Modernity In The 1920s Essay

In an decade defined by its distinct air of prosperity, the 1920s are hallmarked by its modernity in the clash between urban and rural values as the era gives birth to a large scale consumer culture and a pro-business agenda while the ever increasing wealth gap reaches all new heights. The 1920s saw a great increase of productivitin due and manufacturing as well as the centrality of the automobile as a symbol for American business and life. Calvin Coolidge, president for most of the 1920s summed up the main focus of the era in one statement, “The chief business of the American people is business.” This single minded focus on business and consumer goods led to the first true modern, mass marketing campaigns across the radio as well as the immergence of leisure activites such as, vactions, moives, sporting events, and the birth of celebrity culture, but the true impact was the fact that people across the country are getting the same ideas at the same rate, a completely modern

Unfortunately, with the 1920s modernity came the growing acceptance of the wealth gap and even more of a focus on industry over popular well being as large scale poverty and unemployment became as rampant as the consumerism the diffines this era of excess. With the focus on industrialized business there was widespread rural depression as the need of agriculture decreased with the end of World War I and the sharp decrease in income led to skyrocketing foreclosures and a migration out of the farmlands and into the cities, another distinctly modern