1927 and the Rise of Modern America

by Charles Shindo

  Describing the ways Americans searched for a comfortable middle ground between past and future is not an easy task, since it necessarily relies on an attention to detail and specifics while at the same time requiring discussion of a broad range of topics. Simultaneously keeping a narrow focus and presenting the larger picture is achieved best by looking at many different events of a single year rather than looking at well-known examples from throughout the decade. This narrow focus allows for a deeper analysis of the events, of their meaning and significance, and draws attention to the roles of individuals instead of to larger historical trends, forces, and ideas. While selectively choosing events from throughout the decade would make for a more clearly presented argument about the conflicts, contradictions, and varieties of ideas and events necessary to an understanding of modern America’s development, looking at the events of 1927 lets the process of a developing modern America unfold with the same ambiguity and disjuncture that people experienced at the time. An onslaught of events, both positive and negative, overwhelmed Americans in 1927, and they sought to make sense of them much in the same manner as I seek to make sense of the year’s events. The focus on a single year allows for a synthesis of historical approaches as political, economic, and social histories illuminate the broader cultural history of the period. Film studies, literary analysis, media studies, sociology, musicology, and cultural theory all help inform this study, emphasizing the description of events, within their context, in order to illustrate their significance in understanding modern American history. Americans in 1927 were particularly focused on cultural issues rather than on specifically political, economic, or foreign policy issues, and therefore the year is ideally suited to describing the development of modern American culture. America did not become modern in 1927; no single year was the year America became modern. The variety of people and events in 1927—from the celebrated, like Lindbergh, Herbert Hoover, and Babe Ruth, to the derided, like convicted and executed murderers Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray; from the disastrous, like the Mississippi River flood and the flawed trial for anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and the hopeful, like the success of the sound film The Jazz Singer—all illustrate the variety of experiences in American life and how Americans tried to make sense of those people and events and to determine what they meant, for better or worse. This is not to say that 1927 is the only year for which this argument could be made, but it is the best year with which to make this argument. While other years may have been better to illuminate an aspect of modern America (immigration reform in 1924, fundamentalism in 1925, or economic instability in 1929), 1927 is the best year to discuss a wider variety of events and ideas. Even though Lindbergh’s achievement was the biggest story of the year, it did not influence every other event of the year, as the aftermath of the Great War had dominated the early part of the decade and economic concerns would dominate the final years of the decade.

  Earlier studies have also selected 1927 as an important year in the decade, but these works have followed the popular historiographical trend of viewing the 1920s as primarily an age of frivolity and excess. Allen Churchill’s The Year the World Went Mad (1960) refers to 1927 as the year “the Era of Wonderful Nonsense reached its peak” and focuses each chapter on a big news story from the year, in roughly chronological order and with no analysis of each event. Churchill delights in the extreme and the wacky as he describes divorce and murder trials, Lindbergh’s flight, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and the year in sports, without examining the meaning these events held for Americans. Likewise, Gerald Leinwald’s 1927: High Tide of the Twenties (2001) claims that “like a great wine, 1927 was a vintage year,” as he focuses on twelve major events of the year, one in each month. Like Churchill, Leinwald refrains from analyzing or explaining the significance of these events beyond labeling something as new, record-breaking, or now obsolete. Both studies fit alongside such broader studies of the 1920s as Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday (1931), the model on which much of 1920s historiography has been based, and Nathan Miller’s New World Coming (2003), which seeks to build on Allen’s narrative and uses the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald as its narrative thread. These works are primarily descriptive and do not seek to explain how these events came to be or what meaning they hold for their readers besides entertainment.2

  Much closer to my approach are works by such historians as Lynn Dumenil, whose The Modern Temper (1995) takes a thematic approach to the decade, arguing that despite the continuities to be found with political, social, economic, and cultural trends from before the Great War, the 1920s still represent a distinctively “modern” age. While I agree with Dumenil, I think the issue is not when the United States became modern but, rather, how the ideas of the modern world came to be accepted, and in part rejected, by various Americans.3 The focus on a single year allows for a fuller explication of process over description. How Americans dealt with the modern is more telling than when the country became modern. Closer still to my interpretation is Roderick Nash’s The Nervous Generation (1970), in which he argues that the 1920s were more than the extremes “of resigned cynicism and happy reveling” characterized in such works as Allen’s Only Yesterday and most 1920s historiography. He describes the post–World War I generation as “nervous,” searching for clarity in the changes they were experiencing, but he limits his study to intellectuals and how they expressed their nervousness. Although he does engage popular culture, he does not really view American culture beyond the minds of intellectuals.4 Paul Carter has also explored the conflicts evident during the decade in his short work The Twenties in America (1968), in which he describes these conflicts using three distinct dichotomies, characterized as bohemians versus consumers, Calvin Coolidge versus Ernest Hemingway, and town versus country. In explaining these conflicts, he does suggest that there were not two clearly defined sides to each debate but, rather, multiple shades of gray. In describing the faith many had in progress versus tradition, Carter notes, “the more one probes into attitudes towards progress during the Twenties, the more these attitudes dissolve into ambivalence.”5 It is this ambivalence that I seek to describe and explain. Other short works that have touched on these same ideas in different forms are Lawrence Levine’s “Progress and Nostalgia” and Warren Susman’s “Culture and Civilization” and “Culture Heroes.”6 All three essays raise the specter of conflict, tension, and ambiguity in the decade; I seek to extend and deepen their work.

