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Youth After Conflict
Youth After Conflict
by
Goodwin Watson
ASSOCIATION PRESS 347 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK 1947
Copyright, 1947, by the
International Committee of Young Men s Christian Associations.
Printed in the United States of America
To Pat
18 in 1950
OCT141947
INTRODUCTION
The general question raised by Dr. Watson s book is of especial
interest to one whose professional career has extended through our
country s last three wars. And my answer is much the same as his,
that it is not the war which principally influences youth coming to
maturity shortly after its close, but rather the general social situation
otherwise surrounding youth.
The first of the wars that I myself experienced was the Spanish-
American. This had hardly a ripple of influence on youth reaching
maturity during the five or ten years following that war. I was
teaching boys and young men in a Southern undergraduate college,
I do not recall the war as a factor in their interest or seriousness.
There was only one thing that it did for them. President McKinley
had appointed the Confederate Lieutenant General Joseph Wheeler
to be a Major General in the land forces of our Spanish-American
army. This act was taken as symbolizing the official reconciliation of
North and South and as such had wide influence throughout the South
and so probably on these young men. This was the period when the
South ceased to look backwards and began to look outward and
forward, and young people responded wholeheartedly.
World War I was a far more serious affair. When it opened, my
scene had changed to Teachers College, Columbia University, where
my work was principally with graduate students in education. But
certain lessons I believe can be drawn as bearing on Dr. Watson s
problem, definitely as concerns my own learning, less certainly as con
cerned my students. Two problems then mainly interested me, each
inherently contemplating the other and both bearing on the problem
of this book. One was that of educative method how to understand
and conceive the psychologic management of the young so that they
would best undergo full and proper education, including in particular
the character building effects. The other was the social aim of educa
tion how to manage conscious education so that it will best serve
society and civilization.
The first of these problems had of course begun long before the war
but it does so happen that my own contribution to it was made largely
during the four years of World War I, and one aspect of it was in
fluenced by the war itself. One phase of educative method is to con
sider the concomitant, or attendant, learnings, chiefly attitudes, which
are always being acquired whatever one is consciously doing. These
attendant learnings are of supreme importance in character building.
vn
viii Introduction
They had previously been little considered by teachers. I was led to
consider the problem, and eventually to conceive and name these
learnings, by Dean James E. Russell s interest in the war and its
possible lessons for our country.
Dean Russell had done his graduate work in Germany and had
written the authoritative English language book on German (prewar)
secondary education. He pointed out to us that the dual system of
education in use in Germany had prepared the upper class and the
lower class for different places in life but had equally trained both to
be loyal and obedient subjects. As he put it, the different subject-
matter contents led to different social goals, but the common method
made all alike in loyalty and obedience. My study of these points led
me to distinguish and value "concomitant learnings" and I so taught
my students.
As regards the second of the two problems that of a proper educa
tional system for democratic America the war affected the students
of the time in two ways. My advanced students took up, under my
direction, a study of German civilization and the mutual interactions
between civilization and educational system. They saw ( 1 ) how the
Prussian government fostered imperialistic designs by the use of
military power, and (2) how the Prussian school system had the
exact characteristics to support and uphold such a regime. We were
prepared, by contrast, to study the problem of democratic American
civilization and the appropriate system of education to foster it.
When we entered the war the term democracy became a watchword.
All the forces of publicity united to arouse and unify the American
people on this basis. A great wave of liberalism took hold of our
people in greater power, in the considered opinion of the writer, than
ever before or since. The height of this feeling was reached in the
early months of 1918. But when in the latter part of March, 1918,
the Germans made their last great effort and threatened for a while
to reach the English Channel and split the Allies, American attitude
hardened and from then on liberalism declined, slowly until Armistice
Day, rapidly then until after the 1920 election, steadily after that until
the great depression.
It was in January and February of 1918 that Teachers College saw
the strongest conscious interest in democracy of its whole career.
A chapel meeting heard an address on the subject. Later a mass
meeting was held in the Horace Mann auditorium in behalf of a World
Democracy Movement. The hall was filled to overflowing. The
student body committed itself to the movement. The chief result was
a Central Discussion Group to study the various problems of the
Introduction jx
World Democracy. That year the study was on the Report of the
British Labor Party just then issued. The next year study was
centered on the League of Nations ; the next on Industrial Democracy ;
the next on 1 lessons for the schools from the war.
The year 1920-21 saw the last of this effort. The decline of liber
alism, as stated above, had got in its work. From then until the
depression America was increasingly concerned with making money.
It became more and more difficult to interest students in public prob
lems. When the depression came, with the blow continually increas
ing in severity, the trend of interest was strongly reversed. More
Americans began to study social problems than ever before and college
classes were no longer difficult to interest.
What now about World War II? What effect is it having on the
thinking of those now at school ? The impression is that until the war
was over and the GI back in school, the effect of the war on student
thinking was small. After we had entered the war, there was some
increase of interest in the war cause, but nothing like to that developed
during World War I. The student interests observed were mainly
those arising from the non-war aspects of life.
With the GI now in college, there appears no question that they are
more serious than the other students. Why is this ? The answer seems
to be that the seriousness arises not so much from the war experiences
as such apart of course from those seriously maimed as from the
postponement of schooling and entrance into life.
But what about the youth who have not been in the army? What
effect is the war having on them ? The most probable answer seems
to be that the war as such, now that it is over, is not having much
effect at all ! What does concern them are the interests of life arising,
in the main, independently of the war.
The final conclusion seems then to support Dr. Watson s judgment,
that the war as such will have no great effect on the youth who enter
college and life from now on. Leaders of youth, therefore, need to
consider the deep currents of social change to which Dr. Watson
wisely directs attention.
William Heard Kilpatrick
July 9, 1947
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to many writers and publishers for permission to
use quoted passages :
To the Curtis Publishing Company for abstracts from the article
from the Ladies Home Journal entitled "Men Have Lost Their
Women" by M. F. Farnham and F. Lundberg, and for many other
brief quotations; to The Atlantic Monthly for a quotation from an
article by Cyril Falls entitled "A New Generation in Britain"; to
D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., for a quotation from The Young
Delinquent by Cyril Burt; to Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.,
for the quotation from Middletown by Robert S. and Helen Merrell
Lynd ; to Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., for a quotation from Three
Plays by George Bernard Shaw ; to Charles Scribner s Sons for the
excerpt from Mark Sullivan s Our Times; to The Macmillan
Company for the lines from Our Movie Made Children by H. J.
Forman ; to McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., for the tables from
Recent Social Trends in the United States; to Allen, Town and
Heath, Inc., for David Ewen s Music Comes to America; to Dodge
Publishing Company for the quotation from John Martin s America
Dancing; to the New Yorker for the quotation from their magazine;
to The Education Digest for the excerpt from an article by F. W.
Reeves entitled "Democratic Education in the Postwar Period" ; to
the American Association of University Woman for the quotation
from L. K. Frank s article, "Conserving Our Human Heritage,"
found in the Journal of American Association of University Women;
to the Viking Press, Inc., for the quotation from Shape of Books to
Come by J. D. Adams ; and to Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc.
for the quotation from THE REST OF YOUR LIFE by
Leo Cherne.
In addition to the above there are many other individuals,
periodicals, publishers, and organizations who have contributed
directly and indirectly to the content of this study. We wish this
acknowledgment to include them all and to express the hope that the
footnote citations from page to page have assigned the credit to whom
it belongs insofar as it is possible to do so.
The Author and Publisher
XI
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction, by William Heard Kilpatrick vii
CHAPTER I. Youth After the Civil War 1
Go West! Postwar delinquency. Postwar prosperity.
Postwar expansion of social services. Veteran employ
ment Expansion of schools. New educational agencies.
Higher education. Teachers* salaries. Cultural oppor
tunities. Advance of women. Race relations. Some
conclusions.
CHAPTER II. European Youth After World War I . . . . 19
I. Rejection of the authority of elders. 2. Rejection of
traditional morals. 3. Questioning of traditional reli
gion. 4. Demand for a new education. 5. Sex equality
and sex freedom. 6. Demand for economic and social
change. 7. The new internationalism. 8. Interest in
outdoor sports. 9. Pleasure-seeking. 10. Swifter tempo.
II. The new realism. Summary of description of
European youth.
CHAPTER III. American Youth After World War 1 48
The energies of youth. The charges against youth. The
postwar sex mores. Appearance. Manners. Amuse
ments. Popular songs. Smoking and drinking. Delin
quency. Tame youth. Why the excitement? The revolt
against authority. Aspiration toward equality. Political
attitudes. International attitudes. Demand for educa
tion. Religious outlook. Youth organizations. Is -
"postwar youth" a correct concept?
CHAPTER IV. The Aftereffects of War . . . . , 117
Wars speed technical advance. Wars encourage central
ization. Wars disrupt families. Wars provide full
employment Wars foster inflation. Wars separate the
generations. Wars affect character. Wars are followed
by a reaction of self-indulgence. Wars close and open
epochs. Wars disappoint the victors. Long-term
social changes.
xiii
XIV
Contents
CHAPTER V. The First Flowering of Modernism 127
The war an inadequate explanation. All things new.
The modern outlook expressed in book titles. Modern
technology. The automobile. The airplane. The movies.
The radio. Urbanization. Immigration, Education,
Group thinking. The new psychology. The American
literary renaissance. Modern poetry. Modern drama.
Modern art. Publications. The influence of writers.
Modern music. The modern dance. The modern
woman. Sex education, divorce, birth control. Modern
ism in religion. International attitudes. Economic
attitudes. Race attitudes. Crime and corruption.
Prohibition. Cigarettes. Recreation. Conclusion.
CHAPTER VI. Youth s World in the 1950 s 195
Predictions: I. Research. II. Technology, III. Eco
nomics. IV. Leisure. V. Education. VI. Health.
VII. Politics. VIII. Organized labor. IX. Race.
X. International. XI. Family and sex relations.
XII. The arts. XIII. Spiritual values. XIV. The
unknown.
CHAPTER VII. The New Postwar Youth 284
Their new epoch. Their health. Their emotional devel
opment Their schooling. Their work Their leisure.
Their family relations. Their sex attitudes. Their
social attitudes. Their spiritual values.
Index 299
List of Tables
TABLE PAGE
1 New York boys and girls placed for adoption or
employment with families in the West 2
2 Cigarette consumption in the United States 71
3 Number of juvenile delinquency cases per 1,000 children
of juvenile court age 73
4 Juvenile delinquency in Allegheny County 74
5 Production of iron ore per man-year of labor 137
6 Horsepower used on farms in the United States 137
7 Per cent of United States population in metropolitan zones 146
8 Expenditure jor public elementary and secondary schools 147
9 Articles on birth control in NEW YORK TIMES Index 174
10 Magazine articles on labor relations. 183
11 Index oj homicide rate in five cities (Baltimore, Buffalo,
Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis ) 189
12 Cities with public relations 193
13 Changes in items considered wrong, 1923 to 1943 222
14 Replies from girls on smoking and drinking 223
15 Life expectancy at age 18.... 236
xv
CHAPTER I
YOUTH AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
GO WEST !
"To the historian," runs an editorial in the New York Times of
March 16, 1865 (page 6, column 5), "one of the remarkable features
of the Civil War in America will be the fact that during all its
absorbing excitement, its immense sacrifices, and its fearful evils and
passions, the great work of civilization in the Free States of the
West went steadily on." Even contemporary journalists saw
the military war as a temporary handicap in the much larger war
for the physical conquest of the continent. The discovery of gold in
California and the building of transcontinental railroads had
possessed the imagination of young people for a decade before the
fighting began at Fort Sumter and young people with no other post
war plans would follow Horace Greeley s famous advice, "Go west,
young man, and grow up with the country."
