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Decade Of The 1920s Essay

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The Decade of the 1920s
Newspapers had once been the only mass communication & entertainment. The demand for new products that emerged in the 1920s created a new industry, advertising, which enticed buyers to purchase new products, and now that the radio had emerged, advertising was integrated into this media outlet . Radio shows like Amos n' Andy, became a nationwide hit. The advertising industry grew with the emerging industries of mass culture, especially radio and cinema. For the first time, from coast to coast, Americans experienced the same shows and used the same advertised products due to mass culture. The first commercial radio station aired in 1920 and broadcast music to a few thousand listeners. By the end of the decade, thirty-three …show more content…

Movies, novels, automobiles, and new dances like the Foxtrot and the Charleston influenced young people. Although contraceptives were still illegal in most states, the work of birth control advocates such as Margaret Sanger increased its acceptance during the 1920s. Fashion that set young people apart from other generations was the flapper fad, which was influenced by celebrities. Young women shocked the previous generation by wearing dresses hemmed at the knee, bobbing their hair, smoking cigarettes, and driving cars. Additionally, there were many religious issues arose during this decade. Division among Protestants reflected the tensions in society between the traditional values of rural areas and the modern city life. The evolving role of women, the Social Gospel movement, and science caused many Protestants to redefine their faith. Modernists took a historical and critical view of certain passages in the bible and believed they could accept Darwin's theory of evolution without abandoning their religious faith. Protestant preachers in rural areas condemned the modernists and taught that every word in the bible must be accepted as literally true. A key point in fundamentalist doctrine was that creationism explained the origin of all life. Fundamentalist blamed the liberal views of modernists for causing a decline in morals. Religious revivals continued as

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