Temperance

Editorial From WCTU

As the great Greek philosopher Xenophon once said of temperance, "moderation in all things healthful; total abstinence from all things harmful.” While the 18th Amendment has banned alcohol in our fair land, it has not gone far enough. The villains roaming the streets of Chicago, turning fine women into jezebels in flapper skirts with short hair, claim to be respectable businessmen but they do not think twice when it comes to the sale of the other scourge of our nation; tobacco.


The three sins of our century—jazz, liquor and loose women—are joined by yet another, the use of cigarettes and cigars. The foul reek coming from the clubs pollutes our fair city streets. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union is forging ahead with the call for an addition to the 18th Amendment of a ban of tobacco.


Members of the WCTU will be holding prayer meetings outside of that den of sin The Flume Club each and every Sunday morning at 6 a.m. before going to church. Please join us in saving the poor souls who are too weak to resist the draw of that foul establishment.


Yours in Temperance,
Maugarite Bane
President of the Chicago Branch of the WCTU

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The Sounds of the Radio

Most radio historians assert that radio broadcasting began in June 20th 1920, when radio listeners all over Europe thrilled to the voice of Soprano Nellie Melba singing English, French and Italian songs from London. Later that year, in November 2nd America’s first radio station, KDKA in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, broadcast the results of the Harding-Cox Presidential election.


The Radio started to affect mass culture in 1922, when a San Francisco newspaper reported, "There is radio music in the air, every night, everywhere. Anybody can hear it at home on a receiving set, which any boy can put up in an hour." Radio altered the daily habits of its listeners more than any other previous invention. Radio provided people a source of entertainment they could share. Radio programs ranged from live theatre to sporting events, and from symphony concerts and jazz to religious sermons and broadcasts of important events. Now people all over the country and the world laughed at the same jokes, hummed the same music, and listened to the same commercials.


Radio created public personalities, like announcer Graham McNamee. In 1921, McNamee first broadcast a baseball game by radio. He knew little about sports, but his vibrant baritone soon became familiar to millions of Americans. McNamee became the top sports announcer for the new National Broadcasting Company (NBC).


Another NBC radio star was Rudy Vallee, a singer who created a variety show format. The Rudy Vallee Show began in 1929 and was one of the most popular shows of the 1930s. Many famous vaudeville names paid a visit to the show.


Next in popularity after sports on radio were musical programs. Light classical music programs were common. The Chicago station KYW was created to broadcast opera performances in Chicago. The regular performances of the great Irish singer John McCormack were broadcast on the RCA Victor Hour. McCormack was often featured with the New York Metropolitan Opera Company's Lucrezia Bori.


Manufacturers were overwhelmed by the demand for receivers, as customers stood in line to complete order forms for radios after dealers had sold out. Between 1923 and 1930, 60% of American families purchased radios. Families gathered around their radios for night-time entertainment. As radio ownership increased, so did the number of radio stations. In 1920, KDKA was not the only operating radio station, but it remains a benchmark in the United States. By 1922, 600 radio stations had sprung up around the country.

Chicago's first radio station, KYW, begun in 1921 by Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, was the first specialized radio station, broadcasting exclusively opera six days a week. The radio station experienced immediate popularity and continued to be a favourite in Chicago. After the opera season ended, the station owners saw the need to diversify their programming. They began broadcasting popular and classical music, sporting events, lectures, fictional stories, newscasts, weather reports, market updates, and political commentary.

Radio stations like KYW enhanced a sense of community among different groups as each group could listen to programming suited to their interests and needs. However, the advance of radio technology also created a tension between modernity and the traditions and habits of Americans.

The rapid spread of radio listeners and programs lead to inevitable confusion and disruption. Radio stations started competing with one another for time and listeners and many programs overlapped. Listeners of one program were frequently interrupted by overlapping programs. In addition, the public, the government, and emerging radio corporations viewed radio as a means of public service, rarely as a vehicle for personal profit. Radio manufacturers alone experienced financial gain from the radio boom. Radio announcers, deejays, and stations worked on a non-profit basis. Advertising was not introduced until later in the 1920s, changing the public service face of radio, to one of private gain.


