|
Some definitions (Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia 1.5, 1992)
Prohibition
In U.S. history the era of prohibition was the period (1920-33) when the 18TH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution forbade the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Known as the Noble Experiment, national prohibition was the product of a century-long reform movement. Prohibitionists, who viewed alcohol as a dangerous drug that destroyed lives and disrupted families and communities, argued that it was the government's responsibility to free citizens from the temptation of drink by barring its sale. Prior to the Civil War several states had enacted prohibition laws, but most were repealed before 1865.
A new wave of prohibition sentiment swept the evangelical Protestant churches in the 1880s and '90s. Organized by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (see WCTU), the Anti-Saloon League of America (see TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT), and the National Prohibition party, prohibitionists pressed for state and local restrictions and, after 1913, for an amendment to the federal Constitution. The 18th Amendment was finally ratified in January 1919, and 9 months later Congress passed the Volstead Act, which provided for the enforcement of the amendment. The law, which was enforced sporadically at best, met with widespread opposition. BOOTLEGGING, speakeasies (illegal saloons), and smuggling (known as rum-running) all flourished, largely under the control of gangster elements. Opponents, known as "wets," claimed that not only was prohibition ineffective, but also that it represented an unnecessary restriction on personal choice. They mounted a campaign to annul the law, and were successful in 1933, when the 21ST AMENDMENT was ratified. It repealed the 18th Amendment and negated the Volstead Act, although prohibition remained a local option and was retained in some areas.
DEPRESSION
The economic depression that beset the United States and other countries in the 1930s was unique in its magnitude and its consequences. At the depth of the depression, in 1933, one American worker in every four was out of a job. In other countries unemployment ranged between 15 percent and 25 percent of the labor force. The great industrial slump continued throughout the 1930s, shaking the foundations of Western capitalism and the society based upon it.
Economic Aspects
President Calvin COOLIDGE had said during the long prosperity of the 1920s that "The business of America is business." Despite the seeming business prosperity of the 1920s, however, there were serious economic weak spots, a chief one being a depression in the agricultural sector. also depressed were such industries as coal mining, railroads, and textiles. Throughout the 1920s, U. S. banks had failed--an average of 600 per year--as had thousands of other business firms. By 1928 the construction boom was over. The spectacular rise in prices on the STOCK MARKET from 1924 to 1929 bore little relation to actual economic conditions. In fact, the boom in the stock market and in real estate, along with the expansion in credit (created, in part, by low-paid workers buying on credit) and high profits for a few industries, concealed basic problems. Thus the U. S. stock market crash that occurred in October 1929, with huge losses, was not the fundamental cause of the Great Depression, although the crash sparked, and certainly marked the beginning of, the most traumatic economic period of modern times.
By 1930, the slump was apparent, but few people expected it to continue; previous financial PANICS and depressions had reversed in a year or two. The usual forces of economic expansion had vanished, however. Technology had eliminated more industrial jobs than it had created; the supply of goods continued to exceed demand; the world market system was basically unsound. The high tariffs of the Smoot-Hawley Act (1930) exacerbated the downturn. As business failures increased and unemployment soared--and as people with dwindling incomes nonetheless had to pay their creditors--it was apparent that the United States was in the grip of economic breakdown. Most European countries were hit even harder, because they had not yet fully recovered from the ravages of World War I.)
The deepening depression essentially coincided with the term in office (1929-33) of President Herbert HOOVER. The stark statistics scarcely convey the distress of the millions of people who lost jobs, savings, and homes. From 1930 to 1933 industrial stocks lost 80% of their value. In the four years from 1929 to 1932 approximately 11,000 U. S. banks failed (44% of the 1929 total), and about $2 billion in deposits evaporated. The gross national product (GNP), which for years had grown at an average annual rate of 3.5%, declined at a rate of over 10% annually, on average, from 1929 to 1932. Agricultural distress was intense: farm prices fell by 53% from 1929 to 1932.
POST-WORLD WAR I LITERATURE
American literature of the 1920s was characterized by disillusionment with ideals and even with civilization itself. The writers of the so-called lost generation reacted with disillusionment to the war and adopted the despairing tone of The Waste Land. The young poet e e CUMMINGS used his wartime experience as the basis for a novel, The Enormous Room (1922), as did John DOS PASSOS and William FAULKNER. Ernest HEMINGWAY, however, captured the experience of war and the sense of loss most lucidly in his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), which probes the experience of a group of disillusioned expatriates in Paris, and in A Farewell to Arms (1929). American writers gathered in Paris during the 1920s, partly to escape what they regarded as the small-town morality and shallowness of American culture. Among them, F. Scott FITZGERALD had the greatest success in the United States. His masterpiece, The Great Gatsby (1925), helped create the image of the Roaring Twenties, the age of the flapper, and the jazz age.
In the United States, a group of writers chronicled their escape from small-town America and exposed its hypocrisies. Sherwood ANDERSON inspired the rest with Winesburg, Ohio (1919), based on Anderson's hometown of Clyde, Ohio. Sinclair Lewis attacked provincialism in Main Street (1920) and added a word meaning "unthinking conformist" to the language with Babbitt (1922). H. L. MENCKEN took up the attack on the "booboisie" in his essays, as did Ring LARDNER in his sports stories and, at the end of the decade, Thomas WOLFE in the autobiographical novel Look Homeward, Angel (1929).
The influence of European modernism reached the United States during this period. Gertrude STEIN's experiments with the sounds and speech patterns of the American language, developed earlier in Paris, influenced Hemingway and many others. Marianne MOORE edited the Dial magazine and for several decades influenced American poetry with her disciplined, often unconventional verse. Hart CRANE attempted an alternative to Eliot's less vernacular modernism with his American epic, The Bridge (1930). William Faulkner assimilated the technique of the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOVEL from James Joyce's Ulysses and put it to use in The Sound and the Fury (1929). The doctrines of modernism were championed in little magazines such as the Criterion, Dial, and Hound and Horn. Meanwhile, American literature began to be studied critically. D. H. LAWRENCE's Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) was followed by William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain (1925) and V. L. PARRINGTON's Main Currents in American Thought (1927-30).
During this period the American drama flowered, primarily because of Eugene O'NEILL's plays. With such brooding, symbolic, and intensely psychological works as The Emperor Jones (1920), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), and his later, poetically autobiographical masterpiece Long Day's Journey into Night (1956), O'Neill set a new standard for American playwrights. He was joined by a host of talented dramatists, including Maxwell ANDERSON, Philip BARRY, Lillian HELLMAN, Elmer RICE, Thornton WILDER, and later by Edward ALBEE, A
|
|
