{"id":673,"date":"2015-10-04T20:51:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T20:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/?p=673"},"modified":"2015-10-04T20:51:08","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T20:51:08","slug":"1920s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/1920s\/","title":{"rendered":"1920s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Life1926-02-18\"<\/a>No matter how you try to capture the spirit of\u00a0the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age, nothing looms larger in a discussion of that fast-paced decade than the Great Crash of 1929<\/a>. \u00a0The collapse of Wall Street stock prices on “Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929 was unprecedented and devastating. \u00a0There were many underlying causes of\u00a0the Great Depression that subsequently enveloped the industrialized world during the 1930s, but\u00a0any serious discussion of that period must begin with the stock market crash. \u00a0What had looked to many like an American future of almost unlimited prosperity rooted in a new mass consumer culture<\/a> was now suddenly appearing quite vulnerable. \u00a0What had seemed like a generally progressive and sound system of balanced, business-friendly U.S. government policies now appeared wildly out of control. \u00a0There had always been some deep problems in the American economy during the 1920s –widespread poverty, depressed prices in agriculture, dangerously over-extended credit– but most of those ills had been covered up at least in the popular culture by the kind of glamour epitomized (and gently mocked) in\u00a0F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel,\u00a0The Great Gatsby\u00a0<\/em>(1925)<\/a>. \u00a0 After October 1929, however, there was much less glamour to celebrate. \u00a0Between 1929 and 1933, the average price of blue chip stocks declined by 90 percent. \u00a0Unemployment, which had been hovering around 3 percent, rose to a reported 25 percent. \u00a0Even more revealing, investment dollars and available credit dried up almost completely –by some accounts, declining\u00a0by nearly\u00a098 percent in four years. \u00a0That is why American families such as Russell Baker’s sometimes broke apart and struggled to redefine what for them had become a very fragile American Dream.<\/p>\n

Online Textbook Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jazz Age from Digital History<\/a> (Mintz and McNeil)<\/p>\n

Selected Timelines<\/strong><\/p>\n

American Literature & Events: 1920s<\/a>\u00a0(Donna Campbell \/ Washington State)<\/p>\n

Featured Videos<\/strong><\/p>\n