Only Yesterday an Informal History of the 1920s Review

I read Frederick Lewis Allen'due south volume Just Yesterday: An Breezy History of the 1920s.

Lewis was one of the all-time historians of the last century, as much a storyteller equally an archivist. His other 2 books -- The Large Change and Since Yesterday -- tell an amazing story of how America changed in the first one-half of the 20th century.

Here are 6 things I learned from Simply Yesterday, which was originally published in 1931:

1. The end of Globe War I made Americans want to allow loose in the 1920s:

The temper of the aftermath of state of war was at final giving way to the temper of peace. Like an overworked man of affairs beginning his vacation, the country had had to become through a period of restlessness and irritability, merely was finally learning how to relax and charm itself again.

A sense of disillusionment remained; like the of a sudden liberated vacationist, the land felt that information technology ought to be enjoying itself more than it was, and that life was futile and zero mattered much. But in the meantime it might also play-follow the oversupply, accept up the new toys that were agreeable the crowd, go in for the new fads, savor the amusing scandals and trivialities of life. By 1921 the new toys and fads and scandals were forthcoming, and the state seized upon them feverishly.

2. A loosening of commercial publications gear up off a new culture of American values:

The tabloids, indeed, were booming -- and not without effect. There was more than coincidence in the fact that every bit they rose, radicalism roughshod. They presented American life non as a political and economic struggle, merely as a 3-ring circus of sport, offense, and sex, and in varying degrees the other papers followed their lead under the pressure level of competition. Workmen forgot to be class-conscious as they gloated over pictures of Miss Scranton on the Boardwalk and followed the Stillman case and the Arbuckle case and studied the racing dope about Morvich.

3. Prohibition might have done more to heave the joy of booze than diminish information technology:

When the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibition seemed, every bit we have already noted, to have an almost united state backside it. Evasion of the police force began immediately, however, and strenuous and sincere opposition to it -- especially in the large cities of the North and East -- quickly gathered forcefulness. The results were the bootlegger, the speakeasy, and a spirit of deliberate defection which in many communities fabricated drinking "the matter to do."

From these facts in turn flowed further results: the increased popularity of distilled equally against fermented liquors, the utilise of the hip-flask, the cocktail party, and the general transformation of drinking from a masculine prerogative to one shared past both sexes together. The sometime-time saloon had been overwhelmingly masculine; the speakeasy commonly catered to both men and women. As Elmer Davis put it, "The erstwhile days when father spent his evenings at Cassidy's bar with the rest of the boys are gone, and probably gone forever; Cassidy may however be in business concern at the old stand and begetter may still become down in that location of evenings, merely since prohibition mother goes downwardly with him." Under the new government not only the drinks were mixed, but the visitor besides.

four. The automobile completely transformed the economy:

And as it came, information technology inverse the face of America. Villages which had one time prospered because they were "on the railroad" languished with economical anaemia; villages on Route 61 bloomed with garages, filling stations, hot-dog stands, craven-dinner restaurants, tearooms, tourists' rests, camping ground sites, and affluence. The interurban trolley perished, or survived but every bit a pathetic anachronism. Railroad later railroad gave upward its branch lines, or saw its revenues slowly dwindling under the competition of mammoth interurban busses and trucks snorting along six-lane concrete highways. The whole land was covered with a network of rider bus-lines. In thousands of towns, at the commencement of the decade a unmarried traffic officer at the junction of Main Street and Central Street had been sufficient for the control of traffic. By the stop of the decade, what a difference!-red and green lights, blinkers, ane-style streets, boulevard stops, stringent and yet more stringent parking ordinances-and still a shining menses of traffic that backed up for blocks forth Main Street every Sabbatum and Sunday afternoon. Slowly but surely the age of steam was yielding to the gasoline age.

v. The bursting of the stock bubble in 1929 did more than than hurt wealth; information technology destroyed a way of life:

The Big Bull Market had been more than the climax of a business concern cycle; it had been the climax of a bicycle in American mass thinking and mass emotion. In that location was hardly a man or woman in the state whose mental attitude toward life had not been affected by it in some degree and was not now affected by the sudden and roughshod shattering of hope. With the Big Bull Market gone and prosperity going, Americans were before long to notice themselves living in an altered world which called for new adjustments, new ideas, new habits of thought, and a new order of values. The psychological climate was irresolute; the ever-shifting currents of American life were turning into new channels.

The Post-state of war Decade had come to its close. An era had ended.

6. The Great Depression, which lasted until 1940, was originally written off equally a bleep:

When the year 1930 opened, Secretarial assistant Mellon predicted "a revival of activity in the jump." "At that place is nothing in the situation to be disturbed almost," said Secretarial assistant of Commerce Lamont in February. ... "There are grounds for assuming that this is near a normal year." In March Mr. Lamont was more specific: he predicted that business organisation would exist normal in two months. A few days later the President himself fix a definite date for the promised recovery: unemployment would be ended in sixty days. On March 16th the indefatigable cheer-leader of the Presidential optimists, Julius H. Barnes, the head of Mr. Hoover's new National Business Survey Conference, spoke as if trouble were already a affair of the past. "The spring of 1930," said he, "marks the end of a period of grave business. ... American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity."

Become buy the book here. It's corking.

For more:

• What I learned from "This will make you smarter"
• What I learned from "How to fail at everything"
• What I learned from The Bed of Procrustes"

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Source: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/29/6-things-i-learned-from-the-book-only-yesterday-an.aspx

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