The federal government hesitated to regulate the airwaves. Radio stations, listeners, and emerging broadcasting corporations all asked the government for some sort of intervention to end the free-for-all that radio had become. The government responded slowly, gradually passing laws to govern the radio. The Federal Radio Commission was set up in 1926; the Radio Act of 1927 organized the Federal Radio Commission. This Act became the basis for the Communications Act. As the government spent more time investigating radio stations, apportioning time to different groups and programs, and monitoring the growth of the radio industry, they became more and more comfortable with the responsibilities of regulation. These federal bodies eventually ceased to doubt their right to regulate.

The radio brought new emotions, new sensations and each individual experienced a different and personal thrill while listening to the sounds carried by the waves.

The Radio Craze was a cultural phenomenon brought by the roaring twenties. It was the first taste of globalization…




Sources: Wikipedia.org; http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com; http://www.1920-30.com; http://xroads.virginia.edu; http://www.classzone.com

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Flappers: A 1920's Phenomenon

Trendy young women of the 1920s were nicknamed flappers, and the flapper became the image that represented the tremendous change in women's lives and attitudes during that period.
During the early part of the twentieth century women in countries from Australia to Norway were gaining the right to vote, and more and more women were able to support themselves by working at jobs. In addition to women's new freedoms, by the 1920s there were automobiles to drive, films to see, and jazz music to dance to, and modern young women wanted to join in the fun. Young women were no longer content to spend hours binding themselves into burdensome layers of clothing or styling long masses of hair.
The term flapper originated in Great Britain, where there was a short fad among young women to wear rubber galoshes (an overshoe worn in the rain or snow) left open to flap when they walked. The name stuck, and throughout the United States and Europe flapper was the name given to liberated young women. Flappers were bold, confident, and sexy. They tried new fad diets in an effort to achieve a fashionable thinness, because new fashions required slim figures, flat chests, and slim hips. The flapper dress was boxy and hung straight from shoulder to knee, with no waistline, allowing much more freedom of movement than women's fashions before the 1920s. While it did not show breasts or hips, it did show a lot of leg, and the just-below-the-knee length horrified many of the older generation. French fashion designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel did much to popularize the new freedom of the flapper look.
Flappers also shocked conservatives by cutting their hair short and wearing makeup. Before the 1920s long hair was the mark of a respectable lady, but flappers had no time for elaborate hairdos. They cut, or bobbed, their hair just below the ears and curled it in dozens of tiny spit curls with a new invention called a bobby pin. Some also used electric curling irons to create small waves called "marcels," named after Marcel Grateau, the French hair stylist who invented them. Cosmetics had long been associated with prostitutes and actresses, but flappers considered it glamorous to wear dark red lipstick, lots of rouge, and thick black lines around their eyes, sometimes made with the burned end of a matchstick. New cosmetics companies including Maybelline and Coty began manufacturing products to help women achieve the new look. For the first time, women began to carry cosmetics with them in handbags wherever they went.

One of the most famous flappers was silent film star Clara Bow. Sometimes called the "It" girl, Bow was thought to have "it," a quality of open sexuality, innocence, and fun that was the very definition of the flapper. Many women imitated Bow's look by drawing a bow shape on their lips, rimming their eyes in black, and curling their hair onto their cheeks.
Despite the youthful enthusiasm for flapper style, some people felt threatened by it. When hemlines began to rise, several states made laws charging fines to women wearing skirts with hemlines more than three inches above the ankle, and many employers fired women who bobbed their hair. However, in the excitement and gaiety that followed the end of World War I in 1918, the movement toward a freer fashion could not be stopped by those who valued the old ways. It took the stock market crash of 1929 to bring the era of the flapper to a sudden end. Almost overnight, the arrival of an economic depression brought a serious tone to society. Women's hemlines dropped again, and the carefree age of the flapper was over.


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Sources: Wikipedia.org; www.1920-30.com; www.fashionencyclopedia.com

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Women's Right to Vote!

Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or marital status.
Women's suffrage has been granted at various times in various countries throughout the world, and in many countries it was granted before universal suffrage.