While the War Between the States morq nearly filled the horizon
of all citizens than had been true of earlier wars, it is necessary to
remember that total war as we know it is a very recent development.
During the 1860 s, especially in the North, business expanded, agri
culture prospered, schools were extended, and life went forward, in
many ways not closely related to the progress of the armies. Battle
news was important news, but it was not the all-absorbing theme it
has recently been in our newspapers and radio programs. Hence,
in the North, there was no such sharp break in the! continuity of
prewar, wartime, and postwar activities. Because lives of young
people were less upset by the war, the postwar adjustment was less
noticeable. The South, of course, presented a very different problem.
One civilization had come to an end, and it would be generations
before a New South could emerge from the chaos. Our study in
this chapter focuses upon the North because experience there was
more like that of the victorious America in 1918 and in 1945.
The West had been the answer to youth problems before the war,
and the effect of war s end was only to accelerate a trend already
2 Youth After Conflict
^a;M
well along. The reports of the Children s Aid Society, the leading
youth-serving organization of New York at the time, show that
from 1855 to 1863 this Society sent about 800 youngsters, "paupers
and vagabonds," each year from New York streets to live with farm
families in the help-hungry West. In 1864, the number of boys and
girls placed for adoption or employment in the West rose to 1,000.
By war s end it was over 1,200 a year, and within a decade after the
Civil War the numbers rose to nearly 4,000 a year. A typical news
item reports :
The Children s Aid Society is unremitting in its good work of
sending large parties- of homeless and destitute children to the
West. Mr. H. Freidgen, one of their agents, left the city yesterday
afternoon with a company of fifty boys and girls, many of them
of tender age, and a number of larger boys who had been utterly
friendless and without resources when they applied to the Society
for help and seemed quite contented with leaving the city. Several
of the number were from the Newsboys Lodging House. 1
TABLE 1. NEW YORK BOYS AND GIRLS PLACED FOR ADOPTION OR
EMPLOYMENT WITH FAMILIES IN THE WEST
Data from Annual Reports of Children s Aid Society
Year Number Year Number
1855 863 1865 1,235
1856 936 1866 1,450
1857 742 1867 1,664
1858 733 1868 1,943
1859 779 1869 2,263
1860 814 1870 2,757
1861 804 1871 3,386
1862 884 1872 3,462
1863 791 1873 3,701
1864 1,034 1874 3,985
The challenge of the West was a fairly direct continuation of the
wartime challenge. A premium was placed upon youth. There were
hardships to be overcome. It would take drive, ingenuity, brawn,
and courage to win in the struggle. Patriotic values were felt to be
bound up in the campaign for the conquest of the continent as truly
as in the war, American youth thus had at hand a social, moral,
physical, and emotional equivalent for war. There was no need for
youngsters to feel passed by because they had been too young to
enlist. They could still enlist in the main fight.
*New York Times, (February 1, 1860), page 8, column 1.
Youth after the Civil War 3
POSTWAR DELINQUENCY
Delinquency was a problem of deep concern in eastern cities during
the Civil War, but the causes lay in the cultural dislocations asso
ciated with a rush of immigration, rather than in the war itself.
The official spokesmen of religion seem to have been quite as much
worried about the youth of Civil War times as any of their successors
are about contemporary jitterbugs and bobby-soxers. The report
of the Board of Metropolitan Policy for 1864 (published in the New
York Times, January 5, 1865) quotes the Reverend D. Silliman Ives
as follows:
. . . For the last ten years I have been a close observer of what has
passed among the rising generation, in this great metropolis, and
I cannot suppress the humiliating conviction that even pagan
Rome, in the corrupt age of Augustus, never witnessed a more
rapid and frightful declension in morals, nor witnessed among
certain, classes of the young a more utter disregard of honor, of
truth and piety, and even the commonest decencies of life.
Mr. Charles Loring Brace, then secretary of the Children s Aid
Society, reported that "the worst effect of the times is shown in the
moral conditions of young girls. More of them are floating about
the city without the protection of responsible care than ever before,
probably due to the absence of so many fathers/ The New York
Sun of December 26, 1865, recounts a horrible tale of a man found
guilty of "conducting a gambling house for children." , His pupils,
ranging from nine to fifteen years of age, were taught the techniques.
A New York Times editorial of June 29, 1865, takes off from the
crowding of city courts and prisons. "When New York annually
incarcerates one out of every hundred of her population in a penal
cell, is it not time that the prevention of crime as well as its
punishment were looked after? * The editorial does not, however,
blame the war. "Of the 116 felons convicted this month, probably
100 or more were bred in those nurseries of crime the tenement
houses of this city. , .brought up in the poisoned atmosphere of a
crowded quarter; polluted by vile associates crowded with them,
perhaps under the same roof."
The concern about growing delinquency can easily be demonstrated ;
whether delinquency was actually rising in war years and postwar
years is more doubtful. Statistics on delinquency are still very
difficult to interpret, and in 1865 they were less well standardized
than they are today. A New York Times editorial of February 26,
1865, is headed, "Decrease of Juvenile Crime An Encouraging
4 Youth After Conflict
Sign," and summarizes figures collected by the Children s Aid
Society. From 1855 to 1863 the population of New 1 York increased
"at least 40 per cent/* but during the, same period "commitments
for vagrancy decreased from 3,376 in 1855 to 2,998 in 1863;
commitments for petit larceny decreased from 3,299 to 3,019 ; and
pocket-picking commitments decreased 25 per cent. . . . These comprise
the principal off enses that are committed by minors, though they are
not committed by them exclusively. The increase occasioned by the
orphcmage and other unfavorable effects of the war has been very
slight. All commitments to city prisons of those under twenty years
of age amounted in 1860 to 4,975 ; in 1863, to 4,998."
The Children s Aid Society, m 1870, published data on female
vagrants in all city prisons, showing a drastic decline from 5,880 in
1860 to 671 in 1870, despite population increases. Arrests of men
for vagrancy declined from 2,709 in 1860 to 1,140 in 1870. Clearly,
arrest for vagrancy was becoming less frequent. But data on arrests
for all causes of girls under twenty showed a decline from 3,132 in
1863 to 1,993 in 1870.
All of these figures would cast doubt on the charge that war,
which! deprives youth, of paternal attention and inflames passions,
necessarily results in increased delinquency. Changing policies in
the police department and in the courts have a great deal to do with
the variation in statistics. Even more important, however, is the
fact that in New York, as in most northern cities, the war brought
increased income to many poor homes.
POSTWAR PROSPERITY
The New York Sun (March 24, 1865) writes : "There never was
a time in the history of New York when business prosperity was
more general The 150,000 men whom it has sent; into* the army,
the hundreds of millions of dollars that it has poured into the national
treasury, the loss of the rich southern trade, have not shakea [New
York s] stability and today it stands more prosperous in every way
than at the outbreak of the rebellion/ The Children s Aid Society
explained, "Hard as the times were for the business classes, they
were not without material benefit to the poor. Large numbers of
workingmen were then in the army, sending back their pay regularly.
In many cases it was the first regular income the families had
received in years. The wives and children of volunteers also
received an allowance from the city."
Termination of the wartime/ allowances brought some problems,
but these did not prove too difficult to surmount in the general
Youth ajter the Civil War 5
increase of northern industrial activity which followed the end of
the Civil War. A New York Sun editorial of July 9, 1865, was head
lined, "Soldiers Widows and Orphans They Must Be Provided
For." The editorial pointed out that city funds were practically
exhausted, that some 32,000 persons had been assisted, that 10,000
persons were still dependent, with many in desperate need. The last
payday dispensation had been on the average only $2.00 a person,
which had to last a two-week period. Private orphanages were set up
to offer assistance before pensions were provided. A New York Times
item "of January 22, 1865, reports the visit to P. T. Barnum s Museum
of Colonel Young and forty of his boys from an institution supported
by private charity and devoted to "the support and education of
boys who have lost their fathers in? the war." The boys, according
to the press account, "went through a number of military evolutions
with remarkable precision." We found no other reference to military
training of youth as an outgrowth of the war.
Prosperity of the business classes during the war was accompanied
by some inflation, which cut heavily into real wages. An editorial
(New York Sun, July 26, 1865) put the cost of living for a family
of six (two parents, four children) at $9.19 in the prewar period,
1855-1860. By 1864 this had doubled, and was set at $19.13. The
editor optimistically anticipated that workmen s wages would keep
pace. Another editorial (New York Sun, October 31, 1865) warned
working girls that while work was then plentiful and wages high,
it would be well to- save for harder/ times that might follow.
Rarely was there an indication of foreboding about the economic
future. The New York Sun (September 22, 1865}^rayided one ex
ception. Its editorial was headed, "Prepare for Dull Times," and- -
carried the subheads, "Public Debt $27 Hundred Million; War
Prosperity Artificial ; Predicts Eventual Depression."
The rule, however, was buoyant if not extravagant optimism.
Work seemed unlimited. Editorials deplored the slight falling off
of European immigrants during the war and anticipated increased
inflow at war s end with an eagerness resembling that which motiv
ated the immigrants themselves.
The war had held back many needed industrial developments, so
that victory was the signal for a release of new efforts. Money was
free and pleasures abounded. A characteristic note of the period is a
review (New York Sun, September 10, 1865) of the current season
in the theatre. "There is every indication that the season of fashion
and amusement which has just opened will be unusually brilliant."
6 Youth Ajter Conflict
Every performance was sold out, quality appeared to be improving,
and an "association of managers" was substituting "co-operation**
for the old-time cutthroat competition.
POSTWAR EXPANSION OF SOCIAL SERVICES
The expansive spirit of wartime prosperity fostered increase in
all types of investments, including those for serving youth. The
main agency, the Children s Aid Society, had opened twelve indus
trial schools (these will be described later) in 1865, and twenty by
1869. They operated two lodginghouses (one for "newsboys * and
one for girls) in 1865, but six in 1869. They conducted no night
schools or reading rooms for young people in 1865, but by 1869 had
inaugurated eight night schools and five reading rooms. Their bud
get and program apparently increased all during the war ($39,000 in
1863; $54,000 in 1864), reached a peak about four years after the
war ended, and then declined somewhat.
An editorial in the New York Times for September 21, 1866, dis
cusses the project of a large Y.M.C.A. building for New York City,
The aim of the Association is stated in the words of its president,
William E. Dodge, Jr., as "avoiding all side issues or distracting
questions, the single aim of all exertion has been how best to reach
with kindly sympathy the great number of young men in our city
and to elevate them morally, socially, and physically to a true Chris
tian manhood." The editorial reviews "the vicious system on which
respectable boardinghouses are kept," and deplores the fact that
only saloons extend a free and cordial welcome to the thousands of
young men from the country or from foreign countries. A building
is planned "to include everything necessary ,to make a real home
for young men."
The Y.M.C.A. at that time had had fourteen years of service in
New York City. Its activities included a Bible Class, a Literary
Society, and a Medical Students Christian Union. Its principal
postwar projects, aside from- the new building, were campaigns
against obscene literature and "to eliminate female waiters in
concert saloons."
The Y.M.C.A. building program and the expansion of the facilities
of the Children s Aid Society are but two special cases of a general
trend toward vigorous constructive activity. We shall refer later
to expansion of public schools. Even private housing boomed. An
editorial in the New York Sun for July 10, 1865, advocates "cheap
and healthful houses" to replace the overcrowded tenements.
