Nearly one hundred years ago our world entered the decade fondly known as the “Roaring Twenties.”
The decade was a period of dramatic social and cultural change that shaped our modern world. It was the age of radio, flappers, prohibition, and baseball.
For the United States, most of the decade was a period of economic prosperity. It was an economic boom born out of a new mass-production economy.
Factories, that only years before were devoted to the American war effort in World War I, were converted to the mass-production of automobiles, telephones, kitchen appliances, and radios.
The mass production of the radio in the 1920s changed American pop culture forever. The nation’s first commercial radio broadcasts started in 1920.
During the decade, radio stations popped-up across the nation. For the first time, music, news, sports, and opinion could be spread across the nation instantly.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge gave the nation’s first presidential radio address.
Coolidge was a famous introvert, but because of power of radio, more people heard his voice than any person before in history.
Also during the 1920s, the far reaching nighttime airwaves of Nashville radio station WSM 650 AM introduced country music to much of Mississippi.
It is hard to underestimate the influence of those early country music broadcasts on our state.
Radio also allowed for the development of the 1920s most iconic trend – Flapper women. Flappers across the nation tuned their radios to another music style known as jazz. Flappers were probably America’s first counter-culture.
Flapper women were controversial because they wore bobbed hair, shorter dresses, and make-up. Flappers also popularize women smoking and drinking – especially the drinking of cocktails (although illegal under Prohibition). Unsurprisingly the older generations of Americans found these trends outrageous.
The 1920s culture was greatly influenced by the ratification of the 18th Amendment – commonly known as Prohibition. Bars and saloons were closed across the country.
The production and sell of alcohol was driven underground, where it was controlled by bootleggers, moonshiners, racketeers, and mobsters. It was a shadowy world where a fortune could be made. Crime rates skyrocketed and tax revenue plummeted.
The famous Chicago gangster Al Capone boosted that half the Chicago police force was on his payroll, allowing his vast bootlegging empire to go on nearly unabated.
Public support for Prohibition eventually soured, resulting in the ratification of the 21st Amendment which repealed the 18th Amendment – the only time in American history that an Amendment to the Constitution was repealed.
The new American prosperity of the 1920s also created the “Golden Age” of professional baseball. The emergence of sports pages in newspapers and radio broadcasts allowed people to easily follow their favorite team.
Increased personal income allowed more Americans to attend baseball games.
The game itself improved because factories began producing higher quality baseballs, gloves, and bats.
This exciting new era saw the rise of star players like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson.
America did not profit equally from the Roaring Twenties’ economy. Cities profited the most from the new economy, while rural areas were largely left behind.
Largely rural and agricultural Mississippi saw only modest economic improvement during the first part of the decade, but the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 devastated the state. The disaster was the most destructive river flood in American history.
The flood displaced much of the population of the Mississippi Delta. Homes, businesses, schools, and farms were destroyed.
The aftermath of the flood was a difficult rebuilding process in already one of the poorest regions in the nation.
Many of the displaced flood victims decided to relocate to northern industrial cities like St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit.
In the Pine Belt, the biggest development of the 1920s, was the opening of Hercules Powder Company. Hercules was a Delaware based manufacturer of chemicals.
The company bought 100 acres of land for a new factory in Hattiesburg; and in 1923, the new facility opened bringing hundreds of jobs to the area.
The facility originally took the abundance of left-over stumps from the local timber cuts and grinded them to extract rosin.
The rosin was then processed into numerous chemicals.
Like most longtime residents of south Mississippi, I remember the smoke pouring out the factory’s large smokestacks and the very distinctive smell it had. One older gentlemen once told me that the smell did not bother him because it was the “smell of jobs and money.”
Hattiesburg in the 1920s also saw the building of local landmarks: the Old Hattiesburg High School (1921), Hattiesburg City Hall (1923), and Saenger Theater (1929).
It boggles my mind that we are already two full decades into this “new” millennium, but here we are at the beginning of another 20s decade.
What happens in this next decade is unknowable, but the new decade will undoubtedly bring new challenges, new technologies, and new opportunities.
Keith Ball is a native of Petal and is a practicing attorney here in the Pine Belt.
