this clip above shows the kind of inventions that people created during the 1920’s.
Even though most of the inventions we saw in use in the video aren’t things that caught on today some did. Such as the full body suit for going under water and the hat that “we assume” let the man breath underwater. Obviously these inventions at the time weren’t big hits but thanks to the creation of video, people throughout the country/world were able to see things like these. And it seems safe to say thanks to this that it got other people trying to create their own inventions. This is a huge part in modernity because America is all about innovation and it seems very likely that people wanted to out-perform others inventors and it led them to create even better inventions. And even though most probably didn’t make the cut, many did and we use them every day.
According to www.thenagain.info, ” The leading theory regarding the cause of The Great Depression holds that it resulted from the stock market crash in 1929. Prior to the crash, around the beginning of 1928, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates due to financial speculation and inflated stock prices. Industrial production turned down in the spring of 1929, and overall growth turned negative in the summer. This prosperous decade had proven the old adage that all good things must come to an end, when a recession began in the summer of 1929. In the two months before the crash, industrial production fell to an annual rate of 20%, and continued to drop well into the fall months. “By mid-November, the market had declined by a half.” ”
I believe that, the prosperous decade, mostly due to the stock market success, represents an aspect of modernity achieved during the 1920s. On the other hand, Great Depression caused a lot of financial, political and cultural changes. This video show us, how people were optimistic in every aspect of their life, during the decade before the crash of the stock market and how evrything changes after.
The video above shows an example of the type of silent movies viewed during this time period.
The 1920s are greatly known for the entertainment developed during the time period. People had more free time and began spending this time several different types of leisure activities. People began watching sports especially baseball as well as boxing. Some even became involved in sports such as tennis baseball and golf (Chudacoff & Smith 217). The movie business continued to expand as more and more people began too visit theaters. For example about 110 million people visited the movies in a week when the population of the U.S. was only about 120 million (Chudacoff & Smith 217). Music advanced and flourished as Jazz became increasingly popular (Chudacoff & Smith 218). Radio allowed listeners to hear a wide variety of things from music to the news to advertisements about retail products that convinced them to go out and buy them (Chudacoff & Smith 218). This modernized the city by making it a thriving entertainment center with a wide variety of things to do during peoples free time. These developments brought forth the technologies of entertainment in the future that lead to inventions such as the television.
Picture of Babe Ruth who was an important figure in baseball during the 1920s
The city, not the farm, had become the place of national experience. By 1920, four-fifths of the country’s African Americans living outside the South lived in the cities. During the 1920s, urbanization took place on a wider front than ever before. Maturing industrial economies increased the populations of many areas, particularly steel, oil, and automobile centers. Social and cultural diversity continued to be a unique quality of urban life that distinguished cities most sharply from the relative homogeneity of rural and small-town social relations. Leisure activities were another type of consumption mostly supported by city dwellers. In 1923, 300,000 fans attended the six-game World series of baseball between the New York Yankees and the New York Giants. The increase of show business paralleled the rise of sports, maturing with the growth of cities. In the 1920s motion pictures also attracted huge crowds. During 1927-1929, weekly movie attendance reach an estimated 10 million people when at that time nations total population was just over 120 million and total weekly attendance to church was under 60 million. Movies helped to popularize urban culture as nation culture by showing scenes involving diverse city people. In 1920s radio also brought the new world of entertainment and advertising directly into urban homes.
Suburban expansion in the 1920s owed much to the automobile and its related industries. Real estate interests, the construction industry, the auto rubber, and oil industry joined automobile owners in pressing for new roads to facilitate high-speed travel. The building of expressways and parkways encouraged still more suburban migration. In 1920, the growth rate of suburbs exceeded that of the cities for the first time. Many were residential communities for the upper and the middle classes, and others were industrial and mixed-use suburbs where factory workers constituted a fifth or more of the population. 1920s was also witnessed the country’s first suburban shopping center. Due to all of these developments in the 1920s helped the cities to become modern.