Youth after the Civil War 7
VETERAN EMPLOYMENT
The problem of reabsorbing into civilian pursuits the men of the
armed forces is general after every war. Despite the opportunities
in the West, veteran unemployment was the subject of several
editorials in New York papers of 1865. A Bureau of Employment
for Discharged and Disabled Soldiers was set up at 35 Chambers
Street. A New York Sun editorial (May 27, 1865) urged a policy
of veteran preference :
Seventy returned soldiers have lately been employed in the Post
Office of this City, and the Collector has also engaged a consider
able number for duties belonging to this office. This is very well,
so far as it goes, and is worthy of emulation by other Government
officials who have occasion to employ assistants. But unless the
policy extends to our businessmen, who have situations to offer,
the good to be accomplished in this way will be comparatively
little. The disbandment of our two leading armies, for which
preparations are already making, will cause a large number of
soldiers to seek civil employment in this City, and unless some
special efforts are made in their behalf by patriotic employers they
will certainly fare badly in procuring situations. It is not
expected, of course, that businessmen will displace good
employees for worse, but they might give the soldiers the
preference, other things being equal.
A few months later (August 9, 1865) the Sun published with
admonitions a sad letter from a soldier who had been refused work,
while others with more political "pull" got the jobs. Some indication
of the general concern is found in the necessity for an editorial
(June 17, 1865) warning against spurious fund-raising agencies
which purported to be assisting soldiers to obtain employment.
One of the most interesting and illuminating discussions is found
in an editorial of July 4, 1865, which the New York Sun headed,
"A Word to Young Men." The attitude toward women who had
taken jobs under the pressure of war necessity was quite different
from that prevalent in most discussions of the problem today. The
editorial first points out that termination of war contracts by
government is throwing many women out of jobs, then comments:
We see no means of relieving this excess of female labor so long
as men persist in filling situations better adapted- to the capacity
of women, working for barely enough wages to meet frugal
expenses, when, by entering the splendid field open to enterprise
8 Youth After Conflict
in the West and South, they might soon be on the road to a
competency. It is really inexplicable, that stout, ablebodied men
should remain in the city in situations that give them a bare living,
with no prospect of improvement in the future, when, by boldly
striking out from the metropolitan eddy, their pecuniary condition
would be so materially enhanced. While New York is an excellent
place of residence for those who are fortunate as to possess a
competency, it is a notorious fact that it is also one of the worst
places in the United States for a man to live in who is ambitious
to succeed, and at the same time dependent upon his daily labor.
Young men who have nothing} to bind them to the city would
therefore do much better to seek more advantageous fields for
their industry and enterprise, in localities! where they would have
an equal start in the race of life and have a chance to grow up
with the new country as it is developed. Have the young men of
New York of the class indicated no pluck? Have they not enough
confidence in themselves to strike out into a new channel? And
have -they not enough manhood to scorn a contest with poor
women for employment, when the latter have no means of making
other provision for themselves?
The writer advocated no "back-to-the-home" movement. The
reconstruction tasks of the South and the pioneer possibilities of
the West afforded, it seemed to him, such glorious challenges to
young men that they deserved no sympathy at all in their
competition for city white-collar jobs.
EXPANSION OF SCHOOLS
A characteristic postwar change is the improvement of schools.
Perhaps the fact that the country has suddenly realized its
dependence on the courage, strength, and intelligence of boys still
in their teens helps to drive home the obligation. Perhaps the loss
of so many in the flower of young manhood strengthens deter
mination to do more for the younger brothers and sisters. In any
case, the period after (the Civil War set a pattern which we shall
find recurring after other wars. It was a period of rapid expansion
of public provisions for education.
A report of the New 1 York City Board of Education, prepared in
1868 by Richard L. Larremore, its President,- reviewed the growth
in numbers but deplored the lag in providing funds :
One remarkable and immediate effect of the war in its early years
was the rapid increase of school attendance, consequent no doubt
Youth after the Civil War 9
on the general pressure exerted by high prices upon those who
had been in moderate circumstances. The schools had continued
to add to their numbers from 500 to 4,000 or 5,000 pupils each
year until 1862, when the average attendance suddenly rose from
about 60,000 to not quite 75,000, or nearly 25 per cent in a single
year. The resolution of the Board to keep down expenses, even
under such circumstances, is plainly enough indicated by the fact
the schools were forced through the year with an increase of only
$58,000 or about 4 per cent advance on the entire expenditures
of 1861, which were less by $14,000 than even those of 1860.
By 1868 average attendance was up to 86,000, an increase of 60
per cent over the prewar levels of 1860.
An address by Mr. McLean, President of the Board of Education,
forms the basis for an editorial in the New York Times of February
9, 1865:
"The schools are/ says Mr. McLean, "with a few exceptions in
grammar departments, crowded to repletion, and in some parts
of the city hundreds of primary, children have been refused
admission to the schools during the past year for want of room.
These refusals were almost invariably in districts inhabited
by -the poorer classes of people, who have no means of educating
their people except through the public schools. This should not
be. The doors of the schoolhouse should be open to all. No
man in this great city should have the excuse that his child could
not be educated because it was refused admission to a public
school. The Comptroller s budget has one large item of
expenditure for protection against crime ; the best way/ to obviate
it is to build schoolhouses. The one acts by coercion, the other
by prevention. This board has gone to the utmost of its resources
in furnishing school facilities. It is limited in its expenditures
by arbitrary laws, and has been so limited since its organization.*
In another portion of his address he alludes to a nearly related
subject :
One other matter I shall allude to which deserves the earnest
attention of this board. It is that of the vagrant children who are
roaming about our streets, without any guide or protection from
ignorance and crime. Some means should be provided by which
they can be saved from a life of infamy. The subject is one
emminently proper for this board -to consider. It is your duty
to carefully examine the subject and to suggest a remedy for
the evil
10 Youth After Conflict
He reports that in 1864 there were about 200,000 children enrolled
in schools, while at least 50,000 were not being reached at all. (It
is interesting to compare the $10 per pupil cost of those schools with
figures today in New York City, which run fifteen times as high).
Another Times editorial a year later (March 15, 1866) again
stresses the need for better provision :
New York has always been proud of her public schools, the
immense and elegant buildings, the vast machinery, the crowd
of teachers, and the course of instruction pursued. Her Free
Academy a kind of college for the people and her advanced
Schools for Girls, like the well-known one in Twelfth Street,
have been for years -the objects of the congratulations of our
citizens. In no city in the world are so many children taught
gratuitously, the number last year amounting .to 216,955, or
12,474 more than in the previous year. Of these, however, the
average number attending each day is only 91,502.
Another report, covering all New York State, finds 336,000
children who have not been in school attendance for any portion
of the year and concludes ominously : "It is only, we fear, too true,
that with its large immigrant population, New York is today raising,
feeding, and breeding a vast populaton of citizens entirely beyond
the pale and influence of any sort of common school -training/
(New York Times, February 12, 1865.)
In 1868, Superintendent of Schools S. S. Randall reported to the
Board of Education: "It has been estimated that 15,000 children, at
least, are daily and nightly roaming our city streets, wholly destitute
of either intellectual or moral culture attending no school and
ripening with fearful rapidity for the prison, the poorhouse, or -the
gallows!"
NEW EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES
A new institution was developed during this period better -to meet
the educational needs of young people. This was the industrial
school. It reflected the demand of industry for trained factory
workers and the demand of young people for an education more
interesting and more practical than that of the traditional grammar
school. We shall find in the educational advance of most postwar
periods a similar fresh demand for something more practical in
education and for better provisions to serve the neglected young
people.
Youth after the Civil War 11
One of the first principles of the Children s Aid Society was to
help the poor to help themselves. During the Civil War the Society
opened its first industrial school for boys. Mr. Brace, the Secretary,
planned to teach the regular school curriculum in the morning, to
serve some simple food (bread and soup sometimes only bread) at
noon, and to teach some mechanical trade in the afternoon. Car
pentry was introduced, and it proved a great drawing card. The
first class was described as "wild little street Arabs." In another
school, soon opened for girls, the innovation was teaching domestic
science in the afternoon. Girls were trained for household servants,
where demand has constantly been greater than supply. The
children, according to Mr. Brace s report, "learn how to spell, read,
write, sew, and tell the truth learn how and why to prefer virtue
to vice, truth to falsehood. They emigrate to the West. They
graduate, so to speak, into our public schools. 1
By 1868, Superintendent of Schools S. S. Randall reported
18,000 children under instruction in various charitable institutions,
most of them industrial schools. "This class of school," he
wrote, "seems at present to offer the only practicable agency by
which this most desirable and necessary [reclamation] can be accom
plished By aid of the industrial machinery provided for their use,
the children will speedily be enabled to secure a competency for
themselves and become useful and intelligent productive members
of society."
If is characteristic of educational history that one "innovation, like
the industrial school, becomes the home of others. Thus the first
Mothers Meetings in New York City seem to have been 1 those held
in 1863 for the parents of children in the industrial schools.
Another innovation, following right! after the Civil War, was the
evening high school. The New York Times, on September 30, 1866,
reported the official opening of the first such institution :
The Board of Education will tomorrow evening formally open
an evening high school, in Grammar School Building No. 35 on
Thirteenth Street near Sixth Avenue. The public is invited
to attend the opening exercises.
The design of the Board, in establishing this school, is to afford
the young men of the City facilities for obtaining, free of cost, a
higher education than that given in the ordinary evening schools,
with the view to increase their intelligence and usefulness as
citizens, and -enable them to acquire the greatest practical skill in
their several vocations. The course of study has been arranged
specially to meet the wants of those engaged in mechanical and
12 Youth After Conflict
commercial pursuits, and will comprehend, besides the usual
branches of an English education, practical mathematics,
(including surveying arid navigation), bookkeeping, and
mechanical, architectural, and freehand drawing. French,
German, and Spanish will be taught when classes are formed
sufficiently large to warrant the employment of special instructors
for them.
It is proposed -to? conduct this school in a liberal spirit, so as to
afford every student the opportunity to pursue, at his own option,
any of the branches taught in the institution, provided he attends
the class or classes with which he is connected with regularity
and punctuality.
Special^ pains will be taken to provide for all who attend the
school instruction in the history of the country and in political
science, embracing the fundamental principles and requirements
of constitutional and municipal law it being deemed essential
that our common school system should accomplish more than has
hitherto been found practicable to fit the youth of the great
metropolis to discharge aright the duties which devolve upon
them as American citizens, and thus to strengthen the foundations
of our republican institutions
This school is designed particularly for those young men whose
daily avocations do not admit of their attendance upon the day
schools and for those who, having mastered the branches taught
in the ordinary evening schools, desire to prosecute their studies
still further. The young men of the City will, doubtless, appre
ciate this attention to their wants, and we do not doubt .but
the Board of Education will find it necessary to open still more
of these evening high schools.
As in the industrial schools and in the new educational institutions
being proposed for New York in 1946, the emphasis is that so
characteristic of postwar reforms: more practical vocational
training, and more concern with citizenship.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Concern for higher education was also increasing, although the
great expansion did not come until well into the twentieth century.
New York City had its Free Academy (later, City College), but
the New York Times, February 27, 1865, devotes a column of
editorial to a plea for state assistance to scientific and professional
education;
Youth after the Civil War 13
It is freely acknowledged by members of all the "learned
professions" that the great majority of their number are very
imperfectly educated and totally unfit to practice their
professions. ... It is high time that the State interfered to raise
this standard ere our professional men become objects of reproach
abroad as well as at home. In no way can this be so easily and
cheaply done as by establishing free collegiate institutions where
severe preliminary examinations are held before matriculation,
and strict and impartial ones before graduation.
In the various branches of sciences, we have a few deeply
scientific men, but the majority are far, very far below what the
spirit of our republican institutions require. If we mean to
preserve the Republic in a condition to show the great advantages
of a free government of -the people, we must keep the standard
of education so high that other nations may look; upon us with
respect ; and we must, also, keep the people educated not allow
a thorough education to exist among the few rich only.
