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A new era
On April 6th in 1917, the United States of America entered World War I.
Close to two million Americans crossed the Atlantic ocean to fight. Their mission was glorified by propaganda machines which appealed to national pride, honour and glory. But once in combat, the reality of modern, machine-age warfare became apparent. There was not much honour or glory in the veritable butchery - it was a slaughter of human life.
The Armistice finally came on November 11th in 1918, signed by president Woodrow Wilson. Post Armistice America wanted a return to normalcy, they wanted a time to heal and forget.
The time for a revolution had come - the time for the "golden age" had come.
With 1921, post - war business activity reached an all-time high and relatively few people were unemployed. The US enjoyed a boom after World War I, where wages were high and production increased. Here and there warning voices called attention to the difficulties faced by large numbers of farmers and to other weaknesses of the economic system, but the biggest part of Americans, however, wanted to believe that prosperity had come to stay forever.
American society of the 1920s was unusually responsive to new fads and fashions and dramatic public events. This period is called the "Jazz age", for the rhythmical music of jazz was perhaps the most popular one of the new fashions. Other fads shifted rapidly from year to year: from crossword puzzles to dances like the Charleston or eccentric activities like flagpole sitting.
Drastic changes in women's lives took place in the 1920s as well: a constitutional amendment was ratified which gave the women the right to vote: the women's party was organized. Even a special term - flappers - appeared for women who advocated very progressive feminist ideas and followed a certain fashion.
In the 1920s, there was a movement of writers and intellectuals who questioned what had become of their time's America - they were called the "lost generation". This small but influential group had members such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, S. Anderson etc.
At the same time, an Afro - American literary and artistic movement, termed the "Harlem Renaissance" emerged. Like the "lost generation", these writers rejected middle - class values and conventional literary forms.
It can't be true! That was the initial reaction of Americans everywhere to the collapse of the nation's economy in 1929. In a few short months during the winter of 1929 - 1930, the prosperity and promise of the "Golden Twenties" had been replaced by the unemployment, poverty and despair of the period of the Great Depression, a completely new period in American life.
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