Carter, Paul A. Another Part of the Twenties. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.  

            The “myths” of the 1920s, it seems, began growing almost before the decade was over and were compounded by the monumental events of the 1930s and 1940s.  Carter was concerned that the history of the twenties did not match the experiences of the twenties, so his goal was to revisit some of the popular themes of this time period—the flappers, prohibition, republican government, and the like—and show that there were “other” viewpoints that made this era as complex as others in American history.  The style of the book is somewhat unusual; it jumps between themes and ideas rather quickly, but that, strangely enough, is also part of its refreshing appeal.

            Carter begins with a fascinating rural-urban exploration involving the experiences of George McGovern, Ray Bradbury, and two other novelists, to show that the stereotypical rural-urban dichotomy of the 1920s was not quite as extreme as has been shown.  The mathematical magic of statistics, wherein a community of 2,499 was a village and 2,500 was a large urban center, and the fact that “modern” roads did not truly match later standards, is evidence that the author uses to highlight that though Main Street may have been the target of Sinclair Lewis’ jabs at rural America, in actuality the distinctions between modern city life and old-fashioned country life were much more blurred than has been passed down in popular lore.

            In a similar manner, Carter treats topics like views of war and religion, pointing out that the United States of the 1920s held a wide variety of views on such subjects and cannot be neatly placed in the boxes of “isolationist” or “fundamentalist-modernist”.  An especially fascinating chapter treated Albert Einstein’s first visit to America and the various reactions to his scientific theories.  While the theory of relativity became part of the standard debate within educational circles in the nation, and while Einstein’s personal quirkiness made him appealing to many, others saw his incomprehensible theory as incompatible with open, common sense democracy and condemned the scientist and his work.  A resulting challenge of these critiques of Einstein in the 1920s was to make science both practical and profitable.

            To treat the subject of women’s rights in the 1920s, Carter focuses first on Wyoming governor Nellie Tayloe Ross.  Though the decade was heralded as a “breakthrough” for women politically, the unsuccessful reelection of Ross and the fact that it was 1975 before another woman governor was elected, shows the persistence of male prejudice in 1920s politics.  The exception to the rule of “flapper independence”—more an image than a universal reality—was the swimming of the English Channel in 1926, in a better time than previous men, by Gertrude Ederle.  Even such a triumph by a woman, however, was often translated into traditional notions of women’s inner beauty and outward sex-appeal, pointing out the contradictory notions of women’s position in society.

            A chapter on 1920s advertising was intriguing, although Carter’s claim that the have/have-not tension created by ads may have contributed to the urban riots of the 1960s seems a bit of a stretch.  In a final section on Republican government, one might also challenge the author’s claim that the Harding scandals were not examples of true “political” corruption, but he does, once again, point out that the assumed “business” governments of the three 1920s administrations were not as straightforward as has been assumed—and, like the other topics he treats, it is the challenging of those assumptions that makes Carter’s book such a contribution to this area of history.

 

Goldberg, David J. Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s. The American Moment Series, ed. Stanley I. Kutler. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.  

            Discontented America is a story of the ethnic, racial, and ideological conflicts that raged in the 1920s as a result of ongoing tensions from WWI and the decline of Progressivism.  The author holds that the 1920s was an extremely turbulent time in U.S. history and that turbulence helped define America in the post-war world.

            A summary of the achievements of the Progressive era and the ways in which WWI helped shatter those ideals sets the tone for this study.  In Wilson’s doomed battle for the Versailles Treaty in America, for example, the passions of the war continued to influence both sides and reasoned arguments were defeated by emotionalism.  War passions also seemed to influence early foreign-policy decisions of the 1920s including aggressive developments in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and Goldberg even hints that our European tariffs and debt-repayment strategies paved the way for fascism to take root in Germany and Italy.

            Domestic politics, Goldberg argues, were also “anything but normal.”  Internal divisions and scandals hurt both major parties, and women, hopeful of a larger influence in politics because of their newfound suffrage, also suffered from internal conflicts that split their votes and hindered their effectiveness.  The Progressive hope of order from Prohibition likewise was disappointed by the very public displays of violence and disorder over alcohol.  The author sees the 1924 election as a “picture” of politics in the 1920s—the Democrats were split into raucous factions because of the issues laid bare by the reborn KKK, and the last remaining vestige of Progressivism fell when Robert La Follette was defeated because he was labeled as too radical.

            What resulted, argues Goldberg, was an age of capital, but even that emergence was mired in conflict, for major unions, for women workers, for blacks, and for those on the new left.  The state repeatedly threw its power against labor movements and effectively wore them down, especially through support of the American Plan.  He writes, “1922 marked the end of an era of mass labor unrest and inaugurated an era when capital appeared to have emerged fully triumphant over labor.” (73)  African-Americans’ struggle also involved more than labor in the 1920s.  WWI had increased their optimism, but they repeatedly saw their goals hindered, despite groups like Marcus Garvey’s UNIA and the Harlem Renaissance, both of which ushered in a key characteristic of blacks—pride of race.  The author argues that although blacks could not consider the 1920s a new era, it was a time for hope and limited institution building.

            Other groups surveyed by Goldberg include the KKK, whose broader, more inclusive hatred highlighted racial and religious bigotry in the nation.  Organized opposition to the KKK, however, laid bare the timidity of its membership, and led to a quick decline in its public popularity.  One of the targets of the KKK, immigrants, also were the focus of considerable agitation.  Goldberg notes, “By 1922 and 1923, anti-immigrant sentiments had become part of the normal American discourse,” (157) and this attitude and its attendant legislation formed the basis for immigration policy into the 1960s.

            This is a gloomy work.  Though the series editor claims the book corrects the flappers-Babe Ruth type “popular images,” the resulting emphasis on conflict and chaos pushes the pendulum too far in the other direction, exacerbated by Goldberg’s labeling the Progressive era as a time of “innocent optimism.”  If one can look past this prevailing negativity and realize that there were some “good times” in the 1920s, Discontented America can serve as a useful overview of the period.