  Studies looking at a single issue or limiting their scope regionally have also interpreted the Twenties as a transitional period between Victorianism and modernism. Roland Marchand on advertising, Lewis A. Erenberg on New York nightlife, Elaine Tyler May on marriage, Charles L. Ponce de Leon on celebrity, Nathan Irvin Huggins on Harlem, and Lary May on the movie industry are a few of the studies that highlight many of the same ideas about the 1920s that I seek to explicate.7 Each has provided a necessary aspect to the larger synthesis I present. By looking at the events of a single year, the continuities and conflicts of American society stand out not only because of the events and people themselves, but because of the connections with other events and people as well. This approach allows for an examination of how a wide variety of Americans searched for a comfortable middle ground in modern America. Modern America is not so much a definable historical period as it is a set of ideas and values that emerged to compete with older sets of values (Puritan, Protestant, pioneer, Victorian). And just as Victorian sensibilities in America did not completely replace older Puritan ideas, neither did modern ideas replace Victorian ones; rather, they coexisted, sometimes comfortably, most times not. I use both the phrase “modern America” and the term “modernity” to refer to a combination of industrial modernization (as characterized by a corporate-dominated and consumer-driven economy), urbanization, cultural modernism (as represented by modernist approaches to literature, art, architecture, and music), and the development of a widely accessible popular culture. Each of these factors influenced t
he others, and none can be understood on its own. Together they brought about the changes that Americans had to deal with, cope with, and understand. The 1920s, and 1927 in particular, illustrate the discomfort that came from the search for understanding. What follows is an attempt to describe and explain the ways various Americans faced their present, based on their understanding of the past and vision of the future.

  The goal of understanding how people came to grips with modern America does not lend itself to a chronological approach or to a traditional narrative structure. Instead, I have focused on four separate, but not mutually exclusive, agendas in which Americans engaged: mastery, equality, notoriety, and respectability. In their search for modern America, many people sought mastery over aspects of their lives, whether that meant mastery of industry, as in the case of Henry Ford; the expression of machine-age ideals, as in the case of the precisionist artists; or an understanding of such current events as the Sacco and Vanzetti execution, of the debate over contemporary religion, or of the past sought for by novelists and historians. All in their own ways sought mastery over and comprehension of their world as a way to understand modern America.

  Others searched for equality in modern times. Women became the most visible symbol of change during the 1920s, not only in political and economic power but also in appearance and actions. Clara Bow exemplified the “new” woman and was both admired and scorned for it. Theatrical personalities, such as Texas Guinan, and performances, such as the musical Show Boat, illustrate the conflicted attitudes many had toward women. Seeking much more basic aspects of equality, African Americans, especially those in the flood-ravaged Mississippi delta, sought equal treatment and a better life. Through organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Colored Advisory Commission, created in the wake of mounting criticism of discrimination in the flood-relief efforts, African Americans demanded fair treatment and an end to an economic system that held many in a condition of peonage.

  Those less concerned with mastery or equality just wanted to be famous, whether for positive contributions or notorious reasons. Politicians like Herbert Hoover, true-crime figures such as Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, and even professional and collegiate athletes saw any publicity as a benefit to their careers and lives. Public relations, crime reporting, and sports writing all became industries whose main goals were not to celebrate extraordinary achievement but, rather, to sell a product, be it a politician, newspapers, or footballs.

  Those mainly in the newer entertainment professions of motion pictures, jazz music, and radio sought ways for their respective industries to gain respect in a society inundated with leisure pursuits and entertainments but still deeply conflicted about their importance in American culture. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks epitomized the wholesome Hollywood couple; African American artists and intellectuals capitalized on the popularity of jazz music and black culture to stage the Harlem Renaissance. White entertainers, like Paul Whiteman, sought to legitimize jazz by “elevating” it to the level of classical music, as radio sought to legitimize its role in American society by proclaiming its function as an educational and nationalizing force. Each of these people found ways to find meaning and understanding in the numerous changes occurring around them, and while they did not all succeed in finding success or satisfaction, they all contributed to what we know as modern America and the development of American culture.

  Once again, Charles Lindbergh illustrates the way a single event could embody each of these agendas. Lindbergh’s flight demonstrated mastery over what many believed was an unobtainable goal. It illustrated the equality—some may say even superiority—of American enterprise and industry, as it made Lindbergh a celebrity both at home and abroad, and the event brought a measure of respectability to aviation, while not necessarily infringing on the traditional values of some Americans or the more modern values of others. The flight celebrated the triumph of both traditional and modern values and emphasized the ambiguity that characterizes modern American culture. But Lindbergh’s flight is merely the most famous of events in 1927 that help explain American culture in all of its ambiguity. There are many more.

