INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………p.3

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………p.3

CHAPTER I. The rough beginnings…………………………..……………….p.5

Cultures Merge……………………………………………………p.5

The Eye of Society……………………………………………….p.8

CHAPTER II. The four aces of the twenties………………………..……..p.10

Woodrow Wilson………………………………………………..p.12

Warren G. Harding…………………………………………….p.16

Calvin Coolidge………………………………………………… p.17

Herbert Clark Hoover…………………………………………p.19

CHAPTER III. Lights, Music, Action……………………………………….p.21

The 1920’s boom…………………………………………………p.22

The Jazz Age………………………………………………………p.27

The Flapper and Fashion……………………………………..p.29

Famous Faces……………………………………………………..p.35

CHAPTER IV. Prohibition and the Rise of Organized Crime…..p.38

Prohibition…………………………………………………………p.38

Gangsters and the F.B.I……………………………………….p.41

Alcatraz Prison…………………………………………………..p.50

CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………….p.52

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………..p.54

Introduction

America is the land of all possibilities. Is this true? The answer to this question lies somewhere between the following lines of this paper which tries to outline the struggle of the American nation over the years that followed World War I. This statement is known to have come initially from the foreign immigrants who came to the United Sates, in the hope of a better life, trying to achieve the famous American dream. Seen from outside, America was a flourishing country, led by democracy, the perfect role model for those who had suffered the consequences of the communist or fascist regimes. Structured in four chapters, the work presents firstly the state of being before the 1920’s and the beginnings of the 1920’s in the United States.

In the first chapter I tried to embody the political, cultural, and the social situation which brought a mass reform in all the domains, but also the effects of the so called “lost generation” to see the new era under a better light. After World War I the US population confronted with many problems. The mass migration for instance became a threat, influencing the society in a negative way; the Americans had to deal with the Afro Americans who came with their own customs and culture opposing the phenomena of clashing cultures. Changes happened in the life of every American, but women have been more privileged. The equality between sexes, the right to vote and the right to independence for women represented the desired first steps towards a healed America.

The second chapter presents the four presidents who led the United States during 1920 up to 1929. Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover encouraged a warm relationship between business and government, in spite of their conservative view. Although there were four presidents during the 1920’s, only three of them could fill entirely the pages of history with both good and bad deeds. With Harding’s election in 1920 the US was promised to a “return to normalcy” from a “man of limited talents from a small town”. Harding strived as he could to improve government and bring reforms to the country, but his limited condition could not save him from the Teapot Scandal, or the veil of corruption which covered America for years to come. Calvin Coolidge came in 1923 with a better image of the future, stating that “the business of America is business”. He too failed to pull out his nation from the mass corruption and organized crime. With the arrival of 1929, the forth president came to lead this great nation: Herbert Hoover. Fortunately, the luck was on his side and managed to combat Depression and corruption, finishing what his predecessors had started years before. Each president has had a hard time leading such a great nation, but managed to leave his own legacy, guiding America towards progress and success.

Chapter three describes the highs and lows of the “Roaring twenties”. Economic expansion created booming business which turned into profits. The booming of economy, industry, and of the other sectors made specialists compare the US with a phoenix that rose from its ashes. The scars left from the First World War had disappeared, and new memories were being made. The profit grew and everyone could live the true American dream. The clashing of cultures had worked perfectly, blending the traditionalist white pattern with the modern and non-conformist Afro-American perspective. Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman were recognized as the Kings of Jazz, a new form of art which brought with it the revolutionizing of the fashion for both men and women. Literature, art and music also reflected the nation’s changing values. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway depicted perfectly in their literary works the amazing period of the 1920’s.

We are again confronted with the situation of women in this chapter, only this time progress has materialized and what was once a dream, now it became a reality. A new image is presented: the independent, educated, working woman is able to maintain a family and can be stylish at the same time. The pursuit of impossible dreams had finished, carving the way for the modern, powerful woman with a fashionable wardrobe and a sharp mind.

Part of the makeover America went through is the prohibition. A blessing and a curse for the Americans, the prohibition era had brought with it gangsters and corruption. Faces such as Al Capone or John Dillinger have made the front page covers with their illegal smuggling business. Nevertheless, justice was done; the FBI managed to bring back the law and order, forcing their careers as hardened criminals to finish at The Rock’s steps.

CHAPTER I

THE ROUGH BEGINNINGS

Cultures Merge

The “Roaring Twenties” refers to the North American historical period of the 1902’s, which has been described as “one of the most colorful decade”. These years have been marked by progress and regression as well, thus occupy a special place in the American history of the 20th century.

During the 1920’s, the United States imposed a strict restriction upon the foreign immigrants who came here in search of the American dream. Although tension had been accumulating because of the large inflow of foreign immigrants, Uncle Sam managed somehow to integrate this Northern European stock into the already existing population. By the end of the 19th century, the flow was represented by the Eastern European immigrants. Slowly, over 15 millions of immigrants succeeded to enter the space of the United States and establish themselves there. Although America struggled to keep its customs and traditions by the foreigner’s, the former managed to keep theirs untouched.

The causes which made the Nativists send the immigrants back to Europe and the American social workers transform them into native citizens were simple: very few of them could get along with very little English and because they supported political machines which catered their needs. America was recognized as having a distinguishable identity, and the immigrants would do nothing but stain this pure image.

Even though the World War I halted the immigration process, after 1919 the percentage grew significantly, and something had to be done quickly. Therefore, in 1921, the Congress passed a very strict immigration act. In 1924 the law was supplanted by the Johnson- Reed National Origins Act according to which the US could establish a quota of immigration for each nationality. This new bolt kept the immigrants apart from the “promised land” until the 1929 when the Great Depression lead the Europeans pressed by the claw of fascism demanded admission to the country.

As the immigrants settled into their adopting country, some Americans such as Billy Sunday provided an outlet for many who thought that traditions were not respected. Family and religion were no longer in the center of attention. Now, the era of development took charge over the simple life, and for some this was just too much. Radical measures were taken regarding this matter: from the public school’s syllabus there was taken out the Darwinian Theory, due to a bill issued in 1920. William Jennings Bryan, a spokesman for the values of the countryside, as well as a politician sustained in one of his speeches that “by denying the need or possibility of spiritual regeneration, discourages all reforms”. Although the aim was to obtain and apply reform, reaching it seemed a far too long way.

An eloquent example of clashing culture was the case of John Scopes, a Tennessee teacher who was prosecuted in 1925 because he thought in a private school the theory of evolution during a biology class. The case took the nation interest because of the involvement of William Jennings Bryan who, with the help of some rather literary Biblical passages managed to win the case, therefore drawing a lot of criticism upon him.

Another event which took national proportions was the prohibition of alcohol, law enacted by the Amendment to the Constitution. Although the saloon and the drunkard were still fashionable, by applying the prohibition law, it was supposed that all of that would be gone. Unfortunately, it did nothing but to increase the rate of criminal activity. “Bootlegging”, the transportation of illegal liquor and the new drinking places “speakeasies” made intoxication fashionable.This phenomena hit hard both the rural and the urban areas, and it was considered that it will fade away somewhere in the 1930’s.

The speakeasies became more popular as the years passed, leading to the rise of figures such as Al Capone or John Dillinger, who were connected to the organized crime. Even though the police and the United States Federal Government struggled to arrest the owners of such places, these establishments continued to gain territory, due to the increasing rate of bribing. It seemed that the immigrants brought with them not only their customs, but their vices as well, corrupting those who were struggling to gain an extra sum of money.

As already mentioned, the immigrants did not ease the authority’s job at all, but on the contrary. The Americans thought that through their arrival and establishment their pure country has been contaminated with immorality and crime. The supporters of religion claimed that the Afro-American population had brought to their country the “Devil’s music”. The improvising over the traditional structure was acidly criticized, due to its music, its lyrics, its way of dancing and, implicitly its way of seeing life. Between 1910 and 1930 a large number of Afro-Americans moved to the North searching for jobs and a better life, escaping from the slavery which was still practiced. All that population was settled mostly in the urban areas of Chicago, Detroit and in New York City’s Harlem. Seen from the eyes of a reformist, the immigration process with everything it involved brought a wave of new things which had to be discovered and shown off to the entire world.

The roaring twenties, a period of transition, of embracing the old with the new, had both a positive and a negative effect over America’s population: it became a period of creativity for every domain; but all this had a greater impact regarding politics, economy, literature, music and fashion. One of the personalities of the 20th century who managed to capture the magic of the 1920’s was F. Scott Fitzgerald in his litercreasing rate of bribing. It seemed that the immigrants brought with them not only their customs, but their vices as well, corrupting those who were struggling to gain an extra sum of money.

As already mentioned, the immigrants did not ease the authority’s job at all, but on the contrary. The Americans thought that through their arrival and establishment their pure country has been contaminated with immorality and crime. The supporters of religion claimed that the Afro-American population had brought to their country the “Devil’s music”. The improvising over the traditional structure was acidly criticized, due to its music, its lyrics, its way of dancing and, implicitly its way of seeing life. Between 1910 and 1930 a large number of Afro-Americans moved to the North searching for jobs and a better life, escaping from the slavery which was still practiced. All that population was settled mostly in the urban areas of Chicago, Detroit and in New York City’s Harlem. Seen from the eyes of a reformist, the immigration process with everything it involved brought a wave of new things which had to be discovered and shown off to the entire world.

The roaring twenties, a period of transition, of embracing the old with the new, had both a positive and a negative effect over America’s population: it became a period of creativity for every domain; but all this had a greater impact regarding politics, economy, literature, music and fashion. One of the personalities of the 20th century who managed to capture the magic of the 1920’s was F. Scott Fitzgerald in his literary work:” The Great Gatsby” and in “This Side of Paradise”. In both works the author treats all the aspects of life during that roaring period, outlining the flaws of an ignorant society stuffed with useful “baggage”. Ernest Hemingway depicts as well that period in “The Sun Also Rises”, describing the adventures of a group of expatriate Americans in Europe.

The Afro-American culture gave birth also to an artistic movement called the “Harlem Renaissance”, and with the help of its most active representatives, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen they managed to keep themselves apart from the mediocrity of that period.

