1920 Society (4)

Society

1920. The U.S. population reaches 105.7 million. Urban residents (54 million) for the first time exceed rural residents (51.5 million).

1920. The world population reaches 1.86 billion.

1920. Popular songs: "Avalon"; "Whispering'; "When My Baby Smiles at Me"; "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom time."

1920. Babe Ruth signs with the New York Yankees to begin a 14-year career as "Sultan of Swat." He sets a slugging average record of .847 in his first season with New York, hitting 54 home runs, batting.376, scoring 158 runs and making the Yankees the first team in any sport to draw more than a million spectators, nearly double the team's 1919 gate.

1920. The "Black Sox" scandal threatens to undermine the prestige and popularity of America's national pastime. Eight members of last year's Chicago White Sox baseball team are indicted in September for fraud in connection with last year's 5-to-3 World Series loss to Cincinnati.

1920. The National Football League (NFL) is organized. George Halas will make the Chicago Bears commercially viable in 1925 by hiring "Red" Grange, and revolutionize football in the 1930s by perfecting the T formation that will make the game a contest of speed and deception with increased use of the forward pass.

1920. The first Miss America beauty queen is crowned at Atlantic City, NJ, to begin a lasting tradition.

1920. Society (3)

Society

1920. A bomb explosion September 16 scars the JP Morgan bank building, kills 30, injures 200, and causes $2 million in property damage.

1920. The world's first radio broadcasting station goes on the air November 2 to give results of the Harding-Cox election. Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad has set up KDKA at East Pittsburgh but only about 5,000 Americans have radio receivers, mostly "cats-whisker" crystal sets.

1920. Outline of History by H.G. Wells intends to replace "narrow nationalist history by a general review of the human record." "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe," he says.

1920. National Prohibition of sales of alcoholic beverages in the United States goes into effect January 16. A mock funeral for "John Barleycorn" is held January 15 at Norfolk, Va., by evangelist William "Billy" Sunday, who has agitated for Prohibition but whose popularity now begins to fade.

1920. Prohibition booms sales of coffee, soft drinks, and ice cream sodas, but consumption of alcoholic beverages will continue through illegal sales and homemade "bathtub gin."

1920. Life Savers, Inc. has increased sales by packaging candy in resealable foil to preserve their flavor, placing nickel Life Savers next to the cash register at cigar stores and restaurants, and having the cashiers include nickels in every customer's change.

1920. Society (2)

Society

1920. The American civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is founded by social reformers who include Methodist minister Harry F. Ward, Clarence Drrow, Upton Sinclair, Jane addams, Helen Keller, Felix Frankfurter and socialist Norman Thomas. The FBI soon infiltrates the ACLU.

1920. Norman Thomas is a former clergyman who will staunchly oppose both communism and fascism but advocate such radical ideas as low-cost public housinjg, a 5-day work week, minimum wage laws, and the abolition of child labor. Congress will ultimately legislate them all. He will be a quadrennial Socialist party candidate for president from 1928 through 1948.

1920. World economies struggle to revive in the wake of the Great War. Demobilized soldiers find few job openings.

1920. Woman's suffrage is proclaimed in effect August 26, following Tennessee's ratification of the nineteenth amendment. Women voters help elect Harding.

1920. The League of Women Voters, founded by suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, will give impartial, in-depth information on candidates, platforms, and ballot issues.

1920. Society (1)

Society

1920. Russia's civil war continues as the Bolsheviks struggle to consolidate control of the country.

1920. British reinforcements have arrived in Ireland May 15 to support His Majesty's forces against attacks by Sinn Fein political militants who continue resistance.

1920. The Government of Ireland Act passed by Parliament December 23 gives Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland the right to elect separate parliaments of their own with each to retain representatives in the British Parliament at London.

1920. "America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy," says presidential hopeful Warren Harding. The handsome, genial, but colorless senator is nominated by the Republicans and wins the presidency.

1920. The League of Nations meets for the first time November 15 in its new headquarters at Geneva but its membership includes neither the U.S.S.R. nor the United States. The Senate has finally rejected U.S. membership March 19 in a victory for opponents led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts.