The period between 1880-1920 is known in the history of the US as the Progressive Era. It was a time when urban society was open for changes. During the 1920s, urbanization took place on a wider front than ever before. Manufacturing, industrialization and commercialization boosted the population of many cities creating more jobs for the working class. Increases in population size and high production output by manufacturing methods, such as the assembly line, has led to pollution confounding the issues of sanitation and health. As a result, the urban population was faced with numerous types of infections and fatal diseases that threatened their health and safety. The majority of people were forced to live in crowded tenement apartments, sometimes with a few families sharing a room. When one member of the family became severely ill, the risk of it spreading was exponentially greater and easier due to the confined living space. Therefore, the importance of penicillin in the development of modern cities became crucial.
Invented in Europe in 1928 by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming then refined in Oxford University by Howard Walter Floreyand, penicillin was quickly produced around in the U.K. However, it was taken up by the U.S and by using an American innovation, the assembly line, it was produced in enough quantities that made it available and affordable to most Americans. Its ability to kill infectious bacteria has been a break through in medicine. This was most readily seen by the drop in infant and child mortality rates. Where common infections and illnesses were viewed with fatal fear, the advent of penicillin gave the American people and the world a new weapon in the war against illness. For that reason it was called as the “miracle drug” and would prove to be the discovery that changed the way we view and understand modern medicine and science.
During the 1920’s one of the most innovative creations of the time was the radio. This invention transformed society overnight and brought forth many social gatherings to join in with a common interest. Channels would broadcast news reports, different sporting events, music stations and religious practices all available to those who could afford a receiver, which was relatively cheap. It brought people from much greater distances together within in the comfort of their own home. The invention of the radio gave way to many more modernized versions of it such as television and the internet, which have the same objectives and concepts, to connect the world to your home.
Considering its’ success, the radio enabled an access point into majority of American homes. By doing so, it spawned many new jobs and created new ways to advertise products, which in turn leads to higher production. It also enabled society to stay current with news stories, but also gave them the option to enjoy an outlet of entertainment as well. The radio then is very much comparable to the television today, whereas people would come together for certain show programming or sporting events.
In my opinion, one of the greatest examples that represent modernity during 1920s was changing role of women in the society. The beginning of this revolution was caused by passing the 19th Amendment to U.S Constitution which finally gave a women right to vote. Since then mentalities of women began to change. They started to engage in their career life, with concentration in female occupations like teachers, nurses and office workers. They also demanded for equal rights and higher wages in order to become economically and socially equal of men. The number of educated women increased. The marriage started to be perceived as an equal partnership and casual dating became increasingly accepted. What’s more women changed their appearance. They started to wear less conservative clothes. Shorter above their knees gave women the chance to manifest their freedom. Women’s haircut went shorter to a “bob” and they become more comfortable with smoking cigarettes. Visual icons of modernity were flappers – young emancipated women interested in fashion and makeup, embracing new attitude toward everyday life. They listened to jazz music and were symbols of new generation. I found a video, which presents a lot of interesting pictures of women who were livening in 1920’s .
In the 1920s, women adopted a new fashion trend where they liberalized themselves from the constricting clothes to more comfortable and sporty clothes. In the early 1920s, there were still alot of those who continued to wear conservative dresses but younger generation women began to wear sported shorter skirts. The main look that many women strived for was the straight-line chemise, a bob hair cut, and a hat to top it off. Fashion back in the 1920s was influenced heavily by a movement called surrealism which features elements of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions. Thus, the smooth, mechanized, and geometric forms were incorporated into clothing instead of the usual curvy look. Coco Chanel, a French fashion designer, brought her modernist philosophy to fashion by designing clothes that were menswear inspired and also comfortable.
The automobile was first introduced in the early 1900’s. It was available only to the wealthy upper class. In the 1920’s, the automobile became more mass produced and many Americans were able to buy it. This allowed for an even greater expansion of New York City than the Mass Transit system. More and more people could move out of the over crowded city and drive to work. The automobile changed the way New Yorkers lived and helped make it what it is today: a commuter city.