The Eye of Society

After World War I, there surfaced a new generation of youths who were disillusioned and cynical about the world, although the term was usually attributed to the American literary patrons who lived in Paris, such as: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. This negative attitude towards the future was adopted by every American. Now the attention shifted slowly towards the religion and the family. The role of the woman was to procreate, to raise children and educate them, as well as fulfilling the duties of a faithful wife. Obviously, women had fewer legal rights than men did, thus had few opportunities to build up a career. However, in most nations, women benefited almost the same rights as men, so they had much more chances of living an ideal life.

In other religions, women had more help from the laws, which affected them less than in the West: in ancient India when they married, women were not deprived of their goods, or individual freedom; Hinduism allowed intellectual freedom. The American woman followed somehow the example of Muslim women who walked behind their husbands and obeyed them in everything. Of course religion played the main role here, being at the same time an acid critic but also encouraged to overcome the boundaries in art, literature, or culture. Nevertheless, throughout the centuries, there were created some precedents, which symbolized a good example of a devoted wife and a woman who could stand up for her ideals: Queen Elizabeth of England in the 16th century, Catherine the Great of Russia n the 18th century and Queen Victoria of England in the 19th century.

“Women were long considered naturally weaker than men, squeamish, and unable to perform work requiring muscular or intellectual development”.Based on this conception, men considered that the woman’s place is at home. It was also considered that giving birth is the main purpose of the woman, therefore her wishes to improve herself on all the levels existing, were not taken into matter. Since her teenage years, a woman would undergo a radical transformation; she would be put in school or given a proper education by private tutors. During her teen, the girl would be given the best education in order for her to handle without any difficulty the basics: reading, writing, asthmatics, to sew, to cook, and even speak foreign languages. After assimilating all this, she would then be ready to be properly introduced in society so that a rich man could find her fit and propose her. By the age of 20 they would have already married and started a family, so if they wanted to continue their studies they wouldn’t have had a chance.

Fortunately, around the beginning of the 20th century women obtained 19 per cent of all undergraduate college degrees, percentage which rised over the years. Therefore this showed that women were interested in making a better future for them. They started an unseen battle for regaining their rights and dignity.

It is known that up to the 1920’s women in America did not have the right to vote, and of course they were deprived of many rights which nowadays do not bear the same urgency and importance as they did back then. When a woman married, she gave up her name, and obviously her possessions, becoming one and the same person with her husband. There where laws which made the mother defenseless if her husband decided to take the children into his custody; fortunately, a law was issued through which the mother could sue for property in her own name.

Equality law was the one which allowed the woman to reach the level of the man, and benefit the rights which up till now she could only dream. The Church was also involved in these differences between the man and the woman, from the idea that the woman is sinful because she led Adam to bite from the forbidden tree. Although the church sustained this idea, the nuns had a very important role in all the history, giving to all the oppressed women the hope that one could improve her, and could do something with her life other than procreate and become a domestic slave in a so- called civilized world.

Being pretty and knowing all the secrets to being a good wife were not enough for the woman which became even more open minded. During the roaring twenties the women took their chance and could now work in the fields men had control over. Journalists, doctors, writers, shopkeepers, and many other jobs were now available for women all across America, and they could only get better at what they did, leaving the men behind, watching their glorious ascent to the top. Of course this opened many other opportunities in fields women could only dream: professional dancers, ballerinas, singers, actresses. This was the time when the once overpowered women took control and fell good about it.

CHAPTER II

THE FOUR ACES OF THE TWENTIES

Change was a very important part in America’s history, therefore, after that cultural mixture and merge, after the shift of the woman’s position in society, and after prohibition settled onto an already crowded market, the “American society was rent with anxiety and disillusion. The economy fell into a deep recession, thousands of farmers fell into bankruptcy, anti-communist paranoia poisoned political debate, strikes were met with brutality and lock-outs, while racial violence was met with equally violent bank resistance, the Ku Klux Klan reappeared as a social an political force and unemployment stirred nativist anger towards immigrants. Unable to agree upon a workable formula for involvement in the new “League of Nations”, a body designed to arbitrate international disputes and prevent a Second World War, Republican and Democratic politicians bickered amongst themselves and a cynical electorate turned its back on idealistic “crusades”.

In this bitter, dysfunctional environment, American voters turned decisively to the political right. In the three presidential elections of the 1920’s, conservative Republican candidates won sweeping victories and, throughout the period, the party never lost the majority in Congress that it had gained in 1918.Yet, the nation itself did not appear to embrace conservatism in all its forms”.

The U.S. presidential election of 1920 was dominated by the aftermath of World War I. “The wartime boom had collapsed. Diplomats and politicians were arguing over peace treaties and the question of America's entry into the League of Nations. Overseas there were wars and revolutions; at home there were strikes, riots, and a growing fear of radicals and terrorists. Disillusionment was in the air. On June 8, 1920, the Republican National Convention meeting in Chicago nominated Warren G. Harding, an Ohio newspaper editor and United States Senator, to run for president with Calvin Coolidge, governor of Massachusetts, as his running mate. The Democrats, meeting in San Francisco, nominated another newspaper editor from Ohio, Governor James M. Cox, as their presidential candidate, and 37 year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, a fifth cousin of the late president Teddy Roosevelt, for vice president.

The presidential election of 1920 continued the debate between the nationalistic activism of Roosevelt's presidency and the global idealism of Wilson's administration. Harding, the winner, inherited major domestic and international problems that tested his leadership.

The U.S. presidential election of 1924 was won by incumbent President Calvin Coolidge in a landslide as he presided over a booming economy at home and no visible crises abroad. Coolidge (Republican) won the election in a landslide, with Davis (Democrat) only winning the 11 former Confederate states and Oklahoma, and losing the popular vote by 25 percentage points. The Republicans did so well that they won in New York City, a feat that has not been repeated since.

The U.S. presidential election of 1928 pitted Republican Herbert Hoover against Democrat Alfred E. Smith. The Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s and Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic prejudice. The election held on November 6, 1928 was won by Republican candidate Herbert Hoover by a wide margin on pledges to continue the economic boom of the Coolidge years”.

2.1. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)

At first sight it might appear that the three Republican administrations of the 1920s sandwiched between Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic administration (1923-1931) and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (1933-1945), period during which conservatism was the word of the day. Another political factor which characterized the 1920s was the balance of the power between the president and the Congress. Even thought after World War I the balanced showed an advantage towards the presidency, in the 1902s the Republican-dominated presidency set a balance.

“Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856–February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft dividing the Republican Party vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912. To date he is the only President to serve in a political office in New Jersey before election to the Presidency, although Grover Cleveland is the only President born in the state of New Jersey. Early in his first term, he supported some cabinet appointees in introducing segregation in the federal workplace of several departments, a Democratic Congress to pass major legislation that included the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act, America's first-ever federal progressive income tax in the Revenue Act of 1913 and most notably the Federal Reserve Act.

In the late stages of the war, Wilson took personal control of negotiations with Germany, including the armistice. He issued his Fourteen Points, his view of a post-war world that could avoid another terrible conflict. He went to Paris in 1919 to create the League of Nations and shape the Treaty of Versailles, with special attention on creating new nations out of defunct empires. Largely for his efforts to form the League, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Wilson collapsed with a debilitating stroke in 1919, as the home front saw massive strikes and race riots, and wartime prosperity turn into postwar depression. He refused to compromise with the Republicans who controlled Congress after 1918, effectively destroying any chance for ratification of the Versailles Treaty. The League of Nations was established anyway, but the United States never joined. Wilson's idealistic internationalism, calling for the United States to enter the world arena to fight for democracy, progressiveness, and liberalism, has been a contentious position in American foreign policy, serving as a model for "idealists" to emulate or "realists" to reject for the following century.”

Woodrow Wilson guided himself after the famous motto, which he embodied in his first inaugural address on the 4th of March, 1913: “There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. The Senate about assemble will also be Democratic. The offices President and Vice-President have been put in the hands of Democrats. It means much more than the mere success of party. The success of a party means little excess when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party.

Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto”.

He wanted his presidency to be a new beginning, reined by peace, prosper and progress, but unfortunately the times he lived in brought only the World War I and a nation which had lost its belief of a better future.

Born Thomas Woodrow Wilson on the 28th of December 1856 he brought a Scottish heritage to the American people. With both parents of Presbyterian background, he was raised too in this religion, in a pious and academic household. He spent a year at Davidson College in North Carolina and three more at Princeton University, from which he graduated in 1879.

He led the United States through World War I and gained fame as a champion of democracy and peace. Throughout his life, he managed to influence the course of education and of political life too, here he brought successful legislative reforms to the state.

Even though his appearance created the image of a scholar: thin, medium height, wore glasses, Wilson was a man of firm beliefs. He had the ability of a great leader, and he was also recognized for maintaining warm friendships the political circle, thing which brought him even more supporters. Historians consider him as the man who stood fearfully against the crisis of those times, taking the complaints of the people and transforming them into one powerful voice which “inspired integrity, purity of purpose, and responsibility”.

His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor.He was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states' rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote. Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices.

Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law prohibited child labor; another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won re-election. But after the election Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On the 2nd of April 1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.

Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Wilson went before Congress in January 1918, to enunciate American war aims–the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish "A general association of nations…affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike". After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?" But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate. The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.

In some ways, Woodrow Wilson was the president who managed to get through the war a whole country, a good reason for him to be reelected, but he was also a man of progress, who wanted his country to flourish after such a disaster. As a result, with such a rapid industrialization, large corporations started to gain wealth and of course political power. In universities the man was in the center of all the studies, its social problems and also the human thought and behavior became new subject of study. The progress took over Wilson’s Nation.

As stated in his first inaugural address in 1913, he is well aware of the situation, stating that every citizen should be proud of what the country has achieved up to that point in every domain. But progress is something in continuous movement; therefore Wilson asks the people to improve themselves, to upgrade their lives and overcome every obstacle and follow his example.

2.2. Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)

Many Americans were fed up with Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president from 1913 to 1921. The first election of the 1920s scoured Republican Warren G. Harding against Democrat James M. Cox. Cox supported Wilson and the League of Nations in the election. However, Harding won the election in a landslide, which was a sign of America’s frustration with Wilson and his optimistic and liberal policies. The start of the new conservative era restored the power to the Republicans after the presidential election of the 1920.

Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th President of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death from a heart attack or stroke, in 1923. A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate (1899–1903) and later as Lieutenant Governor of Ohio (1903–1905) and as a U.S. Senator (1915–1921).

”His conservative, political leanings, affable manner, and campaign manager Harry Daugherty's 'make no enemies' strategy enabled Harding to become the compromise choice at the 1920 Republican National Convention. During his presidential campaign, in the aftermath of World War I, he promised a return to "normalcy". In the 1920 election, he and his running-mate, Calvin Coolidge, defeated Democrat and fellow Ohioan James M. Cox, in the largest presidential popular vote landslide in American history since the popular vote tally began to be recorded in 1824: 60.36% to 34.19%.

Harding headed a cabinet of notable men such as Charles Evans Hughes, Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover and Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, who was jailed for his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal. In foreign affairs, Harding signed peace treaties that built on the Treaty of Versailles (which formally ended World War I). He also led the way to world Naval disarmament at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22”.

Harding made quite a few excellent appointments to his cabinet although he failed to demonstrate to have much intelligence. Charles Evans Hughes was appointed to be the Secretary of State, Andrew W. Mellon appointed as the Secretary of the Treasury and as leader of the Commerce Department, and Herbert Hoover bumped up the 1920s to a new level. On the other hand, Harding also appointed some of the worst positions for office. He appointed Albert B. Fall as the Secretary of the Interior. The Teapot Dome Scandal or the “Oil Reserves Scandal”surrounded the secret leasing of the federal oil reserves by fall. He secretly granted the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome reserves in Wyoming after President Harding transferred supervision of the naval oil reserve lands from the navy to him. While this scandal entered American politics as a symbol of governmental corruption, it had little long-term effect on the Republican Party. For the moment, Harding started the conservative trend of politics in the 1920s.

Harding died during before he could finish his presidency in 1923, and Vice President Calvin Coolidge took the office as President. He conveyed the virtues of morality, honesty, and economy to the presidency. Coolidge was very tacit turn. Coolidge followed the remaining of Harding’s “hands-off” policies and was reelected in the 1924 election. The United States had one of the greatest periods of prosperity ever during his presidency from 1923 to 1929.

2.3. Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)

John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was the 30th President of the United States (1923–1929). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His actions during the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th Vice President in 1920 and succeeded to the Presidency upon the death of Warren G. Harding. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative.

Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration, and left office with considerable popularity. As his biographer later put it, "he embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions. That he did represent the genius of the average is the most convincing proof of his strength." Many later criticized Coolidge as part of a general criticism of laissez-faire government. His reputation underwent a renaissance during the Ronald Reagan Administration, but the ultimate assessment of his presidency is still divided between those who approve of his reduction of the size of government and those who believe the federal government should be more involved in regulating and controlling the economy.

Calvin Coolidge, a New England Republican became the sixth vice president who succeeded the Nation’s future after the death of a chief executive; in 1923, Coolidge was vacationing on his father’s farm in Vermont when president Warren G. Harding died. The events followed quickly, because the United States needed a leader who could pave the road to progress and peace, implicitly. In 1924, Coolidge was elected to a full four- year term.

He conveyed the virtues of morality, honesty, and economy to the presidency. Coolidge was very tacit turn. Coolidge followed the remaining of Harding’s policies and was reelected in the 1924 election. “The United States had one of the greatest periods of prosperity ever during his presidency from 1923 to 1929. When Coolidge decided not to run again in the 1928 election, the Republican nomination went to Herbert Hoover who easily won the job as the new President”.

Although recognized for his reputation as to be a "Silent Cal," President Coolidge's impact on the consumer economy can be seen as significant; the speeches show him sounding the notes to which Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover's economic initiatives gave concrete expression.” The budget-conscious themes were central to Secretary Mellon's battles for the revenue acts of 1924, 1926, and 1928, in which he led the charge to reduce personal and business taxes”. Herbert Clark Hoover, the Commerce Secretary waged a "war on waste" in government and into the private industry as well, using standardization and simplification of industrial parts and procedures as his main resources.

Americans had a great sense of respect for Coolidge who led hi nation into an era of prosperity stimulated behavior and desire for entertainment. During his presidency there was a boom in every aspect, but at the same time the effects caused by the era of prohibition started to wear off. All this agitation made president Coolidge think twice about the situation of gangsters who appeared like mushrooms after the rain, taking power over an already fragile economy.

2.4. Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933). Besides his political career, Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no previous elected office experience. To date, Hoover is the last cabinet secretary to be directly elected President of the United States. The nation was prosperous and optimistic at the time, leading to a landslide victory for Hoover over Democrat Al Smith.

Hoover deeply believed in the Efficiency Movement (a major component of the Progressive Era), arguing that a technical solution existed for every social and economic problem. That position was challenged by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that took place less than eight months after his taking office, and the Great Depression that followed it which gained momentum in 1930. Hoover tried to combat the Depression with volunteer efforts and government action, none of which produced economic recovery during his term. The consensus among historians is that Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by failure to end the downward economic spiral, compounded by popular opposition to prohibition. Other electoral liabilities were Hoover's lack of charisma in relating to voters, and his poor skills in working with politicians. As a result of these factors, Hoover is typically ranked very poorly among former U.S. presidents.

When Coolidge decided not to run again in the 1928 election, the Republican nomination went to Herbert Hoover won the title as the new President. Because he was a self-made millionaire, Hoover was not quite as conservative as Harding or Coolidge. Conversely, many historians believe that if the Depression had not occurred he would probably have been a good president. Later, Americans detested Hoover because he failed to find a way out of the Depression.

First seen on the political stage in 1914 when the First World War begun, Hoover was distributing food to the hungry Belgians; he also supervised the production and distribution of food for Americans soldiers and civilians, and for the Nation’s allies too. He then progressed furthermore in his career, when president of that time, Woodrow Wilson named him food administrator in the United States.

In 1921, Hoover was named secretary of commerce by President Warren G. Harding up to 1928 when he ran for president. He managed to defeat his Democratic opponent candidate by winning the largest majority of electoral votes ever received by a candidate up to that time. Four years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Hoover by an even larger majority of votes.

In his inaugural address on the 4th of March 1929 Hoover reminded the citizens of the United States that the criminal justice system had failed and immediate action would be needed in order to prevent the rising rate of criminality. He also outlined the important role of government and the laws and reforms needed so that the nation could achieve its goals. As the other presidents before him, Hoover saw the rather tragic situation of his country during those years. “Progress” and “change” were the words of the day, but without the help of the nation itself all those discussions would remain just plain words.

“This is not the time and place for extended discussion. The questions before our country are problems of progress to higher standards; they are not the problems of degeneration. They demand thought and they serve to quicken the conscience and enlist our sense of responsibility for their settlement. And that responsibility rests upon you, my countrymen, as much as upon those of us who have been selected for office.

Ours is a land rich in resources; stimulating in its glorious beauty, filled with millions of happy homes; blessed with comfort and opportunity. […] No country is more loved by people. I have an abiding faith in their capacity, integrity and its purpose. […] I beg your tolerance, your aid, and your cooperation. I ask the help of Almighty God in this service to my country to which you have called me”.

CHAPTER III

LIGHTS, MUSIC, ACTION!

The period from 1920 up to 1930 was a tumulus one for the United States and its citizens. An already weakened America tried to regain confidence in its forces after World War I in front with its presidents who strived as hard as they could. President Wilson’s mistakes in approaching the state’s issues led the U.S. closer to the Depression. “The booming economy began to collapse in mid 1920.The Republican candidates for president and vice president, Warren G Harding and Calvin Coolidge, easily defeated their Democratic opponents, James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, women voted in a presidential election for the first time”.

Although economic recession began from in beginnings of the 1920s under Wilson’s presidency, six years later America enjoyed a strong coming-back due to the politic reforms. The economy sector was not the only one to benefit from these reforms. As a starting point, Coolidge’s declaration:” The chief business of the American people is business” started a chain of events which made the 1920s know both high and low points of the success.

The monopoly of domestic market, trading with Europe, tax cuts, business encouragement which included construction loans, profitable mail-carrying contracts and indirect subsidies, or reforms in agriculture were one of the many goals which the presidents of the 1920s tried to achieve. On the outside, America was a state which was rising from its ashes, but on a closer look, the Nation dealt a battle of its own.

Major progress was made also in the field of culture, women’s rights, and fashion as well. The lost generation seemed to find its way, recreating the old and inventing new styles considered by some rather outrageous. Hiding one’s femininity or dancing up to exhaustion was the possibilities of those times. Critics may have judged women and their fashion too harsh, but there are some exaggerated aspects which simply couldn’t fit the pattern of the society.

As an antithesis, the ascension of the woman is compared to the progress of the industry or economics. While the position of the woman changed during the years, gaining even more rights than before and an equal position with the man, the economy and industry sectors have scored nothing but successes, although they each had their ups and downs. With the slavery era gone, the Afro-Americans were not denied their rights anymore, and certainly not considered outcasts in a country where each individual was considered equal and free. The social background and culture played an important role back in the 1920s.Jazz, flapper fashion, the right for women to vote, and simply the feeling of freedom in a world of contrasts can characterize the roaring twenties.

3.1. The 1920’s Boom and The Great Depression

The Roaring Twenties were seen as an era of economic prosperity due to the new consumer goods. Initially, the North American economy, especially the economy of the U.S. took some time to overcome the situation of a wartime economy and become a flourishing one. Because the United States of America was already seen as one of the greatest powers of the world, the alignment to mass production and mass consumption meant that the crisis from the war days were over, and reform would be applied in all the domains. Unfortunately, this fast progress in the beginnings of the 1920s illustrated a temporary victory, because towards the 1930s, the Great Depression would settle upon this nation.

During the period of World War I, the rate of the labor force was low, because the youth of the U.S. was busy fighting, while the girls replaced their places in the factories. A woman’s place was not in the kitchen anymore, but in the factories, manufacturing weapons or trying to help as they could the soldiers who fought overseas also. This was a tie of deep crisis, but it soon ended when the soldiers came back and started to work again, only this time the factories were concentrated on producing consumer goods.