Even more applicable to the modern situation seem some re
proaches cast by a New York Times editorial (August 20, 1865)
upon the arts colleges. The presidents and professors of our
colleges are charged with manifesting too little concern for public
education, for studying systems and modes of instruction, textbooks,
discipline, and kindred topics. The writer looks over the proceed
ings of the Harrisburg meeting of the National Teachers 5 Convention
and finds among all the distinguished sponsors and speakers only
one. college professor Professor Green of Brown University. He
argues that college faculties need the contact with the life of the
common school quite as much as the humbler members of the
profession need guidance from the learned doctors :
If we could prevail upon some of these latter dignitaries to avail
themselves of the skill which almost invariably awakens an
undying thirst for knowledge in the bosom of the common school
scholar, and makes him, notwithstanding his limited range of
study, a bright, practical, useful citizen, we should less seldom be
called to deplore the apparently stupefying influence of the college
curriculum, which is so often completed with no other evidence
of benefit received than the addition of a sheepskin to the original
donkey.
TEACHERS SALARIES
Teachers salaries usually lag during a period of inflation, and it
is thus no suprise to read complaints along this line. In 1866 the
annual report of the Board of Education reported a minimum
14 Youth After Conflict
wage of $400 a year and an average of $500 for female teachers.
(It will be recalled that living costs for a family and annual wartime
wages for skilled workmen ran about $1,000 a year.) A petition
from the male assistant teachers (New York Times, December 6,
1866) sets forth that they receive "but between $700 and $800 per
annum, scarcely so much as journeymen mechanics receive." .
In answer it was pointed out that teachers had very poor
preparation. Girls who didn t go out into jobs took two years of
"supplementary" grades" above the grammar school and then
sought to teach. In 1868, Mr. Larremore, then President of the
Board of Education, reported that a voluntary Saturday normal
school was being conducted, but that a daily normal school was
badly needed.
In the fervor for better schools, many other steps were -taken.
One was a provision increasing centralized control, permitting the
Board of Education to step in and take charge of any school without,
as previously, awaiting a request from the trustees of the local ward.
Another was to plan schools for Negroes directly under the Board
of Education, rather than under the rather negligent local trustees.
A resolution adopted July 22, 1865, provided for a bylaw to abolish
corporal punishment.
There were many indications that the variousl lines of educational
advance rooted in -the sense of new opportunity which arose at the
close of the war. This viewpoint is brought out in a New York
Times editorial of August 14, 1865. Commenting on the proposal
to form at Harrisburg a National Association of Superintendents
of Public Schools, the writer contends :
There has been entirely too little attention paid to educational
reforms. Public instructors have been content to plod along after
*he old landmarks, and parents have appeared too willing to
sanction the policy. But the country is now starting out upon
a new era of progress and improvement, and we can no longer
afford to value a system of instruction as a numismatist does a
coin, according to its age.
This movement, following closely upon the various teachers
conventions that have been recently held, indicates that the public
mind has now turned from the war and centered upon the cause of
education with renewed interest.
CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES
The expansion of cultural interests in this "new era" which
seemed to be opening up included many agencies in addition -to
Youth after the Civil War 15
schools. Reference has already been made to the unusually
brilliant theatrical season introduced, in 1865. The same year saw
the inauguration of "The New York Association for the Advance
ment of Science and Art" (March 29, 1865). The 1866 list of
New York amusements included P. T. Barnum s American
Museum, Tony Pastor s Opera House, Wallach s Theatre, Niblo s
Garden, The Theatre Francaise, The New York Theatre, The
Broadway Theatre, The Fifth Avenue Opera House, Fox s Old
Bowery Theatre, the San Francisco Minstrels, and the New York
Circus. A prophetic editorial in the New York Sun (November
3, 1866) asks, "Why doesn t someone build a music house with
5,000 capacity for public concerts?" The writer calculates that at
fifty cents each someone could make a fortune while providing
"Music for Millions."
Education often looked askance at much of the available
entertainment A report by Thomas F. Harrison, Assistant
Superintendent of Schools in New York in 1868, refers to the
harmful effect on youth of "demoniac influences, immo-ral pictures,
showy posters at every corner, advertising, gaudily tinted and too
frequently immodest spectacles," as well as the baneful "trashy
stories/ It would seem almost as if he had been thinking of the
movies of the early 1920 s. He recommends as a positive
contribution the establishment of school libraries, then an
innovation. On May 27, 1867, an editorial in the New York Sun
gave vigonous support to the proposal for a free public library
in New York.
ADVANCE OF WOMEN
Every war, by taking the men out of the community, seems to
result in increased opportunities for women. A persistent postwar
theme is the readjustment when the men return.
The discussion above of employment opportunities for veterans
referred to ione editorial defending women s right to the jobs they
had been doing. Another (New York Sun, February 1, 1867)
headed "Employment for Women" argued that during the war
women had proved their competence in many vocations formerly
reserved for men only. The adjustment being made by a ruthless
young industrialism when servicemen returned to compete for jobs
was to keep women on the job but to cut their wage. One example
of rank injustice was cited from the then unorganized garment
industry. Women worked double the hours required of men and
were given only 25 percent of a man s wage.
16 Youth After Conflict
Another editorial in the same paper later that year (Jtily 31,
1867) calls attention to 50,000 girls making, on the average, only
$5.00 a week. "There is no amusement for them no recreation
or pleasure." The wonder is, according to the writer, that more
do not join the 5,000 prostitutes already alleged to be operating
in New York.
That same year there met at Cooper Union in New York a group
of civic-minded educators concerned to provide better opportunities
for the higher education of women. They had in mind the need
for an institution something like the Free Academy 4 for Boys. The
Reverend Dr. Crosby, in presenting the case, castigated the prewar
finishing schools as follows (New York Times, March 24, 1867) :
Our women are fast becoming butterflies for want of a true
training. Most of our female schools are fashionable hothouses,
to encourage the growth of listlessness, affectation and
extravagances. Society is made artificial; the laws of God are
despised and all things set topsy-turvy; wives lord it over their
husbands and daughters over their parents ; wisdom is driven into
the corner and folly wears the crown. I trace nine-tenths of the
flippancy and falsehood of modern society to the mockery of an
education which the daughters of the land receive.
The preceding fall, the Times had reviewed Emily Davies book,
The Higher Education of Women, which advocated equal
professional opportunities for the two sexes. The fight for equality
of educational opportunity was only begun in the years after the
Civil War ; the fruits did not appear in large measure until after the
First World War.
RACE RELATIONS
The effect of the Civil War on the status of -the Negro is a topic
which would warrant a large volume of discussion. The sympathy
engendered in the North by Abolitionist movements continued to
some extent after the war. The "Freedmen s Aid Society" was
organized to give expression to benevolent interest in providing
opportunity for education for young Negroes. Missionaries and
educators were among the carpetbaggers.
When the American Institute of Instruction held its first postwar
session at New Haven on August 9, 1865, with about a thousand
teachers present, the central theme was: "What duties does the
return of peace bring to the friends of education?" The answer
was the obligation to provide for the Freedmen. Letters were read
Youth after the Civil War \j
from southern governors requesting aid in setting up public school
systems. A debate ensued which reminds one of the more recent
discussions on how we can re-educate Germans and Japanese. The
recommendation of a Professor Basset on this occasion was that
Negro teachers be appointed, since the Negro pupils would have
more confidence in people of their own race. A letter from
General Howard was read, pointing out that "the whites also need
much real effort on their behalf. I scarcely ever found a white
child that could read, in passing through Georgia and South
Carolina." He reported that "more than 200,000 people, old and
young, in the insurrectionary states, have learned to- read in the last
three years/
A New York Times editorial of September 6, 1865 echoed this
concern for the "poor whites" :
There is some danger that the next generation of Negroes in the
South may be more intelligent and better educated -than the great
mass of the whites. So much public attention and effort are
devoted to the former, and the latter seem left entirely to their
own resources (which are scanty at best) that such a result
seems by no means impossible. The blacks themselves, moreover,
seem to be far more thoroughly alive to the value of mental
culture than the poor class of southern whites. They are showing
a most admirable and praiseworthy interest in the schools
provided for them and are likely to profit by them very thoroughly.
It was proposed (New York Times,, October 5, 1865) that the
successful experiment with industrial schools in New York be
transplanted to the southern hills.
New York itself seems not to have had a wholly easy time in the
matter of race relations. No struggles like the bitter ones between
the Ku Klux Klan and the Yankees and Negroes in the South
occurred, but there were evidences of a problem still unsolved.
Mr. Brace of the Children s Aid Society, in an annual report, speaks
of "race riots/ which "were the first dreadful revelations to many
of our people of the existence among us of a great ignorant,
irresponsible class who were growing up here without any permanent
interest in the welfare of the community/ (Might have been
Detroit in 1943.) He goes on to say:
The testimony in regard to the riots is to the effect that in every
crowd attacking houses or torturing Negroes were a large number
of lads and young men. These sackers of Houses, and murderers
of the innocent are merely street children grown up. They are
boys whose only home has been the corner grogshop, whose wits,
18 Youth After Conflict
have been sharpened by the incessant struggle for existence in
the streets, while their animal passions have been without control
or restraint; boys who have never known affection and seldom
heard a word of sympathy. *
SOME CONCLUSIONS
The first conclusion one reaches after a study of the life of the
youth in the period immediately following the Civil War is that
"youth" had not at that time emerged as a group to be given separate
consideration. Youth were people. They were workers, pioneers,
settlers, and citizens. Only in the great cities were neglected
adolescents considered as a group needing some special attention.
The second conclusion is that the period after the Civil War was
experienced as hopeful and promising for young people. Youth
was in demand, and there was always more work to be done than
there were available workers. The country had a sense of being
young. It was a young man s world. The atmosphere was
fundamentally different from that today, when seniority struggles
for security, while boys and girls wonder whether there will be any
place for them when they leave school.
A third conclusion is that the postwar period of the lS60 s and
1870 s was characterized by extraordinary interest in the expansion
of educational opportunities. New public schools, new evening
schools, new colleges, and new industrial schools under private
auspices appeared.
A fourth conclusion is that in the North the war itself was only a
minor factor among those which set the tone of life for young
people in the months after ; Appomattox. The opening of the West
and the rapid rise of capitalist industrialism were the basic factors.
Special problems were caused by the flood of immigrants from
Europe. Under the impact of such mighty forces, the after-rever
berations of a brief war were quickly obscured.
Finally, it should be noted that a study 1 of the social consequences
of a war is as out of time in 1865 as is the study of "youth." The
development of the social sciences have led us today to look for
kinds of connections which had no place in the thought of the Civil
War period. Wars were recognized -to be bound up with military
events, politics, and international affairs. Even today it is a rare
historian who reports the consequences of a war for the life of an
ordinary teen-age boy or girl.
2 The Crusade for Children 1853-1927, A review of child life in New York
during 73 years. (N. Y. Children s Aid Society, 1928.) pp. 21-24.
CHAPTER II
EUROPEAN YOUTH AFTER WORLD WAR I.
A legacy of the First World War in almost every combatant
nation was a generation of youth which viewed itself as new and
different. "Look at the daughter and mother in an English home,"
wrote Milton R. Stauffer 1 a few years after the Armistice,
"gazing at each other physically across three feet of dinner table,
but intellectually and spiritually across the deepest and widest
chasm that has ever separated two generations." Cloudesley
Brereton, 2 in an article on postwar youth says, "Every teacher
will agree that the war has left an indelible mark on the mind
and temperament of practically every child who lived through it.
From a physiological and mental standpoint one might also
describe the present generation as a slightly shell-shocked one."