These machines changed NYC forever
Comments Off on The Automobile: Symbol of modernity in the 1920’s
At the beginning of the century the automobile entered the transportation market as a toy for the rich. However, it became increasingly popular among the general population because it gave travelers the freedom to travel when they wanted to and where they wanted. As a result, in North America and Europe the automobile became cheaper and more accessible to the middle class. This was facilitated by Henry Ford who did two important things. First he priced his car to be as affordable as possible and second, he paid his workers enough to be able to purchase the cars they were manufacturing. This helped push wages and auto sales upward. The convenience of the automobile freed people from the need to live near rail lines or stations; they could choose locations almost anywhere in an urban area, as long as roads were available to connect them to other places. Many states in the US established motor fuel taxes that were used only to build and maintain highways helping the auto highway system become self-supporting.
Affecting not only American culture during the 1920s, the automobile also helped American industries. The sharp demand for automobile sparked the creation of a whole new industry in the 20s, the automobile industry. Ford had to provide for his clients somehow, so he expanded his factories, creating more jobs, more revenues, and improving the American economy in virtually every way. Automobiles that drove around a lot found it hard to drive on the poor dirt roads that were common back then, and they required a lot of fuel to run also. So nation wide road construction took place, which created even more jobs, and strengthened the economy even further.As a result of the automobile, Americans and America itself benefited greatly from the advantages it brought to them. Improved transportation and an improved economy made the automobile one of the most important inventions of the 1920s.
This youtube video shows a documentary about the assembly line in Ford’s Company in Detroit. It explains the life of people who worked at this assembly line. Even though the automobile brought many benefits to Ford and the people in America at the end of the video shows somehow an isolation of these workers in society. The workers there, later on, were prohibited to talk to each other, or walk around , or even refrain to go to the bathroom. As one of the people interviewed in this video states: “to see them, they were like marionettes….. human machines.”
2) Write a post that features a video or still image that represents an aspect of modernity (social, cultural, political, technological, etc.) achieved during the 1920s that has not yet been covered on our blog. Include at least one paragraph explaining how and why this change contributed to modernity. You may consult the Chudacoff reading for topic ideas.
(I will demonstrate for you in class how to post a video. You may also consult the “blog support” tab on the site).
I agree with many of the comments above that Hollywood has destroyed the historical integrity of the era to produce a inaccurate film to attract viewers. Even the reviewer, DiGrilamo states how can historians compete with Hollywoods effects, plots, and depictions of history (P126). Although the plot during Five Points seem sensationalized, it does concentrate on a important period of New York City; the Draft Riots. The reviewer points out that Scorcese does a good job portraying the conflict and tension between Irish immigrants with the natives and the division between Catholics and Protestants.
Reading the review shed light to the the conflicts that exist in movie making in respect to historical events. The facts were altered to boost movie image. This alteration distorts key aspect of the time exaggerating groups such as Asians in NYC at the time and underplaying social ills such violence against women. It makes me very concern for the large budget public presentation of facts tells an untrue story with weak character depiction. I expect the film to be highly creative with great cinematography used to make up for the fact that the characters and event description distorted the image of the melting pot of five points NYC. More or less more quantity but less quality.
I am unsure if Barnum’s American Museum would be a fair indication of the definition of entertainment in the 19th century, but what I am sure of is the fact that is was very popular. Personally, I was not sure what to expect. I had already heard about some of the “attractions” at the museum – such as the 25 inch midget and the mermaid from Fiji – and was very curious to get to the site. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed at what I discovered on the website – it did give me a lot of information about the attractions at the museum but lacked a certain “wow” factor, which I am certain was what made the museum very popular. But from an educational point of view, the online museum hits all the right marks. The archive is very informational and entertaining. The image I posted is a perfect representation of Barnum’s Museum to me. Even though it is in the 19th century, I think it was perceived as a colorful place to visit, with weird and larger than life attractions. The total tickets sold will also support the tag of the Peoples Favorite, even though it is very clear that the museum had its fair share of critics.
