An Eyewitness History: The Roaring Twenties by Tom Streissguth analyzes the American 1920s by focusing on specific events of each year, beginning with 1920. In 1920, the Volstead Act, or the 18th amendment, was passed, which outlawed most alcohol sale and consumption throughout the United States. Overall, the act was a grand failure. The Prohibition Bureau, a new executive bureau specifically created to enforce the penalties for being caught with alcohol, was corrupt, with most of the officials, including the head, being bribed into ignoring alcohol smuggling from Canada and the Caribbean, selling, buying, and consumption. The Prohibition led to the creation of the gangster-led speakeasies, or modern-day clubs, in New York City, in which urban dwellers would listen to music, dance, and drink. These speakeasies levied a cover charge, screened people at the door, and sold watered-down drinks for high prices, but they were a place for the city dwellers to have fun and escape the alcohol oppression of the country. Prohibition officers did often raid the speakeasies, but these raids were so often that they became a form of entertainment for the guests. And, while most of the country got away with drinking or got off with very little punishment, the Prohibition still causes judicial chaos, with over 500,000 arrests and nearly 100,000 jail terms over the decade.
The speakeasies offered a place for women to express more freedoms, as is a common theme of the 1920s. Women had to take on a more active role in the public sphere and especially the work place during World War I, while the men were at war. Women’s groups such as the National American Suffrage Association were created, and they greatly impacted the political sphere by lobbying for Prohibition and their enfranchisement. On August 26th, 1920, the 19th amendment was passed, guaranteeing voting rights for women. Women in the 1920s were more vocal, more sexual, and less traditional than all women before them, wearing short dresses, bobbing their hair, and dancing at clubs. For example divorce, once an unspeakable thing, became the norm, even romanticized, in the 1920s, with the divorce rate rising from 8.9 per 100 marriages in 1910 to 16.5 in 1928. However, post-World War I America was in economic and social shambles, as best expressed by the Red Scare of 1920 and the mini-depression of 1921 and 1922. Many constitutional rights, such as tapping phones and breaking-and-entering with no warrant, became the norm as the US government frantically searched for any pro-socialist immigrants. The economic disaster in Europe caused them to demand less American imports, which hurt farmers and merchants alike as they sunk deeper and deeper into debt. Overall, the beginning of the 1920s was a significant and generally positive cultural change, but a disastrous political and economic situation.
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