Cyril Falls, 3 in an attempt to tell Americans what British youth
of the early 1920 y s were like, wrote :
Today we see a great mass of young people in a curious plight.
They are worse educated than their fathers, but they are more
sophisticated. They have little joy in life, but they are addicted
to pleasure. They are contemptuous of the older ideals but
they have been unable to form new ones of their own. They
assume very often an air of arrogance which is no more than
the bravado of unhappiness. Above all, they are in uncer
tainty, without definite goal. The past seems to them madness,
the future a blank. The present is bad enough, but it is here
and there may be nothing better to take its place. ...The
tendency among a large section, which has no thought for
such matters, is to seek from the present all that it can be
made to yield.
From France at this time came characterizations which would
have been equally applicable to the youth of America or Britain.
*M. R. Stauffer, Youth and Renaissance Movements (Council of Christian
Associations, 1923).
a CkmdesIey Brereton, "The Present Generation" Contemporary Review
(1927), 132:321-27.
Cyril Falls, "A New Generation in Britain," Atlantic Monthly (1923),
131 :259-66.
19
20 Youth After Conflict
"Generation que rien ne relie a cefle qui 1 a precedee, pas meme la
guerre, pas meme la victoire!" (A generation which has no
connection with the preceding one, not even the war, not even the
victory!), exclaims Father P. P. Gillet. * Youth dislike the conven
tional and are attracted to everything modern or up to date, says Alix,
and adds, "Quelle joie pour un gar^on de vingt ans de ne plus croire
les livres et les oracles qu ont fabriques ses anciens, et d aller jusqu a
1 extreme dans ses pensees et dans ses actes !" (What a satisfaction
for a youth of twenty no longer to believe in the books or oracles of
his ancestors, and to carry his thoughts and actions to any extreme !)
Xavier de Lignac, in his book on French youth, 5 notes that "Ceux
qui ont grandi pendant les hostilites ont decouvert la vie d une faQon
qui ne ressemble pas a celle de leurs aines. . . .Ce qui toujours nous
separera d eux c est cet interminable espace de la guerre." (Those
who have grown up during the fighting have become aware of life in
a fashion quite different from that of their elders. . . .What always
separates us from them is the infinite gap of the war.) Pichot,
writing on "The soul of youth" in a magazine especially devoted to
the views of the war generation, says, * "La jeunesse, elle est impa
tience, intemperance, parfois revolte; rebelle, par reflexe, a Tordre,
au commandement. Elle n aime pas le- passe." (Youth is impatient,
intemperate, sometimes revolutionary ; it instinctively rebels at orders
and commands. It has no love for the past.) "It is no ordinary
generation," says another writer in the same publication. 7 Youth s
sense of a fresh start in a new world is reflected in the statement by
True, 8 "Us compteront regenerer le commerce, Tindustrie, la
colonisation, la famille, et 1 Etat." (They expect to regenerate
business, industry, colonization, the famiily and the State.)
In Germany, youth movements had begun even before the war.
Young people were becoming aware of their own generation as
somehow different from those that had appeared on earth before.
The feeling of difference was deepened by the defeat in the war.
The first reaction of German youth was not to seek a Hitler but
to seek their own salvation as youth. The young Wandervoegel
(Wanderbirds) hiked over the German countryside seeking
* Quoted by Roland Alix: La Nouvelle Jeunesse (Paris: Libraire Valois,
1930), 1,88 p. The original is quoted as well as translated because the emotional
flavor is, better conveyed in French.
s Xavier de Lignac, La France Attend sa Jeunesse (Paris, 1938).
* Henri Pichot, "L/arne des jeunes" La Revue des V wants \ Organe des
Generations de la Guerre, Annee I, No. 9 (1927), 519-26.
^Emmanuel Bourcier, "Pour les Pupilles de la Nation," La Revue des
V wants . Organe des Generations de la Guerre, Annee I, No. 4 (1927), 623-29.
8 Gonzacjue True, Une Crisp Intellectuelle : Les Jeunes Gens d Aujourd hui
(Paris, 1938), 50 p.
European Youth After World War I 21
renewal in a romantic union with nature. Nowhere else in
Europe did a youth movement so strong and spontaneous arise
as that which sprang up in the first years of the Weimar
republic.
The sense of difference between the prewar and postwar
generations was at its maximum in the U.S.S.R. There the
world s most gigantic revolution had put the sanction of the
state behind rejection of the old authorities in politics, economics,
morals and religion. Youth occupied a pedestal in the early
days of the Soviet Union, for in youth was the hope of the
Revolution. Old schoolmasters and priests had been discarded
the young were challenged to pioneer over a new way.
The youth of Europe, like the students of Latin America and
of China, were breaking old ties and becoming conscious of
themselves as a group and as a social force. The following
sections will explore in more detail eleven specific aspects of
this significant emergence.
1. REJECTION OF THE AUTHORITY OF ELDE RS
One of the most common complaints about European youth
in the early 1920 s was that they no longer had any respect for
their elders. Because the authoritarian pattern had been better
preserved in Europe than in America before the World War, the
breakdown of parental prestige was especially noticeable. Lucie
Delaru-Mardrus devotes a book entitled Up to Date " to a contrast
between Parisian youth of 1900 and those arising after the First
World War.
De notre temps, les enfants avaient le respect de leurs ^parents.
Les fils demandaient conseil a leur pere, les filles obeissaient
a leur mere. Les jeunes filles de bonne famille restaient a la
maison, et quand elles sortaient, etaient accompagnees par
mainan ou la bonne. ...Et, quand elles etaient fiancees, un
chaperon etait toujours la pour ne pas laisser seuls^les futurs
epoux. Les gardens, une fois leurs etudes terminees, succe-
daient a papa dans sa charge, epousaient une belle dot, et tout
allait bien. (In our day, children had respect for their parents.
Sons sought advice from their fathers and daughters obeyed
their mothers. Girls of good family remained at home; when
they went out they were accompanied by mama or the maid.
* Lucie Delaru-Mardrus, Up to Date: Essai sur la Jeunesse FranQaise Con-
temporaine (Paris, 1936), 122 j>.
22 Youth After Conflict
And when they became engaged, a chaperone was always
present so that the future married couple would not be left
alone. Boys, when they had finished their studies, followed in
the duties of the father, married a fine dowry, and all
went well.)
This rose-colored picture of the proper past is contrasted with
the "up-to-date" youth of Paris :
Maintenant, les fils, des seize ans, agissent seuls de leur bord,
vont a leurs sports, a leurs dancings, a leurs flirts, sans que
jamais les parents en soient informes. Leur insolence, leur
froideur, tout ce mepris qu ils montrent a leurs ascendants,
n a plus de mesure. . . .Un beau soir ils rentrent diner en nous
annonqant du bout des dents qu ils seront maries dans quinze
jours. Et le plus inoui, le plus affolant, c est que les filles se
comportent exactement de la meme fagon. Bachelieres comme
leurs freres sont bacheliers, elles n attendent meme pas d etre
liberees du lycee pour sortir meme la nuit avec des gardens,
rentrent a des quatre et cinq heures du matin, revenant Dieu
salt d ou, ne donnant aucune explication, fument et boivent
des cocktails avec des camarades invites sans demander avis,
donnent aussi dans le sport et se marient sans plus d aver-
tissement que leurs freres, avec des petits foutriquets qu on
n a jamais vus, quand elles ne tournent pas tout a fait mal.
(Now, the boys from age sixteen on run things their own way,
go out for sport, dancing, or flirtation without ever letting
their parents know about it. Their insolence, their indifference,
their disdain for their elders, have no bounds. . . . Some fine
evening they come out at dinner with the announcement that
they are to be married in two weeks. And the most unheard
of, the most maddening thing is that girls behave in exactly the
same way. Bachelor girls, like their bachelor brothers, do not
wait even to be graduated from the Lycee before they go out
at night with boys, getting in around four or five in the
morning, returning from God knows where, offering no
explanation. They smoke and drink cocktails with comrades
invited without parents permission; they, too, join in sports;
they marry, with no more notice than their brothers give,
some little upstart one has never seen, if, indeed, they do not
turn out wholly bad.)
The same idea is expressed more concisely by Chouquet in an
article on postwar youth : 10
10 Jean Chauquet "Les Plus Jeunes." La Revue des V wants : Organe des
Generations de la Guerre, Annee II, No. 4 (1928), 795-801.
European Youth After World War I 23
L esprit de famille se perd avec 1 alienation de 1 autorite des
parents et les concessions incessantes de ceux-ci en matiere de
liberte et d argent. (Family spirit is lost with alienation of
the authority of parents and constant concessions which they
must make in matters of money and freedom.)
Another French writer, Henry Bordeaux, n repeats the thesis
that since the war parents have more conflicts with their
children and children less respect for their parents.
Brereton s" article on British youth reports "a marked
change in the nature of parental authority. The parent of today,
especially in the upper classes, has lost a lot of his parental pre
rogatives. Parental respect is a rapidly decreasing quantity.
Father and mother are lucky if they are addressed as nothing
worse than Top and Mom or Old Bean In the working
classes there has been the same decline of parental authority
and one not infrequently hears of parents who have no control
over their children."
"A bewildered parent," writing anonymously in the Living Age, 1S
observes that not merely parental authority but "all reliance of
the young on the wisdom and experience hitherto associated
with age" is being discarded. "They are not insolently derided ;
what is much worse, they are completely ignored."
Another writer on British youth of the early 1920*3 finds this
revolt potentially wholesome : u
Much is said about the rising generation and its alleged
flippancy and irresponsibility. But insofar as it really differs
from any other generation it is perhaps truest to say that it
has the virtues and the vices of this condition. At its best, it
is open-minded and at the worst^ empty-headed. But at least
its head has been emptied of many evils, and there is in it a
potential hospitality for better things.
In Germany the protest against authority found expression in
the Wandervoegel the early youth movement. Here is one
of their typical statements of protest :
11 Henry Bordeaux, La Generation Montante, Jeunes Gens et Jeunes Filles.
Societe de Conferences. Monacco. No. 41, 192S. 44 p.
15 A bewildered parent, "Modern Youth and Its Way," Living Age (1920),
307-45-50.
14 "The New Generation," Living Age (1921), 311:359-62.
24 Youth After Conflict
We felt stifled and unfree in the atmosphere of the home circle,
where we were never taken seriously, were compelled to con
form to the whims of our elders. . . . We will no more stand the
buffoon at a desk who compelled us to cramp body and mind
bending- over books. Who gave them the right to call us
names, insult us, hammer into us their mechanical nonsense?
We will no more go back to the prison they call the school !
Alcohol, tobacco, and cosmetics were taboo. Youth believed in
natural fitness and in discipline but self-discipline.
The conflict between youth and family authority has been
studied with special care in Germany and the results take us
substantially beyond the rather superficial comments of postwar
journalism. One of the masterpieces of social science is the vol
ume Autoritat und FamiUe (Authority and Family) prepared
by the Institute for Social Research. The premises of this
study were first that the problem of authority is the most vital
contemporary issue and second, that family life is the matrix
in which attitudes toward authority are molded. One of the
remarkable facts about this research project is that the findings
led the authors to predict correctly the course of Hitler s Nazi
movement and enabled these social scientists to escape from
Germany in time to salvage some of the endowment of their
Institute. On the basis of the attitudes toward authority being
formed in working-class homes, they foresaw that the labor
movement in Germany would not stand up against the rise of
the Nazi authoritarians.
One of the studies in this comprehensive survey deals
especially with attitudes within the German youth movements."
