The Twenties opened with a worldwide epidemic, followed by profound social change: a shift in working practices, new technologies, more rights and freedoms for women, an obsession with celebrities, rising inflation. Gill Paul, whose new book, The Manhattan Girls, is set in 1920s New York, looks back 100 years and wonders how similar our world is to that iconic decade — and whether our own Twenties might roar.
On 4 March, 1918, Albert Gitchell, a cook in an army camp in Kansas, reported a sore throat, fever and headache. Within days over 500 similar cases had been recorded in the same camp, and over the next two years, between 20 and 50 million people would die worldwide of the virus that became known as Spanish flu.
On 31 December 2019, Chinese authorities in Wuhan confirmed that they were treating dozens of cases of a new coronavirus. By July 2022, the global death toll from Covid–19 would be estimated at 6.4 million – a figure that would have been many times higher were it not for the speed with which vaccines were developed and rolled out.
Both viruses would lead to entire populations being told to isolate from their neighbours and wear masks. Schools were closed, public gatherings banned, and the world economy shrank as everyone stayed at home.
Emerging from the 1918–20 virus, there was a desire for change, for fun and excitement, and the Roaring Twenties began to roar.
Is history about to repeat itself as we emerge from the shadow of Covid?
This feature compares life then and now, focusing on certain key areas.
Work
The 1920 census in the US revealed that for the first time more people were living in towns than in the country. This had been the case in the UK since the mid-19th century.
City dwellers took jobs in the new factories where goods were mass-produced, and some feared that human beings might one day be replaced by technology. There was a huge prosperity gap between white-collar workers and the immigrant or rural poor.
In 1912 Massachusetts introduced a Minimum Wage Act to help those in the worst-paid jobs and some other states followed, but the UK wouldn’t have one till 1998.
In the 2020s so far, Covid has led to a substantial increase in home working, video conferencing, and digital commerce. There was a rush to leave cities for green spaces and natural beauty, and it remains to be seen whether this trend will continue through the coming decade when it’s possible to work for leading companies without ever going in to the office.
Could artificial intelligence take over some of our jobs, or will there always be a need for human oversight?
The prosperity gap, by most objective measures, is as wide now as it was a hundred years ago, with refugees at the bottom of the heap.
Consumerism
For those who had cash in the 1920s, there was no shortage of ways to spend it. Scientific advances and the spread of the electricity network brought labour-saving devices such as vacuum cleaners, washing machines and refrigerators into homes.
Radios and telephones proliferated, and advances in print technology speeded up the spread of news worldwide. Magazine advertisements persuaded women to buy the new lipsticks, perfumes, and face creams, and men took up sports like golf and tennis.
By 1928, 20% of Americans had a car, and in 1927 Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, opening up the possibility of future air travel for the masses. Department stores took over from mail order, and became glamorous temples to the new consumerism.
In the 2020s, personalised adverts on social media target the user, predicting what they most desire even before they know it themselves. 5G phones? Air Jordan trainers? Smart fridges that create a meal plan for the family and order the food while you watch Netflix on one of its screens?
High-street stores are disappearing fast, but goods can be ordered online and delivered the same day, in some cases by drones. Cars are turning electric and driverless, and future innovations in travel might include Elon Musk’s ‘hyperloop’ high-speed railways and space travel for all.
Feminism
British and American women won some life-changing legal rights during and immediately after the First World War: the right to vote was hugely important, but in terms of changing their everyday lives, the right to legal contraception was perhaps of more significance – take a bow, Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes.
Women had greater economic and political power than ever before. Rather than stay at home with their parents until they got married, they could have careers, rent apartments, drive cars, and even take lovers as men did.
But they were a long way from getting equal pay to male colleagues, and it would be the 1960s in the US, 1975 in the UK, before they could open a bank account without their husband’s permission.
The battle for equal pay still continues, and the percentage of women in positions of power is still lagging, with fewer than a third of the UK’s top jobs held by women in January 2022.
Roe vs Wade has been overturned by the US Supreme Court, making it harder for American women in some states to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Transgender rights are the subject of divisive debate. The introduction of the ‘male pill’ for preventing conception will change the sexual goalposts somewhat, while legal and moral arguments still continue over the rights to frozen embryos.
Celebrity
Movie-going became all the rage in the 1920s, and with it came the cult of celebrity. Stars like Mary Pickford, Clara Bow (the ‘It Girl’), Charlie Chaplin, and Rudolph Valentino became instantly recognisable figures, and gossip magazines began to report where they went, what they wore, and who they were sleeping with.
Sports stars like Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey also hit the limelight, with a record-breaking 91,000 spectators watching the Dempsey–Carpentier fight in Jersey City in 1921.
Musicians playing the jazz that gave the decade its name included Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, and they became household names alongside Josephine Baker, she of the iconic banana skirt.
During the Covid pandemic, movie- and theatre-going declined drastically and global customers turned to digital streaming and video on demand for entertainment. It seems unlikely this trend will be reversed, given the convenience of watching from your sofa.
Celebrities caught up in #MeToo controversies dropped out of sight, but new ones appeared out of nowhere, fuelled by TikTok and reality TV shows. The pressures on the famous will undoubtedly remain, with phone and computer hacking growing ever more sophisticated, and social media allowing fans to follow their idols’ every move online.
Will there be another crash by the end of the decade?
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was caused by a number of factors coming together: rampant inflation, a mania for borrowing, and share-buying that was out of all proportion to the intrinsic value of the companies.
The collapse wiped out 40 per cent of the value of US shares and set in motion a worldwide depression, whose effects would be felt until the start of the Second World War.
The UK inflation rate in June 2022 was 9.4 per cent and the US one 9.1, and they are still climbing. A dramatic crash in cryptocurrencies this year has shown the vulnerability of inexperienced investors who jump on the latest bandwagon without truly understanding what they are investing in.
The war in Ukraine and the move away from reliance on Russian oil and gas has put pressure on many economies worldwide and all the signs are it could get worse before it gets better.
The lessons of history are there. But let’s hope we get the fun bits first: the jazz, the dancing, the daring fashions, the cocktails and the glamour. Let the Roaring Twenty-Twenties begin!
The Manhattan Girls by Gill Paul is published on 18 August, 2022.
Gill is the bestselling author of 11 historical novels, many of them re-evaluating real 20th-century women and trying to get inside their heads. The Manhattan Girls is about Dorothy Parker and three women friends who started a bridge group in New York in 1921.
She has written other features about the background to her books, including:
The politics of Tutankhamun’s tomb (The Collector’s Daughter)
My problems writing about Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas (The Second Marriage)
Stockholm Syndrome in Ekaterinburg? (The Lost Daughter)
Join Gill, Hazel Gaynor, Heather Webb and Jenny Ashcroft online to celebrate the launch of The Manhattan Girls on Wednesday, 17 August at 6pm. It’s free, but you have to register.
Images:
- Louise Brooks: Laura Loveday for Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
- An emergency hospital at Cape Funston, Kansas, 1920: Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine via Wikimedia (public domain)
- The 23 bus to Marylebone Station via Oxford St, London, 1924: Leonard Bentley for Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
- Charles Lindbergh taking off from Long Island in Spirit of St Louis, 1927: National Air and Space Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution (CC0 1.0)
- Marie Stopes, 1918: Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0)
- Josephine Baker in banana skirt from the Folies Bergère production Un Vent de Folie by Lucien Waléry: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Crowds gather outside the US Stock Exchange, 24 October 1929: Associated Press via Wikimedia (public domain)