The mass production enabled the new technologies to be sold at cheaper prizes, so, what many people could not afford before the war, now there was no problem in achieving it. The automobile, the radio, the movie and the chemical industries managed to be the most famous in terms of inventions. One of the most important industries was the automobile one. By 1927 Henry Ford had sold 15 million Model T cars in Canada and the U.S. First developed in 1896 with a combustion engine, Henry Ford started his own company, “Henry Ford Company”. During the years, the models of the cars improved, as well as the design and components.

It is needles to say that the invention of the car led directly to a rapid ascension of other investors such as: oil companies, motel companies, or running gas stations. Even more, after seeing Henry Ford’s success, other automobile companies tried their luck on afresh market. Apart from succeeding in making easier communication over large distances, the invention of the car brought with it workplaces for the unemployed, thus contributing to the lowering of the rate of unemployment in the 1920s. So, the automobile represented a further step into civilization. As a reaction, in 1924,”the Federal Road Act offered federal money to state legislatures, which would organize highway departments and match federal funds”. By the end of the decade, there were as many projects as there were roads, and from the highway construction programs the state would have to gain more than any single private industry.

Communication was an important part of the U.S.’s strategy to overcome the crisis from the beginnings of the 1920s. It started with the extension of the road system, and then the electrification system was upgraded. Originally the United States were coal powered, but all this changed when after most of North America was added to the electric grid, they switched to electricity. The need for more reflected into the construction of power plants which created and used the electricity, providing the nation. Another improvement regarding communication was represented by the telephone. Although invented years ago, the telephone lines were being strung across the continent, allowing people to use a once unavailable technology.

Indoor plumbing meant an urbanization of the man, following the need of modernization and fulfilling it. The semi-isolated rural areas and precarious living standard made the population want a better life, thus they started a mass migration to the urbanized areas where they could find jobs, and live a decent life. Moreover, the need for improvement made the cities expand even more, creating megalopolises such as New York or Chicago. During this flourishing period, the first skyscrapers were built. Some might say that the skyscrapers brought the first white collar jobs, reflecting that the urbanization led to development. Evolution has begun in the Big Apple, and from there for the modern man sky was the only limit. The financing of all these reforming programs left the United States in debt, even though the government had taken into account the fact that these kinds of investments would pay off in the near future. Unfortunately, this misjudgment led directly to the Great Depression.

In order for the companies to keep selling their products and make a profit, they started adopting management strategies, and imposed strict rules for their employees. Workdays averaged ten hours and workweeks over sixty, but in other industries the working hours were sometimes doubled. Even though the amount of work and hours working was a large one, the employees stood on their position, knowing that there was someone else who needed a job and would replace him or her if he quit.

Back in those days, and even in the present, it was very important to sell a product and obtain a profit from it, but what mattered the most was how one made the product known to the public. This is how advertising appeared. It first begun with the papers “Ladies’ Home Journal” and “The Saturday Evening Post” which featured Norman Rockwell’s picture on the cover. Then, in the hope of attracting a larger public, Henry Luce begun publishing “time” in 1923.Slowly but surely, companies saw the great potential the papers would bring to them and posted ads in the newspapers so that people would read them and led by curiosity buy or use the certain products. A very ingenious strategy we might think, and was indeed, as in the case of the famous brand Coca-Cola. The drink was firstly introduced on the market as a medicine in the 1880s, and after that in the 1920s the same company presented the fuzzy drink to the public as refreshment. Another example of advertising was given by the big and glamorous stores from the cities. The managers imposed a strict policy for their employees who were obliged to wear clothes with an official character, or the store provided them with clothes. In this way, the store or company would be represented through the employees in a subtitle manner.

If electricity had improved life, the radio did the same thing, bringing the nation together, but also made the people more close-minded, ignorant and disillusioned. For the ones radio addicts or even television addicts, the events related were presented in a subjective way, introducing a mild manipulation of the public. This negative aspect became a part of the lives of American citizens, who embraced both good and the bad, but separating them at one point so that they could see the truth behind.

“Scientific advancements during the 1920s were not confined to only industrial technologies, health and medicine advanced greatly during the same period. Surprisingly, a post-war interest developed in nutrition, caloric consumption, and physical vitality”. “This crusade for health was led primarily by the “Flappers”, liberal and out- going women”.A flapper was often described as those women who bobbed their hair, concealed her forehead, and tried to hide her shapes, wanting to look as flat as possible.

While the population of women wanted to hide their curves, the prosperity of the industry’s prosperity didn’t loose much time to show. “Traditionally, state legislatures, reflecting the views of the American middle class, supported the concept of the “open shop”, which prevented a union from being the exclusive representative of all workers”.The companies would deny now unions the right to collective bargain and would block unionization by taking legal action.

“The Great Depression was a worldwide economic crisis that in the United States was marked by widespread unemployment, near halts in industrial production and construction, and an 89 percent decline in stock prices. It was preceded by the so-called New Era, a time of low unemployment when general prosperity masked vast disparities in income.

The start of the Depression is usually pegged to the stock market crash of “Black Tuesday,” Oct. 29, 1929, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 23 percent and the market lost between $8 billion and $9 billion in value. But it was just one in a series of losses during a time of extreme market volatility that exposed those who had bought stocks “on margin” – with borrowed money.

The stock market continued to decline despite brief rallies. Unemployment rose and wages fell for those who continued to work. The use of credit for the purchase of homes, cars, furniture and household appliances resulted in foreclosures and repossessions. As consumers lost buying power industrial production fell, businesses failed, and more workers lost their jobs. Farmers were caught in a depression of their own that had extended through much of the 1920s. This was caused by the collapse of food prices with the loss of export markets after World War I and years of drought that were marked by huge dust storms that blackened skies at noon and scoured the land of topsoil. As city dwellers lost their homes, farmers also lost their land and equipment to foreclosure.

President Herbert Hoover, a Republican and former Commerce secretary, believed the government should monitor the economy and encourage counter-cyclical spending to ease downturns, but not directly intervene. As the jobless population grew, he resisted calls from Congress, governors, and mayors to combat unemployment by financing public service jobs. He encouraged the creation of such jobs, but said it was up to state and local governments to pay for them. He also believed that relieving the suffering of the unemployed was solely up to local governments and private charities.

By 1932 the unemployment rate had soared past 20 percent. Thousands of banks and businesses had failed. Millions were homeless. Men (and women) returned home from fruitless job hunts to find their dwellings padlocked and their possessions and families turned into the street. Many drifted from town to town looking for non-existent jobs. Many more lived at the edges of cities in makeshift shantytowns their residents derisively called Hoovervilles. People foraged in dumps and garbage cans for food.

The presidential campaign of 1932 was run against the backdrop of the Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the Democratic nomination and campaigned on a platform of attention to “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” Hoover continued to insist it was not the government’s job to address the growing social crisis. Roosevelt won in a landslide. He took office on March 4, 1933, with the declaration that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Roosevelt faced a banking crisis and unemployment that had reached 24.9 percent. Thirteen to 15 million workers had no jobs. Banks regained their equilibrium after Roosevelt persuaded Congress to declare a nationwide bank holiday. He offered and Congress passed a series of emergency measures that came to characterize his promise of a “new deal for the American people.” The legislative tally of the new administration’s first hundred days reformed banking and the stock market; insured private bank deposits; protected home mortgages; sought to stabilize industrial and agricultural production; created a program to build large public works and another to build hydroelectric dams to bring power to the rural South; brought federal relief to millions, and sent thousands of young men into the national parks and forests to plant trees and control erosion.

The parks and forests program, called the Civilian Conservation Corps, was the first so-called work relief program that provided federally funded jobs. Roosevelt later created a large-scale temporary jobs program during the winter of 1933–34. The Civil Works Administration employed more than four million men and women at jobs from building and repairing roads and bridges, parks, playgrounds and public buildings to creating art. Unemployment, however, persisted at high levels. That led the administration to create a permanent jobs program, the Works Progress Administration. The W.P.A. began in 1935 and would last until 1943, employing 8.5 million people and spending $11 billion as it transformed the national infrastructure, made clothing for the poor, and created landmark programs in art, music, theater and writing. To accommodate unions that were growing stronger at the time, the W.P.A. at first paid building trades workers “prevailing wages” but shortened their hours so as not to compete with private employers.

Roosevelt’s efforts to assert government control over the economy were frustrated by Supreme Court rulings that overturned key pieces of legislation. In response, Roosevelt made the misstep of trying to “pack” the Supreme Court with additional justices. Congress rejected this 1937 proposal and turned against further New Deal measures, but not before the Social Security Act creating old-age pensions went into effect.

Brightening economic prospects were dashed in 1937 by a deep recession that lasted from that fall through most of 1938. The new downturn rolled back gains in industrial production and employment, prolonged the Depression and caused Roosevelt to increase the work relief rolls of the W.P.A. to their highest level ever”.

3.2. The Jazz Age

The decade following World War I became a period of progress and wealth, when manufacturers reached the peak of prosperity, and where the nation’s population moved to urban areas where they found the comfort their parents did not have the chance to experiment. The homes were lit by electricity and radios and automobiles weren’t just a luxury anymore. “Nothing of that happened before, and by the mid 1920s jazz was being played in dance halls and roadhouses and speakeasies all over the country. The blues which had once been the product of itinerant black musicians, the poorest of the southern poor, had become an industry, and dancing consumed a country that seemed convinced that prosperity would never end”.

When it first appeared, the new sound of jazz left both delight and controversy .The more its popularity grew, the more it was criticized; even Henry ford had a role in the acid criticism , not to say the papers like “Ladies Home Journal” or “The New York Times” which have put the next good thing of Americans under a bag spotlight.

A passion and delight for some and a soul eating atrocity for others, jazz managed to survive very well through the roaring twenties. This type of music was different from everything it was played before. It broke the rules of music and society also. Before the jazz appeared, there was a traditional structure which every genre respected, but the improvisation over this structure, performer ever composer and black American experience over white conventionality set controversial ties. Undercurrents of racism made the white population think that jazz was immoral and barbaric, and the already frightened music educators tried to convince the public that the European classical music was the only “good music”.