Jungmann s report shows that the rejection of the authority of
the patriarchal family had gone far among middle-class youth
before the First World War. The Wandervogel (Wanderbird)
organization began in 1898 as a spontaneous movement of youth
out of their traditional homes and formal schools into a free fel
lowship of the open road. The youth leader took the place of
parents but was far more intensely loved and idealized. One
of the principal dynamic elements in the Wandervogel move
ment was escape from bondage to parents. "Die Triebkraft war
ganz und gar das ungimstige Verhaltnis puberiler hoherer
15 Autoritat und Familte, Institut fur Sozial Forschung (Paris- Librairie
Felix AJcan, 1936) , 947 p.
18 Fritz Jungmann, "Autoritat und Sexualmoral in der Freien Burgerlichen
JugendHbewegung." Autoritat und Familie, 669-705.
European Youth After World War I 25
Schuler zu ihrem Elternhaus und zur Schule." " (The motiva
tion was simply and wholly the unfavorable relationship of
adolescent pupils to their homes and schools.) But this was well
under way before 1914. "Gerade die Geschichte der Jugend-
bewegung widerlegt die billige Auskunft, die Kluft zwischen
den Generationem sei eine Folge des Krieges und der Revolution.
Alle Phonomene des Generationenkampfs sind in der Jugend-
bewegung vor dem Krieg vorhanden gewesen, von der kom-
promisslerischen Distanzierung im Wandervogel bis zum
erbitterten und gelegentlich auch physischen Kampf im Anfang*
kreis. Der Krieg hat nur die friiher vorhandene Generations-
spannung quantitativ verallgemeinert und intensiv gesteigert." 1S
(The history of the youth movement clearly contradicts the easy
assumption that the rift between the generations was an out
growth of the war and the revolution. All the characteristics
of conflict between generations were present in the youth move
ment before the war, from the Wandervogel s aloofness to the
bitter struggle, even physical at times, which arose in the
[left-wing] circles of the "Beginning" movement. The war
merely brought a quantitative increase, a wider spread and an
intensification of the pre-existent tension between older and
younger generations.) This thesis accords with our own finding
that the characteristics of postwar youth should be sought not
primarily in reaction against the war, but in the accentuation of
trends already apparent before the war.
The revolt of postwar youth in Russia against the authority
of parents and teachers was emphasized by the Revolution. The
Communist Manifesto of 1848 had predicted that "The bourgeois
family will vanish with the vanishing of capital" and added, "Do
you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children
by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty," The neces
sities of the years immediately after 1917 gave youth an
unprecedented independence. The young responded to the
challenge of the new regime, the old were caught in the habits
of the past. Communist authority not ony set children against
their parents and teachers but even over their parents and teach
ers. Pupils, in the beginning, could be better trusted than
teachers to purge the curriculum of old bourgeois ideas. . It was
not uncommon to find a member of the Young Comsomols who
p. 679.
Ibid., p. 681.
26 Youth After Conflict
became a hero for his own age group because he exposed the
counterrevolutionary machinations or sentiments of his own
parents. Seldom before in the history of any land was so great
a sanction given to the rejection of parental authority. Some
foreigners even gathered the impression that all children were
henceforth to be brought up in state institutions rather than
in families.
Within ten or a dozen years after the war the tide had turned
and the Soviet regime was moving toward reinforcing the
authority of parents and teachers. The immediate postwar
attitudes in Russia, however, represented in most extreme form
a world-wide reaction of youth against traditional authority.
Clearly there was far more involved than just the aftereffects
of war.
An interesting sidelight on the causes of the world-wide
challenge to adult authority is offered in an article by Paul
Gautier 20 on French youth. "After 1900, what with the auto
mobile, the little electric motor, and eventually the radio, science
penetrated the domestic hearth and an all-round technician
became indispensable in every household. Both French bourgeois
fathers and English aristocratic fathers tended to regard
machines as dirty. Not so their sons. ...They had been born
during the mechanical era and looked upon the machine as a
tame domestic animal. ... With good grace or ill, the fathers
abdicated." Doubtless many a son discovered his father s
fallability first in connection with some of the newer technical
and mechanical developments of the time.
2. REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL MORALS
Along with the charge of disrespect for parents went the fear
that young people of the 1920 7 s were losing the moral standards
of the prewar world. It is easy to document in any period a
concern by the older generation about the morals of youth.
Adults who have settled into comfortable acquiescence with the
approved standards of conduct probably forget their own
iconoclastic impulses of adolescence. Perhaps their worries
about the younger generation are motivated a little by repressed
ideas of what they themselves would like to do if they had again
the energies of youth.
20 Paul Gautier, "Young France Today: Two Interpretations," Living Age
(1927), 333:1005-10.
European Youth Ajter World War I 27
The criticisms of youth s morals during- the 1920 s reached a
point far above this chronic level of disapproval. Something was
happening in Europe, as in America, to give adults the sense that
youth were off on a new and dangerous path. Delinquency
appeared to be increasing. "Youth," says Brereton n of English
conditions, "have renounced high ideals of generosity and self-
sacrifice, and having jettisoned all conventions and codes are
now boxing the compass in their efforts to steer by the will-o -
the-wisp of instinct alone." French writers of the time refer to
the cynicism and materialism of youth as well as their readiness
to flout convention.
Not uncommonly the moral revolt was defended. Edward
Cecil 22 apparently believed that it was time someone exposed
the shoddiness of Victorian virtue. "First of all," he writes, "it
is being extensively asserted by old women of both sexes that
the youth of this country is immoral. What, of course, is really
happening is that the youth of this country is quite determined
to destroy the old-fashioned immorality which was decked out
in the clothes of respectability." Canon Wood also sees behind
the superficial irreverence an honest spirit of inquiry : *
. . .Behind their unabashed goings on is a sincerity and a lack
of pretence which Victorians never achieved. Beneath their
irreverence is often a deep spirit of inquiry. Their cosmetics
and their carelessness often cover a heart very sensitive to
their neighbour s woes. And their flippancy is frequently a
camouflage to hide a wistful and inarticulate desire to know
if there is anything worth having in religion.
Sometimes the critics of youth seem more disturbed by
manners than by morals. Daisy Ashford in a magazine article *
writes, "I think the age that produced the Girl Guides and the
Boy Scouts cannot be accused of a youth without ideals and
discipline, and we may feel hopeful that an improvement in
manners will shortly show itself when one remembers that part
of the law of both these bodies is that a Scout (Guide) should
always be courteous."
The study of German youth by the Institute of Social Research
shows that the spokesmen for the various youth movements were
22 Edward Cecil, "The Rights of Youth," English Review (1920), 31:542-46.
23 E. S. Wood, (Reverend Canon), The Citizen of Tomorrow (London:
Ernest Bonn, Ltd., 1929). /<rt AX --,-
24 Daisy Ashford, "Not Guilty," Living Age (1920), 307:45-50.
28 Youth After Conflict
highly idealistic. In rejecting the morality of his home and
school the German youth did not feel that he was giving
unbridled rein to his impulses, but rather that he was responding
to a higher morality.
In the Soviet Union a stern "proletarian morality" replaced
"Christian-feudal morality," "bourgeois morality," and what
Engels had called "loose advanced moralities." Communist
youth rejected traditional ethics as class-ethics, designed to
fortify and sustain the power of an exploiting group. They did
not, however, move in the direction of licentious indulgence.
The code of the Pioneers and the Young Comsomols was very
demanding almost ascetic. Alcohol, tobacco, even cosmetics,
were abjured in those early days of the Revolution. Young
people were challenged to accept tremendous responsibilities.
"Shock troops" of young men and women volunteered to go
into the most difficult situations and to work unsparingly at the
task of building up their new society. Even in the capitalist
world where the new Bolshevist experiment was viewed with the
greatest suspicion, there was grudging admission that postwar
Russian youth had found a "cause" which carried them far
beyond an absorption in gratifying personal appetites.
3. QUESTIONING OF TRADITIONAL RELIGION
Youth movements after the First World War arose primarily
outside the churches, and expressed a protest against traditional
religious forms. Edward Cecil notes that British youth show
"a wholesale disregard of Christianity" but he thinks that is
because "people have grown tired of the false representation of
Christianity which is given to them in the accredited channels
of Christian teaching." 25 Brereton also sees a positive gain in
the new religious outlook. "It would... be a great mistake to
regard the present generation as irreligious. Certainly they are
more tolerant : whether their tolerance takes the form of a good-
4 humoured indifference towards religion, or, in the case of the
more thoughtful, of seeing good in more than one religion." 28
Alix 27 goes further and finds the postwar generation of French
intellectuals more religious than their predecessors. He recog
nizes that they want to discuss all beliefs, accepting none merely
as authority, and that their interest is in an active rather than
a contemplative religion.
25 r*- *t
Cecil, op. cit.
"Breretoe, op+ cit.
27 AHx, op. dt.
European Youth After World War I 29
These and numerous other expressions by adults of opinions
about the religious life of youth must be regarded with some
skepticism. No comparative studies were made. There are
always those who believe youth is now seeing the Light, and
those who believe youth now has lost the true Faith. The one
consistent emphasis in all reports is, however, an intensification
of the demand characteristic of young people at all times, to
decide these matters for themselves on the basis of what they
conceive to be their own inner standards of truth and value. As
the clergy in all warring nations began to repent of their
chauvinism and to denounce the error of war, it was natural that
young people should question the prewar religious teachings.
Something was admittedly wrong. Youth felt themselves to be
pioneering toward a truer, better interpretation of religion.
Now, a generation later, we can look back and ask ourselves
what changes were wrought by this postwar generation so
impressed with its own religious iconoclasm. In Russia, clearly,
the changes were tremendous. Antireligious propaganda suc
ceeded so well that now the persecution can be relaxed without
fear that the church will ever regain anything like its prewar
influence. In Germany the various churches each set up their
own "youth movement" but by 1930 it was clear that the
strength of youth was not in any of the traditional religious
groups, but in the socialist youth who were materialists or in
the Nazis who were neo-pagans. It is important to note that
these major religious changes took place only in countries that
were defeated and that passed through revolutions. It is very
doubtful whether the religious outlook of British churches or
French villages altered significantly in the quarter century, 1914 to
1939. The changes that did occur might better be put down to
general advance of enlightenment plus the influence of some
world-wide theological movements (Barthianism, for example)
rather than to direct conse quences of the war. It is probable that
the war helped to undermine the prevailing nineteenth century
faith in progress, and so laid the foundation for some of the
neo-orthodoxy and crisis theology.
4. DEMAND FOR A NEW EDUCATION
A British writer has said that every major war has been
followed in England by an educational reform. A fresh sense
of dependence upon youth leads to a renewed concern to give
youth a chance at education. Dissatisfaction with conditions in
30 Youth After Conflict
the world points to a revision of what is taught in schools. The
changes that are introduced in education represent a fair
measure of the effort of the society to rid itself of the evils
of the past.
The "youth movement" in Great Britain (as in the United
States) took the form of a movement for youth education rather
than a movement by youth to educate itself. The Education Act
of 1918 removed children from the labor market and made four
teen the actual minimum age for leaving school. Before the
First World War it was common practice in both rural and
urban centers for half the children to be at work before reaching
the age of fourteen. The Act of 1918 went further and staked
out a claim for youth education up to the age of eighteen. Day
continuation schools were established by the Fisher Act. .The
bill provided for voluntary part-time attendance at school,
during working hours, for young people up to the age of eighteen.
Interest in extending schooling was furthered also by unem
ployment which began to be important in Britain as early
as 1920.
The close of the war sent thousands of young men whose
education had been interrupted by the war back to college.
In the (London) Nation for 1920, a writer describes 4 * the
upsurge of interest in education. "Our old universities are
crammed to overflowing. As though smitten by a wild desire,
youth swarms to those ancient seats of learning In Cambridge
we read that the number of undergraduates has risen 100 per
cent since last term In Oxford the crowds are such that there
is no more housing room for undergraduates there than f6r
agricutural laborers in the country."