The modern movement for women's suffrage originated in France in the 1780s and 1790s, where Antoine Condorcet and Olympe de Gouges advocated women's suffrage in national elections. In medieval France and several other European countries, voting for city and town assemblies and meetings was open to the heads of households. In Sweden, during the age of liberty between 1718 and 1771, women were permitted to vote if they were tax paying guild-members. Women were entitled to vote in the Corsican Republic in 1755 whose Constitution stipulated a national representative assembly elected by all inhabitants over the age of 25, both women (if unmarried or widowed) and men. Women's suffrage was ended when France annexed the island in 1769.


In the years before World War I, Norway (1913) and Denmark (1915) also gave women the right to vote, and it was extended throughout the remaining Australian states. Near the end of the war, various states gave women the right to vote, including Canada, Soviet Russia, Germany and Poland. British women over 30 had the vote in 1918, Dutch women in 1919, and American women in states that had previously denied them suffrage were allowed the vote in 1920. Women in Turkey were granted voting rights in 1926. In 1928, suffrage was extended to all British women on the same terms as men, that is, for persons 21 years old and older.

In the United States, the beginning of the fight for women suffrage is usually traced to the Declaration of Sentiments produced at the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. in 1848. Four years later, at the Woman's Rights Convention in Syracuse in 1852, Susan B. Anthony joined the fight, arguing that «the right women needed above every other...was the right of suffrage».


During debates on the Reconstruction Amendments which extended the vote to ex-slaves (through the 15th Amendment), suffragists pushed hard for universal suffrage, but they never had a chance.


In 1872, a suffragist brought a series of court challenges designed to test whether voting was a "privilege" of "US citizenship" now belonging to women by virtue of the recently adopted 14th Amendment. One such challenge grew out of a criminal prosecution of Susan B. Anthony for illegally voting in the 1872 election. The first case to make its way to the Supreme Court, however, was Minor vs Happersett (1875). In Minor, a unanimous Court rejected the argument that either the privileges and immunities clause or the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment extended the vote to women. Following Minor, suffragists turned their attention from the courts to the states and to Congress.


In 1878, a constitutional amendment was proposed that provided «The right of citizens to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex». This same amendment would be introduced in every session of Congress for the next 41 years.


In July 1890, the Territory of Wyoming, which allowed women to vote, was admitted as a state. Wyoming became the first state with women suffrage. By 1900, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho joined Wyoming in allowing women to vote.
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party became the first national political party to have a plank supporting women suffrage. The tide was beginning to turn.


In May, 1919, the necessary two-thirds vote in favour of the women suffrage amendment was finally mustered in Congress, and the proposed amendment was sent to the states for ratification. By July 1920, with a number of primarily southern states adamantly opposed to the amendment, it all came down to Tennessee. It appeared that the amendment might fail by one vote in the Tennessee house, but twenty-four-year-old Harry Burns surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, «Don't forget to be a good boy» and «vote for suffrage». Women had finally won the vote in the United States of America.


Sources: Wikipedia; www.history.vt.edu; www.historyteacher.net; http://pennamite.wordpress.com; www.law.umkc.edu

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Speakeasy

A Speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the period known as Prohibition. During this time, the sale, manufacture, and transportation (bootlegging) of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States.

The term «Speakeasy» might have originated in Pennsylvania in 1888, when the Brooks High-License Act raised the state’s fee for a saloon license from $50 to $500. The number of licensed bars promptly plummeted, but some bars continued to operate illegally. Kate Hester had run a saloon for years in McKeesport, just outside of Pittsburgh. She refused to pay the new license fee and wanted to keep from drawing attention to her illegal business. When her customers got too rowdy, she would hush them by whispering “Speak easy, boys! Speak easy!” This expression became common in McKeesport and spread to Pittsburgh.

An alternative theory is that the term was simply derived from a patron's manner of ordering alcohol without raising suspicion — bartenders would tell patrons to be quiet and «speak easy».

Speakeasies were numerous and popular during the Prohibition years. Some of them were operated by people who were part of organized crime. Although police and agents of the Bureau of Prohibition would often raid them and arrest their owners and patrons, they were so lucrative that they continued to flourish.

