Page 2 - 1924 Booklet

The Roaring ‘20s

Hemlines, the Stock Market and Lindbergh all went up!

This was a period in American history of dramatic social, economic and
political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms.
The nation’s total wealth more than doubled in the 20’s, gross national product
expanded by 40 percent and unemployment remained low. This economic
engine swept many Americans into an affluent “consumer culture” in which
people nationwide saw the same advertisements, bought the same goods,
listened to the same music and did the same dances. Many Americans, however,
were uncomfortable with this racy urban lifestyle, and the decade of Prohibition
brought more conflict than celebration.
One of the most successful and best known
bootleggers in the Pacific Northwest region during
Prohibition was Roy Olmstead. A former lieutenant in
the Seattle Police Department, he began smuggling
alcohol from Canada while still on the force.
Perhaps the most familiar
symbol of the “Roaring Twenties”
is the flapper: a young woman with
bobbed hair and short skirts who Roy Olmsted
drank, smoked and said “unladylike”
things. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none
of these things, though many did adopt a flapper wardrobe.
Moviegoing became an American pastime, especially
after the emergence of “talkies.” By the decade’s end, 80
million people flocked to cinemas weekly, with radio and
magazines boosting interest in the stars on the screen.
Starting in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution guaranteed the right for women to vote, though it
would be decades before Black women in the South could fully
exercise their right to vote. However, it was a decade earlier,
in 1910, when voters in Washington approved Amendment Six to the
State Constitution granting women the right to vote. Millions of women worked
and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy.
By the mid-1920s more than 60 percent of American households had
electricity. And with this electrification came new machines and technologies
like the washing machine, the freezer and the vacuum cleaner that eliminated
some of the drudgeries of household work.