The centre o jazz was in New Orleans where honky-tonk clubs were bursting from nowhere and made out of Storyville the city’s red-light district. Because of the white Americans which thought jazz was the Devil’s music, the black musicians often used as their scene brothels and other less reputable locations? But this prohibition of music began from 1917 when the US Navy feared for their sailor’s safety and health because they frequented the jazz clubs, and as a measure of protection they shut them down. In the same year, some white Americans set the basis of an organization called Original Dixieland Jazz Band with the basis in New Orleans which cut their first jazz record, opening the door for other bans on the jazz scene.

Banned in over sixty communities across the nation, jazz was not allowed to be played in public dance halls anymore. Moreover, it was ridiculed by those who still bore the traditionalists like Thomas Edison who said that the records sounded better played backwards. Other important personalities of the 1920s like Ann Shaw Faulkner, president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, a powerful alliance of women’s social and reform groups lunched a crusade against jazz too. She stated that jazz was first the accompaniment of the voodoo dance which stimulated half- crazed barbarians to do outrageous deeds.

In spite of all the negative publicity and anti-campaigns, jazz managed very well to gain even more supporters, bringing together black and white people as well, in the Black and Tan clubs of Chicago. This merge was also a racial and social one, reuniting all kinds of people just for the simple pleasure of having a great time dancing and listening to jazz. With the help of monkey glide, the turkey trot and the Charleston, everyone was moved by this music both figuratively and literarily. Jazz spread from North to the South due to the migration of the black people in search of a workplace. In Chicago there appeared at least 100 clubs in the South Side scene. As its popularity grew more and more, jazz overcome the nightclub barrier too, the radio recording companies from New York being the ones who dominated the music industry now, shifting the attention from Chicago, and also considered the epicenter of the art movement Harlem Renaissance.

Now, after jazz has won all the battles with the society and the morality of those times, all it was necessary was for its voices to be heard and not kept under the key. Rising stars aspired to the title of the “King of Jazz”, which a white bandleader obtained successfully due to his outstanding talent. Paul Whiteman co-opted and sanitized the jazz, his recordings being linked to the symphonic music. Although criticized by many blacks, his records sold millions. While Paul Whiteman set a pattern for jazz, back in New York, Louis Armstrong emerged, achieving a great success. With his fan base already established, Armstrong made jazz an art form with his original songs, although his record company suggested him to change some of the lyrics in order to avoid offending the white audience. The Devil’s music brought another star, Duke Ellington, a composer and bandleader, who continued this passion for jazz up to the 1930s, enchanting the overseas English audience.

Although the black people were not considered equal to the white population, the former managed to establish equilibrium through their passion for art, and especially for jazz.

3.3. The Flapper and Fashion

“Bathtub gin, speakeasies, hot jazz, the Charleston, the 1920s were a wild and a romantic era, thoroughly modern. Then, hope sprung afresh from the battlefields of Europe, a new freedom. The United States had been engaged in a major European war and had been on the winning side. The farm boys returned home, itching to live in the city. Flappers were bobbing their hair, rolling down their stockings, raising their hemlines and wearing makeup”.

The flapper fashion style appeared due to the class’ negating the differences between themselves and the rich ones. Initially high fashion was only for the rich people who continue wearing their rich embellished clothes for evening; meanwhile the middle classes discovered the flapper clothes.

” The term flapper in the 1920s referred to a "new breed" of young women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to the new jazz music, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms .Flappers had their origins in the period of liberalism, social and political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of the First World War, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.

The first appearance of the word and image in the United States came from the popular 1920 Frances Marion movie, The Flapper, starring Olive Thomas. Thomas had starred in a similar role in 1917, though it was not until The Flapper that the term was used. In her final movies she was seen in the flapper image. Other actresses, such as Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore and Joan Crawford would soon build their careers on the same image, achieving great popularity”.

In the United States, prohibition contributed to the rise of the flapper. ”Writers in the United States such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anita Loos, and illustrators such as Russell Patterson, John Held Jr., Ethel Hays and Faith Burrows popularized the flapper look and lifestyle through their works, and flappers came to be seen as attractive, reckless and independent. Among those who criticized the flapper craze was writer-critic Dorothy Parker. She penned "Flappers: A Hate Song" to poke fun at the fad”.

As the years passed, the length of the dress or skirt varied in accordance with the needs of the 1920s. Therefore, Charleston dance had a great influence on the skirt’s and dresses lengths as well, because one needed to move freely in the clothes, therefore visible knees and leg were characteristic.

After the war, women’s fashion was inspired by the manly figure, and as the years passed, many feminine characteristics slowly disappeared. The clothes became loose rand and without shape, broader shoulders, shorter hair, or the disappearance of the waist were all characteristics of the 1920s. The flat chest became very fashionable, together with a tanned body and a face that screamed 15 were women’s goals, and had to achieve them on any cost. Young women and with boyish figures who could party all night and still look were all the range.

A problem regarding this manly figure which was achieved by some women after enormous efforts was health itself. The flat chest fashion brought with it the bra, which was present in every woman’s wardrobe. Big busted women had to flatten their chests somehow, and they found the perfect solution in the bra that could be laced at both sides and pulled in order to flatten the chest. As health was important, women tried not to disregard it as many components of this boyish fashion kept them restrained in the clothes, comfort not being the word they could use to describe how they felt.

The bra sales increased rapidly, because it was easy to wear and comfortable also, allowing women to dance and do the daily activities more easily, for example fast flappers refused to wear corsets, rolling the stockings to the knee so that they could dance.

A great influence upon the fashion of the 1920s was brought by the famous fashion designer Gabrielle Chanel, known as Coco Chanel. The clothes she designed were in neutral tones of beige, sand, cream, navy and black, in soft fluid jersey fabrics which were cut ion simple shapes, which did not require any waist definition or corsetry. Chanel influenced not only the clothes of the 1920s, but also the hats. During the roaring twenties, the forehead was not fashionable, so the hat, especially the cloche hat was renowned for the image it created. This hat had affected the body posture in a way, because “it fit snuggly over short hair and almost reached the eyebrows. It was decorated with a pin in the front or a ribbon”.

The hairstyle did not change very munch during the 1902s, because it was maintained short, therefore easy to maintain. It was first bobbed, then shingled, the Eton cropped in 1926 up to 1927.An Eton crop was considered a daring and also shocking for the society of those times, since hair had always considered a woman’s crowning glory. The ones who escaped this fashion were the elder ladies women.

It was considered that disappearing to the powder room to refresh one’s makeup was a rude gesture; therefore it became fashionable to make up in public. A fresh face, without any sign of tiredness was maintained with powder and red lipstick and some eye shadow. Usually, an engraved compact and lipstick was more than sufficient to carry in their purses. Ox blooded lipstick was used lavishly, but rouge was still in vogue.

Coats and shoes were other fashion items of importance in the roaring twenties. Coats were mostly long until 1926, but that did change in time. The fastening system was not complicated at all, because the majorities wrapped over, or were one sided fastened, allowing the wearer comfort and freedom of movement. The shoes were represented by the ankle strap button. Heels were over two inches high. T bar shoes or others with buckles and bows gained the interest faster than average shoes. They were considered an important accessory, because they were visible under the short dresses. Alongside with the jumper, which had been introduced as a unisex item, shorts became acceptable for walking and cycling; while for skating normal dresses were enough.

“Men returning from the war faced closets full of clothes from the teens, which they wore into the early 1920s.During this time, the sacque suit, which had been popular since the mid eighteen-hundreds, constituted appropriate “day” dress for gentlemen. (Edwardian etiquette commanded successive changes of clothing for gentlemen during the day.) With the suits, colored shirts of putty, peach, blue-gray and cedar were worn. Shaped silk ties in small geometric patterns or diagonal stripes were secured with tie pins. Black bowler hats completed the ensemble.

The tail coat was considered appropriate formal evening wear, accompanied by a top hat. Starched white shirts with pleated yokes were expected with the tail coat, although bow ties and shirts with white wing collars were also seen. Tuxedos were increasing in popularity but were not yet completely acceptable.

Black patent-leather shoes were popular during this era and often appeared with formal evening wear. Casual clothing demanded two-tone shoes in white and tan, or white and black. Fringed tongues on Oxfords and brogues were seen frequently. Lace-up style shoes were most in demand. .Knickerbockers, later shortened to “knickers”, were popular casual wear for the well-dressed gentleman. Variations of knickers included plus-fours, plus- sixes, plus-eights and plus-tens. The “plus” in the term referred to how many inches below the knee they hung. Norfolk coats as well as golf coats were worn with knickers. The coats sported large patch pockets, a belt, usually one button and often a shoulder yoke. Gentleman’s shoes or boots were the appropriate footwear to coordinate with knickers.

In 1925 the era of the baggy pants dawned. This fashion would influence men’s wear for three decades. Oxford bags were first worn by Oxford undergraduates, eager to circumvent the University’s prohibition on knickers. The style originated when knickers were banned in the classroom. As the bags measured anywhere from twenty-two inches to forty inches around the bottoms, they could easily be slipped on over the forbidden knickers.

John Wanamaker introduced Oxford bags to the American public in the spring of 1925, although Ivy League students visiting Oxford in 1924 had already adopted the style. The trousers were originally made of flannel and appeared in shades of biscuit, silver gray, fawn, lovat, blue gray, and pearl gray. Jazz clothing passed quickly in and out of fashion during the twenties. These tightly-fitting suits were considered an expression of passion for jazz music. Jackets were long and tight-waisted with long back vents. The buttons were placed close together whether the jackets were double or single breasted. Trousers were tight and stove-pipe skinny.

Tweed cloth became popular at this time. The word “tweed” is an English variant of the Scottish word “tweel”, itself a variation of “twill”. Tweel refers to hand-woven wool fabric from the Scottish highlands and islands. Historians differ on whether tweed originated in the highlands or the south of Scotland. The name became associated with the Tweed River which forms part of the boundary between England and Scotland. Tweed eventually became the general term for all carded “homespun” wool, whether it was Scotch tweed, Irish tweed, Donegal tweed, Cheviot tweed or Harris tweed.