With the introduction of the NY Herald in 1835, the culture in NYC was already changing. People were now being intrigued and entertained by reading about murders, suicides and rapes. I am uncertain if Barnum seen this culture change as the perfect opportunity of open the museum in NYC or he would have done it either way, but NYC was now rapidly expanding and accepting to new means of entertainment. I think from an historic point of view the website does a good job giving the viewer all the information it had in a fun method, but visually and interactively it could use a lot of improvement. Continue Reading »
I read all of the above comments, and I am agree with them. To me, the movie review is itself a thriller while the movie fails to preserve and protect the glorious past. The movie does not focus on all of the real issues; however ,the movie review clarifies many important issues. The reason behind creation of gangs were to survive and preserve their own races from growing political discrimination and competition, and from the unsustained economy; But, “hollywood” mostly represents only the competitions (blood and violences) between gangs. There was a sentence in the movie review that “historian can compete the work”. And i think the writer already did it; Reading the review i knew many gangs’ namse: The roach Guards, Chichesters, kerryonians, Shirt Trails, Daybreak Boys, true blood American; and how their clothing and languages were; they had different accent regarding their Gangs. And I acknowledged the importance of the five points by his narrative description.
3) Add at least one comment to this post expressing your reaction to the review and predicting what you will learn about New York City history from the movie and whether you will enjoy it. Browse the comments and respond/add to them as much as possible.
New York City had a population of 515,547 in 1850 -- a 65% increase in just 10 years
I will compare and contrast Boston vs. New York in the 19th century. To begin with, both cities were considered as one of the most established cities in the mid –nineteenth century. In this time period, both cities experienced massive migration. According to Chudacoff, “By 1850, there were 135.6 persons per acre in New York, 82.7 in Boston.” (Page 66) Boston’s population grew from 61,392 in 1830s to 177,840 in 1860s. New York’s population grew from 202,589 in 1830s to 813,600 in 1860s (Chudacoff page 61). This data shows us that, Boston grew 3 times and New York 4 times larger in population between 1830s-1860s.Both cities were the financial centers of the United States in the 19th century, and were especially important in funding railroads nationwide. Although, Boston was growing at the fast speed, it wasn’t not nearly as developed as New York. In the 19th century New York was bigger, economically stronger and faster at innovating and applying new technologies. As Chudacoff stated, “By 1833, some eight omnibuses operated on the streets of New York.”(Page85)On the other hand, it took Boston another decade to implement this type of transportation to accommodate growing population. This example shows us how these two cities differ in development aspect.
The similarity that New York and St. Louis had is that they were both cities that were fast growing. Both cities had merchants that sought to obtain as much business as they can and they both benefited with the ports that they had around them. New York was one of the biggest port city during the 1840s and 1850s and St. Louis was benefited with the great midwestern water network. However, this benefit that St. Louis had soon with the civil war and the building of the railroad, this city soon failed. This is the difference, as for New York the civil war did not harm them as much as it did for St. Louis. While the civil war was occurring the lower Mississippi river was closed to commercial traffic by the Union army and caused for a downfall in St. Louis business. All of the business that St. Louis conducted was shifted to Chicago. As for New York, they did go through economic problems during the civil war, but their business did not shift to another city and they did not go to a downfall to completely paralyze New York.
According to Chudacoff, during the civil war, contrary to New York, Philadelphia, relative unity prevailed. Industries there met needs for war materiel, and workers adjusted to inflation and succeeded in getting some wage increases. Philadelphia residents responded relatively calmly to government quotas requiring that the city furnish a certain number of recruits for the Union army, and a strong police force deterred potential social upheaval. (81) Instead, in New York, there had riots which caused by unfair Draft Laws. The whites laborers were attacking black people and republicans and it lasted for four days and resulting in more than four hundred deaths. Most of all, it was a race riot. Through the image, we can see rioters subjected black men to the most brutal violence: torture, hanging, and burning.
There were still farms in both cities, but they started to die out. Farms moved to more rural cities since the big cities needed that land to build buildings and other more useful things. Insurance had expanded to cover fire, marine, and wool manufacturing damages. After the Connecticut compromise, States were equally represented in congress. Even though slavery was abolished in NY in 1801 there were still slaves in both cities up until the 1870’s.
New York had developed much quicker and in a more organized way than Connecticut. The main reason for that in my opinion is NY’s geographical location advantage over Connecticut. New York’s port gave it a great boost economically since they were able to ship and trade goods and later on sell it to other cities, making the most profit because the products reach their hands first. Also more immigrants moved into NY than Connecticut, causing NY to expand quicker because of the cheap labor of the new immigrants. New York started to develop earlier than Connecticut so it also had a time advantage. Connecticut was bigger on slaves at the time, because of the farms they still had while New York already got rid of them.