Another great educational development which followed World
War I in England was the expansion of workers education.
The Workers Education Association in 1920-21 was conducting
293 tutorial classes, enrolling 6,820 students, and another 500
one-year classes with nearly 20,000 students. These classes
were all organized democratically; the students decided on the
subjects they wished to study and had the right to select their
teacher. Most of the courses were non vocational, dealing with
economics, social problems, political philosophy, literature,
music, and biology. Stanley High 29 reported, "The young
28 "The Young Idea," Nation, London (1920), 26:639-40.
* Stanley High, The Revolt of Youth (New York: Abington Press, 1923),
Ch. II.
European Youth After World War I 31
workingmen of England are revealing a faith in a liberal educa
tion as the road over which they may find a way to a new
world order."
It was in Russia, after the Revolution of 1917, that the most
radical changes took place in education. Schools became the
agency for developing a new type of citizen for the new kind
of society. Democratic planning was undertaken in the school
to prepare for democratic planning of the economic order.
Schools were linked directly with productive enterprise and
wherever possible schools and shop exercises were incorporated
in the work of the community. Educational opportunity was
extended by subsidies to good students so they might stay on
at school and be paid while studying. Preference was given to
children from working-class homes. World history was re
written to show a Marxist interpretation. By the 193 Ts the
pendulum had begun to swing back toward some of the older
educational values (national patriotism, adult control, prescribed
curricula 5 etc.). But Russian education immediately after their
Revolution illustrated in extreme form trends that were apparent
all over Europe.
In Germany the Weimar Republic fostered some of the best
experimental schools the "progressive" movement in education
has ever known. Some were child-centered, free, romantic, and
very much in the spirit of Rousseau s Emtte. At one school, near
Hamburg, boys found themselves free to play all day if they
wished. For some days none came into a classroom. After a
week or two, however, the program of "nothing but sport" palled.
Groups gathered around teachers and demanded something inter
esting to do. Various projects were proposed and some were
taken up with keen enthusiasm. The lesson of the emptiness
of a life that is all play was thus taught without moralizing and
in a way that was possible only because the usual rules
were abandoned.
Other German schools developed other new approaches to
education. Hikes and excursions were very common and some
of the values of the outdoor summer camp were incorporated in
the new schools. The Karl Marx Schule in Berlin launched a
different emphasis an attempt to make working-class youth
aware of the social context of education. These various
experimental schools in Germany represented, however, only
a minority.
In France the formal structure of education with its centralized
control for the whole nation changed very little after World
32 Youth After Conflict
War I. There were changes in the attitudes of young people
but these did not become reflected in institutional procedures.
Several French writers comment on the demand of youth for
a more practical education. "They disdain the purely intellec
tual/ wrote D Agathon, 80 "and they view intelligence as a force
for better living and better action. Alix a found "the practical is
preferred over the intellectual. . . .In -the lycees the study of living
languages attracts a larger number of students than those courses
which have a purely cultural value. . . ^School subjects are viewed
from the standpoint of what they contribute to earning money."
Father Gillet criticizes youth for neglect of the Greek and Latin
humanities, but Alix responds, "II travaille, il travaille pour
gagner de Targent, pour jouir de cet argent. Le motif est bas/
dites-vous, et quel idealisme! Mais il travaille et il reussit."
(He works, he works to make money, to enjoy that money.
The motive is low/ you say, and what idealism 1 But he works,
and he succeeds.) Bordeaux 82 finds youth "not interested in
lectures, ideas, and theories, but in the performances of tennis
stars and the newest gadgets for automobiles. Getting money
has most attraction. Youth, as a result of the war, -is concerned
with the immediate and practical, not given to much thought
about distant horizons."
Youth s critical attitude toward nationalistic ideals in educa
tion aroused both alarm and defense. Gautier 83 writes on this
point: "Pitilessly they [the youth] take the measure of the great
men of yesterday and of today. Their iconoclastic fury bears
witness not only to their youthfulness, but to their dislike of
false celebrity and the trappings of false grandeur. ...Eager,
violent and frequently unjust in their destruction, the young
people of today are none the less carrying on a useful work of
reassessment a necessary revision of values/
This critical approach did not result in the emergence of
French statesmen, during the interwar period, whose stature
rose above their predecessors. The complaint of Van Bunnen in
one of a series of essays prepared under the auspices of the
Palais de Justice de Bruxelles in 1914 but published much later
seems well-grounded. 3 * "Unfortunately, nothing is changed, and
^D Agathon (pseud, for Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde), Les Jeunes
Gens d Aujourd hm (Paris, 1919).
^Alix, op. cit.
M Bordeaux, op. cit.
** Gautier, op. cit.
G. t VaB Bttrmen, "Tendances: Enquete sur la Jeunesse, la Guerre, et Notre
* Les Conferences du Jean Barreau (1933), p. 8-21. .
European Youth After World War I 33
in spite of the terrible lesson of 1918, the world seems to be
falling again into the same mistakes. . . /Patriotism: what crimes
are committed in thy name! Educators continue to try to im
press patriotism upon youth, and to describe the great battles of
history lest youth should fail to be sufficiently patriotic."
One other comment frequently found among writers on youth
education in France after the First World War, concerns their
superficial disregard of the old masters and the traditional disci
plines of preparation. Delaru-Mardrus * waxed almost bitter
about the pretensions of youth.
Nous avions, nous, le respect et Tadmiration de nos maitres. . . .
A present, plus de maitres que d eleves. Us ont encore du lait
au bout du nez qu ils puolient deja des livres, exposent des
tableaux, se lancent dans le chant avant d avoir rien appris,
et pretendent, sans aucun bagage artistique, prendre partout
la premiere place et nous mettre au revers, nous qui avons
travaille des quinze et vingt ans avant d etre tout a fait surs
de notre metier." (We had respect and admiration for our
teachers. Now there are more teachers than pupils. They
still have milk at the ends of their noses when they are pub
lishing books, exhibiting pictures, and joining in the chorus
before having learned anything. Without any artistic equip
ment they everywhere make claim to the front seats, leaving
behind those of us who have labored fifteen or twenty years
for complete mastery of our medium.)
Accent on youth is again evident in France today. The Maquis
were young, the Resistance movement largely a youth under
taking. We may expect soon again to hear the complaint that
the youthful usurpers lack the painstaking discipline which is
so treasured an asset of the experienced.
5. SEX EQUALITY AND SEX FREEDOM
A vitally important change in the culture of Europe and
America dates from about the time of the First World War.
The age-old dominance of men was effectively modified by a rise
of women to new positions of equality in education, occupations,
love-making and politics. The trend away from Victorian mores
began before the war but was hastened by wartime labor shortages
which gave women opportunities to demonstrate competence in
new fields. The "suffragette" movement provoked ridicule in
s Delarti-Mardrus, op. di.
34 Youth After Conflict
England as in America, but in both lands women eventually
attained the vote. Revolutions gave the franchise to women in
Russia and in Germany. The loss of men during the war had
two consequences: first, not enough men survived to marry the
women of that generation ; second, there were not enough men
to do the work men had previously done.
Dorothy Hyson, discussing careers for women, 38 recalls that
Tor four years women did men s peacetime work. There was
not time to ask questions. There was not time to realize that
this substitution of labour was involving a revolution which even
the suffragettes could hardly have foreseen. A new generation
of women have inherited ideas from an atmosphere in which
their mothers were forced to undertake all forms of state service."
Olive Wheeler, also writing of events in England, w calls
special attention to the increase in number of co-educational
schools. The substitution of co-education for separate schools
accompanied the revolutions in Russia and Germany, although
in Germany this trend was limited (except in a few outstanding
progressive schools) to the elementary schools.
French public opinion was resistant to the equalitarian trend,
but that did not stop its advance. Bordeaux 88 notes the young
women of the rising generation of the 1920 5 s "now plan for and
pass examinations for jobs as pharmacists, chauffeurs, and
stenographers. There are still a few young women who are
sentimental, idealistic, refined, and delicate in taste and manner,
but since the war these characteristics are rare."
An article in the Revue Internationale de U enseignement gave
the answer of French educators to the question : "What will be
the effect of the war on the teaching of girls at the secondary
school level ?" M "They will have decreased savings, increased
responsibilities, and the cost of living. The loss of a large
number of young men will make marriage more difficult. Young
women will seek jobs in the steady occupations formerly reserved
for men. . . .There is some difficulty reconciling occupations for
39 Alan C. Johnson, (Ed.) Growing Opinions: A Symposium of British
Youth Outlook (London: Methuen, 1935), p. 198-205.
47 Olive A. Wheeler, Youth: The Psychology of Adolescence and Its Bearing
on the Reorganization of Adolescent Education (London: University of
London Press, 1929), 202 p.
38 Bordeaux, op, cit.
^"Projets Relatifs a 1 Ehseignement Secondaire des Jeunes Filles."
Reponses adressees j>ar ^les membres du personnel administratif ou enseigne
ment au questionnaire etablie par la commission extraparlementaire. Revue
Internationale de F Enseignement (1918), 72:32-66.
European Youth After World War I 35
young women outside the home with the occupation of rearing
and educating children."
Those familiar with French ways of life and thought will
understand that the new equality was regarded with some dis
favor by many writers. "Le masculin Frangais naturel, dans son
plus bel age, a completement cesse d etre trouble par 1 eternel
feminin. . . .Les femmes ont perdu leur mystere en s affranchissant
de toutes les reserves qui les faisaient lointaines et comme
inaccessibles. Elles sont trop libres. Elles sont trop nues."
(The natural French male, at his best age, has quite ceased to
be concerned about the eternal feminine. ...Women have lost
their mystery in discarding all the reserves which kept them
remote and inaccessible. They are too free. They are too naked) ,
wrote Delaru-Mardrus. * Gautier tt finds that "as women become
more and more masculine they are treated less and less as if
they were precious or highly respectable/ 5 Alix 42 finds something
good in the new outlook which regards a girl as an equal com
rade. "It is rare that young men search only for physical
attractiveness in girls; they look for the intellectual in girls of
their own age group. Dowries play less of a part in marriage ;
more youths marry for love."
Brereton* 3 regrets the tendency of "emancipated" women in
Britain to "sow their wild oats/ but he finds in the increasing
comradeship of the sexes "the brightest spot -in the present
generation."
An editorial in the Livmg Age* adds : If its [the rising genera
tion s] sexual morals are marked by a sort of paganism, at least
they are not specially marked by any sort of perversion; and
there has been no revival of the revolting aestheticism that bore
monstrous fruit at the end of the nineteenth century/
The question of the extent to which youth departed in practice
from the traditional ideal of continence before marriage is one
which aroused considerable excited speculation but on which
there are few facts. The best European data seem to be those
reported in the volume of studies prepared by the Institute for
Social Research cited earlier. A questionnaire to 360 doctors
specializing in gynecology and sex disorders revealed a con
sensus that sex relations before or outside of marriage became
** Delarti-Mardrtis, op. cit.
^Gautier, op. cit.
42 Alix, op. cit.
43 Brereton, op. cit.
" "The New Generation," IMng Age (1921), 311:359-62.