Flannel was the other popular fabric of the era. The word flannel may be derived from the Welsh word “gwalnen”, meaning woolen cloth. Flannel was originally made as a heavy, comfortable, soft and slightly napped wool cloth. Gray was the most popular color, and thus gray flannel trousers became known as “grayers”. Other popular colors were white, beige and stripes. Flannel trousers were traditionally worn in warm weather.

While Paris was unmistakably the world seat of women’s fashion, for men, it was London. Tailors in France weren’t quick to admit the fact, however, all men’s fashion magazines featured styles and trends from London. During the decade of the twenties, students at Oxford and Cambridge violated – for the first time ever – the Edwardian practice of different types of dress for different times of the day. The students wore flannel trousers and soft collars all day. When the English empire stood intact, it was easy for London to dictate men’s fashion.

The fashion of the roaring twenties had overcome some transformation, but women kept their femininity, even though a manly figure became fashionable.

3.4. Famous Faces

Initially, women were not equal to the men, she was considered just someone who could stay at home and take care of the children and keep the house clean. Then, women rebelled against their status and managed to obtain the independence they had been dreaming for. Up to the 1920s, women had not the right to vote, but after the 26th of August 1920, the efforts of the parties at the power led to the passage of the 19th Amendment which stated that the rights of citizens to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the U.S. or by any State on no account of sex”.These way women gained the power, and they could follow their dreams. Now they could work, they could vote, they were equal to men. During the First World War, the U.S. needed force labor in the factories to keep the country active and help the soldiers overseas with supplies of guns and artillery, food and everything they needed. Therefore the government had brought women to work, offering them the possibility to improve and be the not the only ones who would support the family.

A very important role in the history of the 1902s had Alice Paul, “an American suffragist leader. Along with Lucy Burns (a close friend) and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. Paul was the original author of a proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1923. She opposed linking the ERA to abortion rights, as did most early feminists. It has been widely reported that Paul called abortion "the ultimate exploitation of women." There has been a suggestion that although she did not want the ERA to be linked with abortion, it was for political, rather than ideological or moral, reasons”.

William Jennings Bryan and John Scopes were involved in the 1925 “Monkey” Trial which regarded the theory of evolution. Bryan, a former Populist Party poster boy, champion of free silver and three times presidential candidate, was a key witness against the biology teacher John Scopes. The latter brought the famous debate Christian fundamentalism and Darwin’s theory of evolution, by challenging a Tennessee state law forbidding teaching it, and started a trial in which he was found guilty.

Clarence Darrow was undoubtedly the most famous lawyer back in the 1920s. He represented John Scopes in the “Monkey Trial” in which “his relentless badgering ridiculed Christian fundamentalism”.

The four presidents of the roaring twenties, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover are important figures who led the United States through both good and bad times, but Harding, Coolidge and Hoover marked the past in a unique way.

Calvin Coolidge a superconservative from Massachusetts, Coolidge served as vice president under Warren G. Harding and became president in 1923 after Harding died in office. He then became president in his own right in 1924, but declined the offer to run again in 1928. Like both his predecessor and his successor Herbert Hoover, Coolidge struck down the remnants of Progressive-style legislation in favor of rewarding big business. Harding’s election in 1920 not only killed Woodrow Wilson’s hopes of joining the League of Nations, but inaugurated a decade of conservatism and benefits for big business. The Teapot Dome scandal erupted in 1923 shortly before his untimely death. Herbert Hoover, President of the United States from 1929–1933, Hoover supported big business and limited government regulation of industry or the economy. Another famous face was Albert Fall, secretary of the Interior under Warren G. Harding, who accepted bribes from oil companies to look the other way while they illegally drilled for oil on public lands. The Teapot Dome scandal of 1923 rocked Washington and sullied the president’s reputation.

The years of inventions and progress, Henry Ford was the American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. Ford's intense commitment to lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but arranged for his family to control the company permanently.

In the music industry, Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901– July 6, 1971), a cornet and trumpet player shifted from collective improvisation to solo performances. He made jazz recognized as a form of art, and revolutionized the world with his music and lyrics.

Al Capone and John Dillinger were the most famous gangsters and figures of the prohibition era. Al Capone, perhaps the most infamous gangster in American history, “Scarface” Capone led a major bootlegging ring in Chicago during the 1920s. He managed to evade prosecution until a court convicted him of income tax evasion in 1929. Meanwhile, Dillinger was a bank robber in the Midwestern United States during the 1930s. Some considered him a dangerous criminal, while others idolized him as a present-day Robin Hood. He gained this latter reputation (and the nickname "Jackrabbit") for his graceful movements during heists, such as leaping over the counter (a move he supposedly copied from the movies) and many narrow getaways from police. His exploits, along with those of other criminals of the Great Depression, such as Bonnie and Clyde and Ma Barker, dominated the attention of the American press and its readers during what is sometimes referred to as the public enemy era (1931-1935), a period which led to the further development of the modern and more sophisticated Federal Bureau of Investigation.

These people have achieved a recognizable reputation due to their deeds which affected them and the U.S. directly or indirectly. Good or bad, these famous faces will always be a part of the amazing history of the roaring twenties.

CHAPTER IV

PROHIBITION AND THE RISE OF ORGANIZED CRIME

4.1. Prohibition

In the United States prohibition begun on the 6th of January 1920, after the Eighteenth Amendment had gone into effect, accomplished by means of the national Constitution and the Volstead Act. The word “prohibition” for the roaring twenties referred to that part of the Temperance movement which wanted alcohol to be made an illegal beverage. Even though prohibition started in force from the 1920’s, in1905 three American states had already enacted the law, and by 1916, 26 states out of 48 were ready to punish the crimes of liquor.

Speakeasies and other underground drinking establishments were places where alcohol could be easily bought and consumed even during the times when the law said that the sale of alcohol was illegal. The name “speakeasy” came from the fact that during prohibition, the patrons of these disreputable locations had to speak easy in order for the doormen to let them in. The doorman’s job was to keep away those who looked like” dry agents”. Prohibition was associated with a period of crisis in the liquor world, for both consumers and manufacturers. Alcohol was kept secret by average people and brought to the light only to serve their guests, Legal and illegal home brewing became very popular during the prohibition. While large quantities of alcohol were being smuggled in from Canada via the Great Lakes and from Saint Pierre and Miquelon , limited amounts of wine and hard cider were allowed to be made at home, and the companies which had bought or made liquor prior to the prohibition were able to continue their activity through the years.

Police and religious faces were supposed to give an example during those harsh times of liquor crisis, but they proved to be one of the most active supporters of illegal traffic. Later on, after the prohibition had warned its effects, preeminent citizens, politicians, police officers admitted to having used alcohol. As a paradox, the wine used in Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Christian and Episcopal and in some Jewish church ceremonies, available through the government’s wears houses was used to quench the thirst of God’s servants. Doctors were as well thirst healers, providing the patients the much needed medicine, of course in the medicinal purpose. It was estimated that over a million gallons have been consumed over the years due to the prescriptions of the “ill” population. President Harding, although he had voted for prohibition, he kept also a backup for bad days.

With the prohibition at its peak, the prohibition agents started overlooking in the gangster’s business with alcohol, thus more corruption appeared. Enforcing the laws of prohibition meant spending over six millions of dollars, and such amount of money was needed in other sectors, solving more important problems. As a result, the authorities settled deals with the gangsters who bribed the formers in order to keep their silence. These trading were advantageous for both parties, because they each gained something; the gangsters obtained money and alcohol traffic increased bringing more money, and the police officers gained money and a good drink.

Bootlegging became a money earning activity during prohibition days, giving lucrative opportunities for organized crime in manufacturing and distributing the precious “water”. Al Capone, one of the most famous bootleggers has built an empire out of it. With all that frenetic desire of gaining money rapidly, many emerged into a new domain for them, producing alcohol; there fore the quality differed from product to product. There have been cases of people going blind or suffering from brain damage after drinking the so called “bathtub gin”, made up of alcohol and various chemicals. One such case involved the patent medicine Jamaica ginger, knows as “Jake” by its users. As a result, the Treasure Department ordered changes in the receipt to make it undrinkable. Unfortunately, some avid vendors used and industrialized plasticizer or even the automobile radiator to distill liquor, and so, many of the usual clients became “extinct” or “out of order”, having nothing to gain from this but permanent paralysis or brain damage, and in the end death. The alcohol managing was dangerous for the ones who produced it too. The risk of working in improper conditions could lead to a fire, because of the highly inflammable content; even so, the illegalities continued uninterrupted.

There were leaks in the system too, because many alcoholic products fell just under the legal limit, thus with a little magic from the right person, it could become a real drink. Under the 0, 5% ban you could drink “neer beer” which was, certainly an ideal drink. On the label it gave explicit directions of what the buyer should not do with it, because he would have found that in his bottle was in fact alcohol. Having the instructions, the consumer’s job was to follow them properly and enjoy the result.

In the 1919s, there were corn-alcohol stills which produced ethanol, which was used in the making of alcohol. By destroying these stills, the farmers lost their only way of making ethanol fuel, and home made liquor. The prohibition police took the farmers their way of earning easy money, and made them dependent to petroleum fuels.

Even though corruption had reached unimaginable levels in the prohibition period, there were some responsible heads which kept their minds clear. Eliot Ness and his elite team of Treasury Agents nicknamed The Untouchables, and the New York City prohibition team of Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith, known simply as Izzy and Moe. This honesty devoted, highly effective and sometimes eccentric teams attracted immediately the media’s attention.

The prohibition era has been known to be closely related to jazz, flappers, and crimes. The police couldn’t handle the deal, so it made a sort of alliance with the gangsters and smugglers, contributing to the rise of the black market. But soon, all that would see its end, in 1933, when the 21st Amendment enacted. According to this law, the black market would disappear soon due to the low-priced beverages sold in legal stores. Organized crime later adjusted by selling illegal drugs instead.

Slowly, the alcohol was not under the spotlight anymore, alcoholic beverages being sold legally at a lower and affordable price and of course the competition between the law and criminals ended. Distilleries were not functioning anymore and left the scenery. So did the gangsters and their plans of getting rich.

