was a period of great economic prosperity across Europe and America. The twenties were also a time of parties and illegal practices. This kind of change affected the whole society – it affected how the people saw themselves, the importance they gave to morality, moral philosophy and professional ethics.
Before the ‘Booming Twenties’ the values of people in general were quite simple such as respecting the institution of marriage, being a loyal spouse, raising children with love and care for their moral values and earning through an honest living. Such traditional values suddenly seemed a thing of the past. There were several factors that attributed to these changes.
Consumer Society and Mass Culture
The economic growth in this swept the people into a very affluent, new and unfamiliar “consumerism.” People across bought similar or even same products because of the wide-spread advertising and the convenience of chain stores, they even listened to the same kind of music, learnt the same dancing and even spoke the same way. It happened that many people were not at ease with what we can call the “mass culture”; in fact, for a lot of people in the United States, this decade brought a lot more conflicts even though it was the period that was called ‘Roaring Twenties’. This led to a kind on imitable behavior among the masses and one could say individuality was lost to a great extent. It seemed like consumerism had in fact affected the way people thought, spoke, dressed, ate and moved about. The popular and game-changing consumer products that came about this time included – the vacuum cleaner, refrigerator and ready-made clothes. The other revolutionizing invention of this period was in travel – the car. This gave individuals a new sense of freedom, especially women and young people. With this freedom came other newfound choices that were taboo before.
Sexuality in the 20’s and The New Woman
One could easily say a sexual revolution came about in the twenties, where the young people started questioning the traditional notions of appropriate and acceptable behavior. Encouraged by the general prosperity all around the you people of the day partied hard, drank spurious liquor and even danced suggestive inappropriate looking moves in the jazz clubs that were numerous and popular haunts. The women of the time sported the ‘flapper’ look, which was in fact a short, boyish looking bob, with knee length skirts that were fringed, long necklaces and stockings that were rolled. This was the look of the ‘New Woman’. Though the traditional sections lamented and criticized these looks and behavior, the young men and women did not seem to care, they almost seemed wanton. Slowly it seemed like a part of the older generation too began to adopt these practices and join the revolution. Sex was openly spoken about; pre-marital sex was discussed and practiced freely. As a result of this, practicing birth-control became more popular even though illegal. The women were less suppressed as they were viewed differently, this was quite liberating for the women.
The Jazz Age – A New Lifestyle
During the 1920s, one also saw the growth of African American culture clearly in the performing arts. In music, it was through a form called jazz, an improvisation and very spontaneous musical form that was derived from both slave music or songs and some African spirituals. The 1920s is also called the ‘Jazz Age’ because the jazz style of music was made popular during this period. However, jazz was a kind of music whose character was usually associated with the “loose” morals of that time. Essentially at that time, Jazz was not only a kind of music; it was also known to be an entire lifestyle.
Other Forms of Entertainment
In the 1920’s there was a growth of recreation, as the wages increased and people had more leisure time. It almost seemed like entertainment too was mass produced to cater to that period’s mass culture. Magazines like Time and Reader’s Digest were very popular choices for mass circulation. Radio became immensely popular for both news and entertainment. Movies became very famous choices of entertainment. With the whole society veering towards free expression of thought, action and sexuality, such forms of entertainment too fueled the same kinds of thoughts in people. This was like a wave that could not be stopped and with these spreading rampantly through such media it was nearly impossible to curtail of sensor a lot.
Prohibition and its effect on Professional Ethics
In the twenties, some kinds of freedoms were allowed while some others were restricted or prohibited. There was a law passed that closed every bar, tavern, inn and saloon in the US that served liquor. After this law was passed, it was deemed illegal for these places to sell any beverages that were intoxicating and were with over 0.5% of alcohol. This situation drove the so far legal trade of liquor underground. This caused the people to approach illegal setups instead of the ordinary taverns and bars. In such shady places, the selling was controlled by various kinds of law-breakers like bootleggers and racketeers including other kinds of organized-crime people. One such person (Chicago gangster Capone) apparently had about one thousand of his own gunmen and even half of the police force of Chicago on his side and he paid them kickbacks. From this we understand that laws that were supposed to prohibit only promoted illegal trade and seemed to break people’s scruples about them.
Twenties – A Time of Injustice and Crime
In the "Roaring Twenties", the real and a large part of the situation was that the 1920's were also a time of rampant crime, injustice and murder. It was also the time that caused the US to go into debt. There were a lot of unjust killings in this period. A criminal was hanged to death in the presence of 200 people just to set an example. In another case, a student killed another one over whiskey.
An underworld clan KKK (Ku Klux Klan) resurfaced gaining power. This clan was racist in its beliefs and hence killed or murdered people for the same reason. They fervently disliked Catholics, foreigners, Jews and African Americans. The clan seemed to clearly feel that the immigrants, African Americans and all the new beliefs were actually tainting the sacred American way of life. This clan had about 2000 national members during this time. Leading such lives was not uncommon for these members. They just seemed to terrorize anyone different from them.
The other effect towards the end of this period was that the wages of people were cut down dramatically while most of the prices of the items they needed only grew. U.S. Steel had cut wages down to almost 30 cents an hour. This kind of wages were barely enough for these people to survive. All these reasons caused the Great Depression in both America and Europe.
The twenties were an age of very dramatic political, ethical and social changes. Money was suddenly abundant and people’s lifestyles changed drastically. America’s collective wealth had more than doubled during this period. The time of the twenties surely one of the time periods when both USA and Europe’s economy saw unparalleled growth. The young women took control of their bodies and hence their lives. Sexuality that was a taboo topic was suddenly a fad.
We can conclude that during the Roaring Twenties there was an illusion of progressiveness; however, it was just an illusion. This was partially true, if we considered the economic and technological aspects. However, these transformations also brought about many more changes to other aspects of the society. Hence in the 20’s there were a wide range of social tensions that prompted people to forego their moral values and ethics they were taught. One can safely say that the ‘booming twenties’ was a time of loss of identity, or gaining of a new identity for the society, such was the complete transformation.