  Charles Sheeler, Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company (1927). (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987 [1987.1100.1]. Copy Photography © The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  Crowd protesting Sacco-Vanzetti verdict. (© Underwood & Underwood/Corbis)

  CHAPTER 1Seeking Mastery: The Machine Age and the Idealized Past

  MASTERY OVER MACHINE AND MAN: While the industrial modernization of the United States, represented by Henry Ford’s massive River Rouge plant, made possible the consumer culture that characterizes modern America, the loss of individuality brought about by modernization led to the prejudices of the majority sometimes taking precedence over the rights of individuals, as in the flawed trial of executed anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Ford’s success in the automotive industry reflected the overall success of the American economy in the 1920s. The wide availability of consumer goods and higher wages improved most Americans’ standard of living, but these gains were made at a cost. Individuality in work as well as in society suffered as labor became mechanized, as at River Rouge, and Americans grew fearful of outsiders and others marked as different, like Sacco and Vanzetti.

  In their attempts to understand the changes occurring around them, Americans sought mastery over their world by controlling, illuminating, utilizing, or limiting the people and things around them. By using new technology and manufacturing practices, Henry Ford and the rest of the automobile industry sought control over both the machines of industry and the consumers buying their products, while advertisers and artists sought to illuminate the ambiguity of the machine age through photography, painting, exhibits, and performance. Even religious leaders utilized modern methods of industry and marketing to make religion pertinent to modern man, best represented by the works of advertising executive and religious writer Bruce Barton. But while some celebrated and adapted modern methods to their work and lives, others sought to limit change or at least to alter the course of modernity by illustrating the dangers of believing in limitless progress. The outcry of support for convicted and executed anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti illustrates the divide between those who viewed changes in the demographic makeup of the nation as a benefit for a thriving democracy and those who saw it as a threat. Sinclair Lewis, who supported Sacco and Vanzetti, also warned of religion’s commodification in Elmer Gantry, while Willa Cather indirectly critiqued modern religion by presenting an idealized past in Death Comes for the Archbishop. Likewise, writers of history and historical fiction, like Charles and Mary Beard and Glenway Wescott, suggested that progress is not inevitable and that not all change is for the better. Each of these people sought mastery over social change by in some way controlling that change through actions and ideas. Their attempts, the conflicts they created, and their successes and failures help explain how modern America developed.

  the machine as business

  Just as many Americans celebrated Charles Lindbergh, many also saw Henry Ford as a hero, and for as many different reasons. Yet Ford was more a symbol of modernity and success—in a word, of progress—than he was a role model. Ford backed his celebrity with technological, economic, and cultural substance; the advances he brought to the automobile industry also helped transform American industry in general. Ford’s role in the automobile industry’s transformation of American life is also significant, but in terms of lasting practical contributions, Ford’s industrial philosophy—or Fordism, as it was called—was short-lived. His legacy lies primarily in the imagery of modernity he presented and popularized for the American public.

  Ford’s achievements in automobile manufacturing—standardized and interchangeable parts, the assembly line, well-paid unskilled labor, rapid production, independence from c
ontractors and other manufacturers, and the production of a single product—all resulted in the affordable Model T, the most successful single car model in history, with over 15 million manufactured. An early Ford production engineer discussed the fact that the automobile industry could be broken down into three distinct endeavors: “the art of buying materials, the art of production, and the art of selling.”1 For years, Ford had perfected the first two endeavors but had neglected the third. As Ford increased production through technological and managerial changes, he paid little attention to advertising, marketing, and sales. Indeed, the Ford Motor Company did not run a promotional campaign for the Model T, but publicity and word-of-mouth sufficed to make it the best-selling automobile, accounting for half of all cars in the world in 1927. Ford spent virtually nothing on advertising the Model T to consumers, since demand for the automobile usually outpaced production, at least until the mid-1920s. Ford considered marketing studies unnecessary because he intended to make a car for everyone, not for a specific market. From 1917 to 1923, the Ford Motor Company had no advertising department at all, relying on individual dealers to promote the product. Customers were made aware of the Model T primarily through news stories about Henry Ford and “the Ford car,” as the Model T was widely known, and through an extensive network of Ford dealers.2 As a result, Model Ts were more readily available than other makes of car, not only in terms of price and production but geographically as well. This availability, coupled with the simplicity of the design, made Ford cars easier to maintain: either the individual owner could do the maintenance, or a nearby dealer or service representative could. Adding to the popularity of the Model T was the tremendous amount of publicity garnered by the vehicle (it was the first to traverse the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the winner of numerous road and country races, and so on), the Ford Motor Company, and Henry Ford himself.