4.2. Gangsters and the FBI

“The 18th Amendment had banned the sale, transportation and manufacture of alcohol in America. But it was clear to some, that millions neither wanted this law nor would respect it. There was obviously a huge market for what in the 1920's was an illegal commodity. It was the gangsters who dominated various cities who provided this commodity. Each major city had its gangster element but the most famous was Chicago with Al Capone.

4.2.1. Al Capone

“Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), was an American gangster who led a crime syndicate dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging of liquor and other illegal activities during the Prohibition Era of the 1920s and 1930s.

Capone was "Public Enemy Number 1". He had moved to Chicago in 1920 where he worked for Johnny Torrio the city's leading figure in the underworld. Capone was given the task of intimidating Torrio's rivals within the city so that they would give up and hand over to Torrio their territory. Capone also had to convince speakeasy operators to buy illegal alcohol from Torrio”.

Al Capone remains one of the famous residents of „The rock” known as well as Alcatraz Prison.. Before arriving there he had been manipulating the Federal Penitentiary’s leading figures in Atlanta. He had always been able to obtain what he wanted, even if convicted he could persuade his keepers to offer him some privileges. Even under the bars, he had rather luxurious life. Even from an early age he started the large range of crimes with pimping prostitutes, earning money as a bouncer in several brothels. By the age of twenty, he moved to Chicago, where his business really flourished. He was involved in bootlegging, gambling houses, and of course prostitution, and was believed to earn over $100,000 per week.

Capone had developed a very intelligent strategy: he wanted to take the lead on the black market, but he also wanted to be in the spotlight. On one hand he opened soup kitchens to feed the poor, lobbied for milk bottle to ensure the children’s safety, and made daily trips to the City Hall, so that the authorities could be overcome by him, and on the other he was occupied numbering the money from an illegal alcohol transport. It seemed that Capone had a double personality, the honest people considering him a modern Robin Hood, meanwhile the police considering him the thief who always escaped the claw of law.

Soon, this positive side would be shadowed by the presumption of murder of the local prosecutor Billy McSwiggin. The prosecutor had tried to pin Capone with the violent murder of a rival gang member. All this brought Capone on the first pages of the papers, changing his good boy figure. Scared by the consequences of what happened and the negative publicity earned from the press, Capone went hiding for three months, after which he negotiated his surrender with the authorities from Chicago, but soon the dices were cast in Capone’s favor and the lack of evidence freed the powerful gangster.

“After the 1923 election of reform mayor William Emmett Dever, Chicago's city government began to put pressure on the gangster elements inside the city limits. To put its headquarters outside of city jurisdiction and create a safe zone for its operations, the Capone organization muscled its way into Cicero, Illinois. This led to one of Capone's greatest triumphs: the takeover of Cicero's town government in 1924. Cicero gangster Myles O'Donnell and his brother William "Klondike" O'Donnell fought with Capone over their home turf. The war resulted in over 200 deaths, including that of the infamous "Hanging Prosecutor" Bill McSwiggins.

The 1924 town council elections in Cicero became known as one of the most crooked elections in the Chicago area's long history, with voters threatened at polling stations by thugs. Capone's mayoral candidate won by a huge margin but only weeks later announced that he would run Capone out of town. Capone met with his puppet-mayor and personally knocked him down the town hall steps, a powerful assertion of gangster power and a major victory for the Torrio-Capone alliance.

For Capone, this event was marred by the death of his brother Frank at the hands of the police. As was the custom amongst gangsters, Capone signaled his mourning by attending the funeral unshaven, and he cried openly at the gathering. He ordered the closure of all the speakeasies in Cicero for a day as a mark of respect.

Much of Capone's family put down roots in Cicero as well. In 1930, Capone's sister Mafalda's marriage to John J. Maritote took place at St. Mary of Czestochowa, a massive Neogothic edifice towering over Cicero Avenue in the so-called Polish Cathedral style”.

By 1929 Capone’s empire was worth $62,000,000, competing with George „bugs” Moran, his most preeminent rival. It was said that Bugs publicly talked against Capone and despised him so much that made the former order his assassination and his gang too, starting from the bottom until they reached the „head”.

One of the hits Capone is recognized for was The Valentine’s Day Massacre from 1929. „Machine Gun” McGurn, one of Capone’s trusted associates was asked to mastermind the hit. McGurn had one of his lure the members of the Moran Gang enter a garage to buy some liquor at a very low price. The deal was made and the delivery was due to Valentine’s Day. McGurn had prior stolen some police uniforms, and on the day of the attack, Capone’s gang awaited Moran’s gang to come dressed as police officers and ordered them to handle all the alcohol and stand facing the wall. Thinking that they had just been caught by the police, seven members followed the orders, waiting to be arrested, but instead McGurn opened fire with machine guns killing them all. Bugs, who had seen the false policemen before the raid, had fled.

All the attention the media had given to Capone made president Hoover call the gangster in front of the justice once more. Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury collected solid evidence against Big Al, the already known crimes and flagrant evasion of taxes. It took nearly five years and a undercover operation to catch him; he was convicted to 11 years $50,000 in fines and pay court a total sum of $30,000. The judge refused to set a bail, and during his confinement at Cook County Jail the arrangements to transfer him to Atlanta were being made.

After he arrived at The Rock, Big Al begun to take charge of the prisoner’s scene around there, manipulating them in such a way that he could live an almost normal life even behind the bars. Slowly, his health condition became even more fragile, in 1947, Capone had an apoplectic stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve but contracted pneumonia on January the 24th . He suffered a fatal cardiac arrest the next day.

4.2.2. John Dillinger

“John Herbert Dillinger (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was a bank robber in the Midwestern United States during the 1930s. Some considered him a dangerous criminal, while others idolized him as a present-day Robin Hood. He gained this latter reputation (and the nickname "Jackrabbit") for his graceful movements during heists, such as leaping over the counter (a move he supposedly copied from the movies) and many narrow getaways from police”.

At 16 he quit school and began to work intermittently. A year later his father moved the family to a farm near Mooresville, Ind. Dillinger rejected rural life and spent most of his time in the surrounding cities.In 1923 Dillinger fell in love, but the girl's father ended the romance. Embittered, Dillinger stole a car which he later abandoned. Afraid of being prosecuted, he joined the Navy but deserted a few months later. In 1924 he was arrested for assault and attempted robbery. On the advice of his father he pled guilty; not only did he receive a more severe sentence than his accomplice, who pled not guilty, but also the accomplice secured parole after 2 years, while Dillinger languished in prison.

A difficult prisoner, Dillinger served much of his time in solitary confinement. As is frequently the case, Dillinger's confinement, instead of reforming and rehabilitating him, only trained him to be a criminal. When he left prison in 1933, he carried a map, supplied by inmates, of prospective robbery sites.Released during the worst of the Depression, as an exconvict it is unlikely that Dillinger could have secured legitimate employment. He quickly found employment robbing banks, however, and almost overnight became a kind of Robin Hood national hero. The fact that people were killed during his holdups was overlooked; instead the national press played him up as a brilliant, daring, likeable individual, beating the banks which had been inhumanely foreclosing mortgages on helpless debtors.Dillinger became a challenge for law enforcement officials, for he often made them look like fools; conflicts between police jurisdictions made him difficult to capture. When he was captured, he was able to escape. When he was captured, he was able to escape. His most famous exploit was when he broke out of heavily guarded Crown Point County Jail armed only with a wooden gun. Eventually, however, the members of his gang were killed or caught. Dillinger moved to Chicago, disguised himself, and attempted to disappear. But he was recognized On July 22, 1934,he was killed. Even in death Dillinger remained a thorn in the side of the establishment. Anna Sage ("the lady in red") became a hated figure, like most informers, and the image of law enforcement suffered through what was regarded as too little willingness to take Dillinger, then almost a national hero, alive.

His life was short, but his death was considered by some a very good subject for a book. Everything started on the 20th of July 1934, when Ana Sage contacted a police sergeant, offering to reveal the whereabouts of Dillinger in return for the reward money and the drop of the deportation file against her. The sergeant agreed and co-opted Melvin Purvis .Sage confirmed that on July the 22nd she, her friend Polly and Dillinger would go to see a movie at Biograph or at the Marbro Theater. Secondary plans made Purvis and Agent Ralph Brown stake out at the Biograph. Sage tipped off the FBI agents who opened the fire. She had told agent Purvis that shoe would wear a white and orange dress, which due to the night lights led to the enduring notion of “The Lady in Red” as a betraying of her character. Although she had turned in Dillinger, Ana Sage was deported in her country home Romania in 1936, where she remained until her death 11 years later.

Outside the theatre, those who had witnessed the shooting soaked their handkerchiefs into Dillinger’s blood, as a sort of souvenir. There was founded even a society called “Jon Dillinger Day” members of which gather on every anniversary of Dillinger’s death in front of Biograph Theater and retrace his last moments of life by walking on the alley where he died, playing on the bagpipe “Amazing Grace”.

4.2.3. THE F.B.I.

“For more than half of its history, the United States got along without a general purpose investigative agency. In 1908, over the objections of some members of the Congress, the grandson of the French emperor's brother Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, had issued an executive order creating such an investigative force within the Justice Department.

The agency became the subject of intense controversy. With the entry of the United States into World War One, the Bureau of Investigation became engaged in an embarrassing roundup of thousands of young men, only a handful of whom turned out to be genuine draft dodgers. Shortly after the war, the Bureau was the lead agency of an operation that became known as the Palmer Raids — the dragnet arrests of tens of thousands of alien radicals in 33 cities. Partly because most of the victims were arrested without a warrant, the majority were eventually released either before or after their prosecution. One of the supervisors of Palmer Raids was a young Justice Department lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover”.

In 1924, following a round of additional scandals and the forced resignation of Attorney General Harry Daughterty, Hoover was selected to clean up the disgraced agency. In 1935, it was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover would remain the director of the FBI until his death in 1972. During the 1930s, with the help of an aggressive public relations program, the FBI won wide support from the American people for its capture of a handful of highly publicized gangsters. With the coming of World War Two and the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the FBI's reputation as the nation's premier enforcement agency continued to grow.

