he 1920s was a decade of exciting social changes and profound cultural conflicts. For many Americans, the growth of cities, the rise of a consumer culture, and the so-called "revolution in morals and manners" represented a liberation from the restrictions of the country's Victorian past. But for others, the United States seemed to be changing in undesirable ways. The result was a thinly veiled "cultural civil war," in which a pluralistic society classed bitterly over such issues as foreign immigration, evolution, the Ku Klux Klan, and race.

Background

The 1920s is commonly thought of as a hedonistic interlude between the Great War and the Great Depression, a decade of dissipation, of jazz bands, raccoon coats, bathtub gin, flappers, flagpole sitters, bootleggers, and marathon dancers. According to this view, World War I had shattered Americans' faith in reform and moral crusade, and the younger generation proceeded to rebel against traditional taboos while their elders engaged in an orgy of speculation.

In fact the decade was both a decade of bitter cultural tensions as well as a period in which many of the features of a modern consumer society took root.