Because they were illegal, speakeasies avoided attracting any attention from the police and did not tolerate brawling or violence on their premises.

The term «blind pig» or «blind tiger» originated in the United States in the 19th century; it was applied to lower-class establishments that sold alcoholic beverages illegally. The operator of an establishment (such as a saloon or bar) would charge customers to see an attraction (such as an animal) and then serve a “complimentary” alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law.

The difference between a speakeasy and a blind pig was that a speakeasy was usually a higher-class establishment that offered food, music, live entertainment, or even all three. In large cities, some speakeasies even required a coat and tie for men, and evening dress for women. But a blind pig was usually a low-class dive where only beer and liquor were offered.

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Sources:

wikipedia.org

kitandandrew.co.uk

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The Noble Experiment

Prohibition in the United States, also known as The Noble Experiment, was the period from 1920 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption were banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In the 1916 presidential election, both Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson and Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes ignored the Prohibition issue, as was the case with both parties' political platforms. Democrats and Republicans had strong wet and dry factions, and the election was expected to be close, with neither candidate wanting to alienate any part of his political base.

In January 1917, the 65th Congress convened, in which the dries outnumbered the wets by 140 to 64 in the Democratic party and 138 to 62 among Republicans. With America's declaration of war against Germany in April, German-Americans—a major force against prohibition—were widely discredited and their protests subsequently ignored.

A resolution calling for an amendment to accomplish nationwide Prohibition was introduced in Congress and passed by both houses in December 1917. On January 16, 1919, the Amendment was ratified by thirty-six of the forty-eight states. On October 28, 1919, the amendment was implemented by the Volstead Act. Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. A total of 1,520 Federal Prohibition agents (police) were given the task of enforcing the law.

Although it was highly controversial, Prohibition was widely supported by diverse groups. Progressives believed that it would improve society as generally did women, southerners, those living in rural areas and African-Americans. There were a few exceptions such as the Woman’s Organization for Prohibition Reform who fought against it. Will Rogers often joked about the southern pro-prohibitionists: "The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls." Supporters of the Amendment soon became quite confident that it would not be repealed, to the point that one of its creators, Senator Morris Sheppard, joked that "there is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a humming-bird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail."

At the same time, songs emerged decrying the act; after Edward, Prince of Wales, returned to the United Kingdom following his 1919 tour of Canada, he recounted to his father, King George V, a ditty he'd heard at a border town:

Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry,

Went across the border to get a drink of rye.

When the rye was opened, the Yanks began to sing,

God bless America, but God save the King!

The issue of Prohibition became a highly controversial one among medical professionals, because alcohol was widely prescribed by physicians of the era for therapeutic purposes. Congress held hearings on the medicinal value of beer in 1921. Subsequently, physicians across the country lobbied for the repeal of Prohibition as it applied to medicinal liquors.

While the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcohol was illegal in the U.S., Section 29 of the Volstead Act allowed the making at home of wine and cider from fruit (but not beer). Up to 200 gallons per year could be made, and some vineyards grew grapes for home use. Also, one anomaly of the Act as worded was that it did not actually prohibit the consumption of alcohol; many people actually stockpiled wines and liquors for their own use in the latter part of 1919 before sales of alcohol became illegal the following January.

Alcoholic drinks were not always illegal in all neighbouring countries. Distilleries and breweries in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean flourished as their products were either consumed by visiting Americans or illegally imported to the U.S. The Detroit River, which forms part of the border with Canada, was notoriously difficult to control. Chicago became a haven for Prohibition dodgers during the time known as the Roaring Twenties. Many of Chicago's most notorious gangsters, including Al Capone and his enemy Bugs Moran, made millions of dollars through illegal alcohol sales. By the end of the decade Capone controlled all 10,000 speakeasies in Chicago and ruled the bootlegging business from Canada to Florida. Numerous other crimes, including theft and murder, were directly linked to criminal activities in Chicago and elsewhere in violation of prohibition.

Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities. On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages.

On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment.

Source: Wikipedia.org

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