Social issues of the 1920s
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The 1920s saw the rise of a variety of social issues in lieu of rapidly changing world. Conflicts arose in what was considered acceptable, illegal, and respectable. The conflict quickly became developed into one between the liberal urban areas against the conservative (and often reactionary) rural areas.
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[edit] Prohibition
During the 1920s the populations in cities swelled. Crime and political corruption became much more common and accepted. Following a relatively conservative period following the First World War, a liberalism began to spread throughout urban areas during the years following 1925. Urban areas began to hold increasingly liberal views of sex, alcohol, drugs, homosexuality. The view that women and minorities were entitled to equality became increasingly prevalent in urban areas, especially among the educated. For example, the actor William Haines who was regularly named in newspapers and magazines as the #1 male box-office draw, openly lived in a gay relationship with his lover Jimmie Shields. Many people in rural areas became increasingly shocked at all the changes they saw occurring and many responded by becoming reactionary. The Volstead Act, a law meant to uphold the Eighteenth Amendment, became increasingly difficult due to a disregard and disdain for a law that was deemed ridiculous. The fact that members of congress had actually drunk a toast after passing the Eighteenth Amendment reveals that even those who were supposed to be setting an example did not take the law seriously.[citation needed] This lack of respect for the law enforcement eventually spread to other areas of culture, and many conservative members of Congress criticized this lack of order as stemming from the rampant use of alcohol.
[edit] Authors
Authors were starting to became more abundant and the quality of writing started to sky rocket. Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein were a few authors popular at the time. Fitzgerald’s second novel, “The Beautiful and Damned,” published in 1922, represents an impressive development over the comparatively immature, “This Side of Paradise.” “The Great Gatsby,” which many consider his masterpiece, was published in 1925. Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, notably Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, such as Ernest Hemingway.
[edit] Disputes over Human Origin, and the Scopes trial
The Scopes trial of 1925, involved a controversy over the teaching of evolution over creationism in public schools. A teacher named John T. Scopes had defied the Butler Act of the state of Tennessee, and taught the theory of evolution in his classes. The court case appeared to challenge a law that had existed for only about a month, and was largely a theatrical trial used by both sides to illustrate an argument. But it represented the first major public dispute between evolutionists and creationists, and made a large impact on the ways that science and religion interacted with society for the remainder of the century.[citation needed]
[edit] Isolationism, Immigration, and Communism
America's isolationist philosophy after World War I gave rise to a xenophobic feeling across the nation. This was concentrated in rural areas and especially in the south where the Ku Klux Klan gained widespread support and sought to persecute immigrants and minorities in the early 1920's. At the same time, Communism was still a new philosophy in government, and much of the general American public held a hostile view toward it. The beginning of the 1920's saw the height and fall of First Red Scare as exemplified in the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti. This opposition to Communism was caused mostly by its Anti-war associations and its connection with a series of bombings.
