The American Twenties (1918-1928). Progress and Regression

The period of the 20s is remembered as the Jazz Age, the "Roaring 20s", the era of the "flivver", the "flapper", Hollywood, Campbell Soup and the tabloids. For the politically and socially conscious, it is branded as the age of intolerance, of xenophobia and 100% Americanism, of Prohibition, the KKK, the Red scare, Immigration Restriction, and the divisive trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. It is a decade clearly bounded by two major tragedies (World War I and the Great Depression). Rising living standards, changing lifestyles, a revolution in morals, the coming of age of the consumer society, the standardization, rationalization and concentration of production ushered in a "new era" which some Americans found it hard to adjust to. Retreating into nostalgia, or worse still, regression, they sought to recreate a safer, more amenable past, more truly "American" too, constantly wavering between welcoming the present or attempting to restore the past, in a fruitful, and neverending tension between "progress" and "regression".