1920. Five men kill a factory guard and paymaster April 15 at South Braintree, Mass., and escape in a stolen motorcar with a steel box containing a payroll. Factory worker Nicola Sacco and a fish peddler Bartolomeo Vanzetti are picked up May 5 in a car that contains propaganda leaflets attacking the U.S. government and all other governments. They are arrested for the April 15 murder and robbery, and they are prosecuted as "Reds" by U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer.

To be continued.

1919. Literature

Literature

Demian. Hermann Hesse. German. 1919. Novel. Bildungsroman. Demian a visionary. Protagonist, Sinclair, seeks wisdom from him. Pognant statement of the terrors and torments of adolescence.

Java Head. Joseph Hergesheimer. American. 1919. Novel. China trade. Home of Salem retired captain. His Chinese wife commits suicide to escape a lustful neighbor.

The Moon and Sixpence. W. Somerset Maugham. British. 1919. Novel. Conventional London stockbroker deserts wife, family, and business to become a painter. Based on the life of Gauguin.

"The Pastoral Symphony." Andre Gide. French. 1919. Tale. Pastor adopts blind girl and seduces her. Her sight restored, she commits suicide.

"Tradition and the Individual Talent." T.S. Eliot. American/British. 1919. Essay. Poet can't write significant poetry without being steeped in the tradition. Avoid romantic, autobiographical writing. Concentrate on technique and impersonal, detached poetry.

Winesburg, Ohio. Sherwood Anderson. American. 1919. Novel/Stories. Twenty-three thematically related sketches and stories. Simple, realistic language. Tales of sterility and thwarted creativity. Narrative united by character of George Willard. A Bildungsroman about Willard's developing "wholeness."

The American Language. H.L. Mencken. American. 1919/48. Nonfiction. Differences between British, American languages in vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

1919 Society (4)

Society

1919. Captain Billy's Whiz Bang is launched at Minneapolis by former World War army captain Wilford H. Fawcett, who quickly turns his mimeographed off-color joke sheet into a 25-cent pocket-size monthly which his sons haul to local dealers on coaster wagons.

1919. Popular songs: "Swanee" by George Gershwin; "How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After they've Seen Pa-ree)"'; "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise"; "Let the Rest of the World Go By."

1919. Jack Dempsey wins the world heavyweight boxing championship July 4 by a third round knockout over champion Jess Willard at Toledo, Ohio. The "Manassa Mauler" will hold the crown until 1926.

1919. The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series, defeating the Chicago White Sox 5 games to 3 but heavy wagering on the underdog Reds raises suspicions.

1919. The pogo stick patented by U.S. inventor George B. Hansburg is a bouncing metal stick that thousands will ride in the 1920s.

1919. Grand Canyon National Park is established by act of Congress. The 673,575-acre park in Arizona includes the most spectacular part of the Colorado River's great 217-mile canyon.

1919. An Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting sale of alcoholic beverages anywhere in the United States is proclaimed in January to go into effect January 16, 1920.

1919. The Prohibition Enforcement Act (Volstead Act) passed over President Wilson's veto defines as "intoxicating" any beverage containing 0.5% alcohol or more.

1919. The Fleischmann Co. launches a national campaign to urge housewives to buy bakery bread instead of baking at home.

1919. Society (3)

Society

1919. A "Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes" by U.S. physicist Robert Goddard predicts the development of rockets that will break free of Earth's gravitational pull and reach the moon.

1919. The Treaty of Versailles obliges Germany to pay large reparations that include not only billions of dollars, francs, pounds, lire, etc., but also merchant ships and fishing ships plus large quantities of coal to be delivered in the next 10 years to France, Belgium and Italy.

1919. English economist John Maynard Keynes foresees that high reparations imposed on Germany will upset the world economy.

1919. German aircraft engineer Hugo Junkers will design the first all-metal airplane to fly successfully and will establish one of the first regular mail and passenger airlines in Europe.

1919. Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of relativity is confirmed May 29 by English astronomer Arthur Eddington who photographs a solar eclipse on the island of Principe off West Africa. Einstein has insisted that his equations be verified by empirical observation and has devised specific tests.

1919. Dial telephones are introduced November 8 by AT &T.

1919. "Gasoline Alley" by Chicago Tribune staff cartoonist Frank King capitalizes on America's growing fascination with the motorcar. It will be the first strip in which characters grow and age.