From 1921 up to 1933 the FBI had to deal with gangsterism and public disregard for prohibition. Due to the Prohibition problems, there was created a new department, called “Department of Treasury”. The bureau of investigation was not so successful in investigating the gangsters; Al Capone’s file was categorized as an unsuccessful mission, bearing the name of “fugitive federal witness”. The KKK had been investigated as well; the bureau used the Mann Act to bring the Klan in front of the justice.

Bank robbers, bootleggers, and kidnappers took advantage of jurisdictional boundaries by crossing state lines to elude capture. A criminal culture marked by violent gangsters flourished, but no federal law gave the BOI authority to tackle their crimes and other law enforcement efforts were fragmented. The Bureau addressed these matters as its jurisdiction permitted throughout the 1920's.

In 1924, Attorney General Harlan Stone appointed John Edgar Hoover as Director. Director Hoover (1924-1972) implemented a number of reforms to clean up what had become a politicized Bureau under the leadership of William J. Burns (1921-1924). Hoover reinstated merit hiring, introduced professional training of new Agents, demanded regular inspections of all Bureau operations, and required strict professionalism in the Bureau's work.

Under Hoover, the Bureau also began to emphasize service to other law enforcement agencies. The Identification Division was created in 1924 to provide US police a means to identify criminals across jurisdictional boundaries. The Technical Crime Laboratory, created in 1932, provided forensic analysis and research for law enforcement, and the FBI National Academy, opened in 1935, provided standardized professional training for America's law enforcement communities.

4.2.4. The KKK

“The Ku Klux Klan is a group of white supremacists, who, throughout US history, have held strong beliefs against specific groups of people. The KKK with which our generation is most familiar is from the 1950's and 1960's. This group's beliefs attacked black Americans in the struggle for civil rights. In the 1920's, however, the Ku Klux Klan held beliefs that were more likely to attack immigrants, Jews, Catholics than African Americans. The 1920's KKK attracted its largest membership, though it was not centered in the South. All of the Klan's members were supposed to study and learn the KKK manual written in 1925. The manual states that the Klan's primary purpose was: "To Unite white male persons, native born, Gentile citizens of the United States of America, who owe no allegiance of any nature or degree to any foreign government, nation, institution, sect, ruler, person, or people who are of sound minds and eighteen years or more of age, under a common oath" ( The Klan Manual, 1925)

In this manual, the KKK held many beliefs that they still hold today: They have a "task of developing a genuine spirit of American patriotism." Their racial task is "to maintain forever white supremacy" and "to maintain forever the God-given supremacy of the white race". "White men must not mix their blood with that of colored or other inferior races."
Their pledge of secrecy is "to keep solemnly secret the symbols of the order" because the "alien world is eager to learn all it can of the organization". "These matters must never be divulged to the alien."

Under the leadership of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Klan was united by their "shared racist ideals and the desire to preserve the old South." Engaged in lawless and violent acts, the Klansmen wore robes over their faces and body to conceal their identities. They were often referred to as the Invisible Empire because of their attire. The mark of the white robe was soon affiliated with such atrocities as threatening, beating, mutilating, and lynching African-Americans. Although by the end of the nineteenth century the Klan had primarily vanished, the KKK rose again after WW I. Reaching its peak of over two million members, the Klan of the 1920's thrived on nativism, anti-Catholicism, opposition to the cultural modernism of the Jazz Era, and violations of alcohol, smoking, and gambling laws. Directing their hate tactics toward Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born, the Klan used tarring and feathering, branding, mutilating, and lynching (hanging) to install fear.

The Klan used others tactics to install fear as well. The most significant, which later became a trademark of the Klan,was the burning of the cross. The fiery cross is said to be a "symbol representing the ideals of Christian civilization." The cross itself is a symbol of sacrifice and service to Christ. The fire signifies that "Christ is the light of the world." The light is said to "drive away the darkness and the gloom so a knowledge of truth dispels ignorance and superstition." Burning crosses were left as a mark to warn those that had been violated by the Klan.

ll was well for the Ku Klux Klan until 1925. The Klan had reached its peak with between 4 and 6 million members. The Klan had overwhelming pulls in state elections and influence on the elections of many governors as well as ties with organized crime. Eventually, though, people began to oppose the Klan.

A group called the American Unity League tried to diminish the KKK. They discovered and published the names of many Klansmen. This tactic seemed a sure win but was not very effective. The Klansmen stilled remained hooded at rallies, and most were prominent figures in their communities. As a result, the Klan split the Democratic presidential convention. The public did not take heed to this very well, and by the end of the 20's, a power struggle among the top postions of the Klan caused the group to split. The Klan quickly fizzled out with the conviction of the head of the Indiana Klan. Only a handful of Klansmen was the remainder of the millions that so previously had approved of the Klan's violent acts.

4.3. Alcatraz Prison

Alcatraz Island is located in San Francisco bay. It received its name in 1775 when the Spanish explorers charted San Francisco bay. They named the rocky piece of land La Isla de los Alcatraces, or the "Island of Pelicans". In 1847, Alcatraz was taken over by the United States military. "The Rock" as it is most commonly referred to, had extreme strategic value, especially during these times of tension between the United States and the Mexican government.

In 1861, Alcatraz started to receive Confederate prisoners, during the Civil War; the number of prisoners here numbered from 15 to 50. They consisted of soldiers, Confederate privateers, and southern sympathizers. They were confined in the dark basement of the guardhouse and conditions were grim. The men slept side-by-side, head to toe, lying on the stone floor of the basement. There was no running water, no heat and no sanitary facilities. Disease and infestations of lice spread from man to man and not surprisingly, overcrowding was a serious problem. They were often bound by six-foot chains attached to iron balls and fed only bread and water. After the war ended, the fort was deemed obsolete and was no longer needed. The prison continued to be used though and soon, more buildings and cell houses were added. In the 1870's and 1880's, Indian chiefs and tribal leaders were incarcerated on Alcatraz; they shared quarters with the worst of the military prisoners. The island became a shipping point for deserters, thieves, rapists and repeated escapees.

The social upheaval and the rampant crime of the 1920's and 1930's brought new life to Alcatraz. Attorney General Homer Cummings supported J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in creating a new, escape-proof prison that would send fear into the hearts of criminals. They decided that Alcatraz would be the perfect location for such a penitentiary. In 1933, the facility was officially turned over to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Attorney General asked James A. Johnston of San Francisco to take over as warden of the new prison. He implemented a strict set and rules and regulations for the facility and selected the best available guards and officers from the federal penal system.

Construction was quickly started on the new project and practically the entire prison cell block was built atop the old Army fort. Part of the old Army prison was used but the iron bars were replaced by bars of hardened steel. Gun towers were erected at various points around the island and the cellblocks were equipped with catwalks, gun walks, electric locks, metal detectors, a well-stocked arsenal, barbed and cyclone wire fencing and even tear gas containers that were fitted into the ceiling of the dining hall and elsewhere. Apartments for the guards and their families were built on the old parade grounds and the lighthouse keeper's mansion was taken over for the warden's residence. Alcatraz had been turned into an impregnable fortress.

Conclusions

The Twenties had begun an era when the Americans felt good. They had forgotten about the troubles of the Europeans and began to better their lifestyles. Fortunes were gained and lost. Some survived, and some were swept away by the wind of change which came with revolutionary improvements in every aspect of life: style, culture, music, fashion arts, economy, industry or finance. The sad faces of the lost generation gained their smile with the arrival of the jazz era, and the flourishing country gave the writers the will to enchant the public once again. Women were proud to show off their new coats and hairdos at the most fashionable clubs in town. It seemed that everything went for the best. It was true in a certain matter, but things only improved after the World War I, hiding under a glamorous smile fear, disappointment and criticism.

In point of mentality, there was not a great change, everything being carefully thought and analyzed. People were still reticent towards embracing new technologies and progress. Moral values and the fear that the Afro-American population would take over their country has put the US population against any form of reform, everything being made with great difficulty.

There were two sides of the Nation during the 1920’s. One side wanted progress and embraced everything that was new, and accepted the consequences, and the other side, even though it was aware of what was going on, repaginated everything, offering a hypocrite smile to the wide public. Religious matters had not been solved, and the new rise of the Ku Klux Klan raised even more prejudices against the black people and the foreigners. People were not feeling safe anymore, not even in their homes. They always feared that if their religion was discovered they would become living targets for these heretics.

The enthusiastic era of Jazz hid some tears and drama of the black people’s side. Racism was still being practiced and, unfortunately, the beautiful and meaningful songs composed by the black singers had to be modified in order not to offend the whites. America became a world of discrepancies, where the famous saying “the land of all possibilities” caught a malicious connotation. The system was corrupted, the church too, and people were dazzled and did not know which way to go. Prohibition was only a curtain for the alcohol smugglers to come forward on the black market.

The twenties were not an entirely happy period, because as I already mentioned the fake smile hid a sad story beneath it. Even though the economy boomed, and all seemed to go for the better, all that lavish lifestyle which the really rich adopted had reached its end when the Stock Market crashed in 1929, and left them almost bankrupt. Indeed a sad end of the roaring twenties, a timeline which gained its nickname ,”roaring”, because it entered the history of an already tired country in a rather unexpected manner and created a lot of agitation.

Even the advertising industry surfaced an evil and avid society which could do everything in exchange for some extra money. The presidents did not help too much, or they were just not interested enough in their country’s situation, transmitting the problems of the prior presidency from one to another, hoping that someday a leader would rise who would solve them all.

This rather pessimistic view of the roaring twenties was influenced by the sufferings the population had to go through. An eloquent example is the new well paid jobs for the newly arrived immigrants. The job was a reason to be happy because they gained then necessary money to survive and have a decent living, but they had to work from morning till late at night, and came home just to eat and go to sleep, so that the next day they could repeat the same routine.

The United States’ population has learned how to smile and how to laugh when faced with the most tragic situation, and the only solution was surviving at any cost, because after all, they had done the same thing after World War I.

As a conclusion, the 1920’s in the USA represented an era of joy and sadness, progress and drawbacks, fear and courage, confusion and straightness. All this mixture added to the rich experience of the most powerful nations of the world, becoming an example for the other countries, an example of “yes” and “no”.

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