36 Youth After Conflict
more common among women during the years immediately after
the First World War. There was a corresponding tendency for
young men to have sex relations with girl friends rather than,
as in former generations, with prostitutes. A few extracts from
the comments of the German specialists give the picture. * SA
While before the war, girls usually remained continent, or at
least largely continent, up to marriage, a change has now
appeared. Most girls, as a result of lessened chances for
marriage, enter a liaison as freely as do men. In my experience
this does not injure their acceptability in the eyes of future
husbands, (p. 275)
Since the war, monogamous marriage has been much more
difficult to maintain than it was before the war. Couples who
remain faithful, from inclination and conviction, are, at least
in large cities, very rare. Many are compelled to remain
faithful but that is another matter, (p. 277)
Both with married and unmarried men, the overwhelming
proportion of extramarital sex relations are on a love basis,
rather than with prostitutes. Prostitution since the war has
greatly decreased, and in my experience plays no significant
part. (p. 279-80)
Again it was in the Soviet Union that the most drastic changes
took place. Marriage and divorce were made easy; no stigma
was attached to sex relations outside of marriage; child care was
provided by nurseries. The Communist party fought to prevent
licentious behavior among its own members and gradually
brought about a return to stricter and more conventional family
organization. Yet, even before the introduction of higher bar
riers against divorce, the divorce rate in the Soviet Union was
lower than it was at that time in the United States. Observers
reported that because men and women had equality of status,
worked freely together at common tasks, and were free from
strong sex taboos, there was less of sex consciousness and fewer
sex problems than in some of the more cloistered homes and
schools and communities of Western Europe.
6 ; < DEMAND FOR ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CHANGE
An editorial on "Youth" in the New Statesman 4 * proposes that
"one of the safe generalizations we can make about youth is
^ A Atttoritat und FondUe, op. cit
* New Statesman (1922), 19:177-78.
European Youth After World War I 37
that, whatever opinions it holds, it holds them more violently
than age Youth is on both sides in every issue that is worth
fighting about." Louise Creighton" sees British youth primarily
on the side of change. "The young are discontented with the
world as it is; they are impatient for change; they will not be
content with mere patching."
While the economic and political face of Europe was being
transformed in the wake of World War I, youth was involved in
every struggle. Youth fought in the Russian Revolution the
aristocratic cadets in defense of the old order ; the working youth
for the new. Reactionary youth triumphed over the socialist
youth to set up dictatorships for Horthy in Hungary, Pilsudski
in Poland, Punio de Rivera in Spain and Mussolini in Italy.
Observers accustomed to irresponsible American college stu
dents, pouring their energies into football and fraternity life,
were impressed by the seriousness with which European youth
took their political alignments.
In the German youth, the spirit was clearly revolutionary.
Since the dawn of the twentieth century German youth move
ments had been anti-authoritarian. "Frei" (free) was a common
term to describe their groups. Their literature abounds
with words like "Aufbruch," "Anfang," "Aktion," "Sturm,"
"Zeitwende," and "Erhebung," all suggesting the emergence of
a new and revolutionary change. They expressed themselves in
lyric and drama rather than in the more serene style of the novel.
They read Nietzche, Strindberg, Werf el, and Dostoevski. The
new leftwing groups which arose after the Revolution were
called "Neuer Anfang" (New Beginning) and "Entschiedene
Jtigend" (Youth who have made their decision) .
Postwar youth movements in France were largely rightist
(Catholic or Fascist) or leftist. The largest was the Association
Catholique de la Jeunesse Fran^aise, claiming 200,000 mem
bers. * It began as a student organization, gave religious service
to troops during* the war, and in 1919 reorganized. It followed
the political-economic line of the papal encyclicals. A Congress
of the A.CJ.F. at Chartres in 1922 was devoted especially to
problems of rural youth. In 1927 a special workers division of
the A.CJ.F. was organized under the name / Jeunesse Ouvriere
** Louise Creighton, "New Wine in Old Bottles," Contemporary Review
^Data 1 from "Pierre Picard, "U Action Sociale de la Jeunesse Fran$aise
dans FApres-guerre." (Paris, 1933).
38 Youth After Conflict
Catholique." Local groups of "militants" appealed to employers
and to government agencies to improve working conditions, to
enforce labor laws, and to reduce health hazards. Other sub
divisions of the A.C.J.F. served young women (Jeunesse Catho
lique Feminine), farm youth (Jeunesse Agricole Catholique),
students (Jeunesse Etudiante Catholique), or sailors (Jeunesse
Maritime Catholique).
One youth group which arose directly out of the war was the
Equipes Sociales, founded in 1919 by a group of eleven veterans
at France s distinguished TEcole Normale Superieure. This
organization is of special interest for its purpose was to preserve
in civilian life the unity and comradeship across class lines which
had been felt by the soldiers in the trenches. It was a reaction
against the disunity and individualism which flourished after the
war pressure relaxed. This group, too, was Catholic in faith.
On the left were socialist and communist youth groups. The
Jeunesse Socialiste began in 1925 and reached some 11,000 by
1933. The junior groups were called Faugons Rouges, also
organized in 1925, and reaching about 11,000 youngsters. Their
program was co-educational and democratic, modeled after some
self-governing youth camps in Austria. These began in 1918 and
were called "children s republics." The Fauqons Rouges helped
introduce youth hostels in France.
The Jeunesse Communiste, organized in 1920, followed the
lead of the world-wide Communist International. They, too,
had various affiliation and subordinate groups. The Federation
Sportive des Travailleurs enrolled about 16,000 workers in a
program primarily athletic. The Jeunes Syndiques had 16,000-
18,000 members. The Pionniers Rouges, organized in 1924,
served cadets (ages 7-12), pioneers (ages 12-16), and anciens
(ages 16 and over). Like Boy Scouts they emphasized hikes
and camping, but they differed in being co-educational, in cam
paigning against alcohol, and in following the political program
of the Communist party. The leaders of the party were supposed
to be trained in this organization.
All over Europe in the 1920 s a larger proportion of youth
was found in the left extreme or the right extreme, than in the
middle-of-the-road parties. Gautier writes of French youth, *
"Most young people have detached themselves from every party
that merely represents pooled interests and ignores national
needs. Socialism has given way to Communism and Syndicalism
48 Gautier, op. cit.
European Youth After World War I 39
since they seem more direct and more effective. On the other
hand, we also witness an incontestable growth of Royalism, for
royalty built France and did a good job of it. . . .Well schooled
in the natural sciences, the young peope are almost unanimously
convinced that there is no such thing as equality, either in
human society or in the world of Nature. . . . The fact is that
liberty has been pretty well suppressed since 1914, and the more
it has been suppressed the more pleased we have been. . . .Every
where liberalism is on the wane. The dogma of the freedom of
man that Rousseau put into circulation has seen its day. The
Great War, together with a more profound knowledge of history,
has dealt the final blow."
Alix 4 * comments on the nightly political parades of Royalist
youth singing the Marseillaise, and Socialist youth singing the
Internationale. Not infrequently fights occurred between these
groups of young people, each with its "myth" and its dream of
the future.
The young people paraded and sang ; they argued and fought ;
but they were not given responsibilities in government. Cecil, w
writing at about the same time, complained of "the tendency to
be over-cautious, lover-fond of compromise, and over-nervous of
taking risks." He deplored the fact that so few young people
were entering Parliament or government offices. "Youth won
the war, and the future of the world belongs to youth." Such
phrases remained merely rhetoric. The controls were held fast
in the hands of men of experience, and, except in the Soviet
Union, there was little tendency to give young men, after the
war, positions comparable to those young men had had during
the war.
7. A NEW INTERNATIONALISM
The first groups to get together in fellowship across the
boundaries of what had been enemy nations were groups of
idealistic young people. At camps in the Alps as early as 1920,
gathered Christian youth groups and others concerned to build
new international friendships. Macadam, describing inter
national student organizations in 1922, wrote, 81 "Perhaps one
of the most hopeful signs in Europe at the present day is the
* Alix, op. cit.
w Cecil, op. cit.
H Irison S. Macadam, Youth in the Universities : A Paper on National ana
International Student Organisations (1922), 22 p.
40 Youth After Conflict
movement among students of all countries to unite in an inter
national organization. They desire to know each other better,
to gain a sympathetic understanding of the ideals and aspirations
of other nations, to appreciate points of view different from their
own." He presents especially the European Confederation
Internationale des Etudiants, an organization devoted to bring
ing about a European consciousness and a spirit of creative
fraternity among European students. H. G. Wells, in a preface
to the report, spoke of the agency as serving "the interests of
world future against the miserable legacies of hatred and
suspicion from the world s past" Exchange of students was one
of its activities.
The study "Notre Jeunesse," prepared for the Palais de Justice
de Bruxelles, 52 speaks of the need to revise old ideas of
patriotism :
II n y a pas de Desarmement moral possible sans une revision
profonde de la notion de patriotisme. La patrie n est ni un
Absolu ni une fin en soi; elle est pour I homme et non pas
rhomme pour elle Je me refuse a donner le beau nom de
patrie a ce qui n est qu une prostitution ehontee de cette realite
sacree pour laquelle des millions de jeunes homines ont accepte
de mourir!. . .Que Ton prenne la peine d examiner avec
objectivite et independance les veritables causes et les veritables buts
de la plupart des guerres, on sera douloureusement frappe de leur
futilite ou de leur ignominie." (No moral disarmament is possible
without a profound revision of the idea of patriotism . . . .The Father
land is neither an Absolute nor an end in itself; it exists for
man, not man for it 1 refuse to give the fine name of
"Fatherland" to what is only a shameful prostitution of the
sacred reality for which millions of young men were ready to
die!. . .If one examines objectively and independently the real
causes and the real aims of most wars, one is painfully
impressed wi-th their futility or their ignominy.)
This was the sort of thinking which produced the postwar
pacifist reaction in most countries of Europe and in the United
States. European youth had, however, much more faith in the
League of Nations than American students had. At the same
time many among them were aware that no real peace had
been achieved.
Gautier s 68 interpretation of young France spoke of their
observation that "behind the big words and the fine protesta-
** G. Van Bunnen, op. cit.
W Gautier, op. cit.
European Youth After World War I 41
tions of friendship ... all nations are at war, actively or passively,
economically or politically " The cTAgathon essay M emphasizes
that a feeling for all humanity had arisen out of the carnage of
war, and that a better social order was demanded. "Us ne re-
poussent pas, dans Tordre international, Tidee d une Societe des
Nations, estimant que si elle est ecartee au noin d un realisme
historique etroit, elle se fonde stir tine realite nouvelle "
(They do not reject the idea, in the international order, of a
League of Nations, believing that if it is discarded in the name
of strict historic realism, it is based on a new reality.)
Sir James M. Barrie, addressing St. Andrews University in
May, 1922, told the students, "You have more in common with
the youth of other lands than youth and age can ever have with
each other. Even the hostile countries sent out many a son very
like ours, from the same sort of homes, the same sort of uni
versities, who had as little to do as our youth had with the origin
of the great adventure."
It is sometimes forgotten that pacifist and internationalist
sentiment was as influential in the German youth of 1920 as in
any other national group. In my files I find literature of the
"Grossdeutsche Jugend" collected in Germany during 1923.
Their slogan was "Unsere Rache muss die Liebe sein." (Our
revenge must be love !) A German, born in the Rhineland, pleads
with his fellow Germans against armed effort to recover that
territory. He enumerates the losses of the war and concludes:
"Had we given all that in peaceful work and love for the German
people and people of other nations, we would be a rich folk ; no
one would be in need; war and revolution would have been
avoided; no nation on earth would dare to attack us, in spite
of nay, because of the fact that we would carry no weapons
save those of the Spirit" While the old men still nourished
hatreds, some idealistic German youth offered with their own
hands to rebuild a French village which hate had destroyed.
The leading political group the Social Democrats had
much the same attitude toward war which the peace-loving
Scandinavians had. The terrible postwar inflation added to the
conviction that war always meant disaster. Those who later
rallied around Hitler did so in reaction from a pacifist inter
national outlook which had dominated during the 1920^3, and
which apparently led only to unemployment and misery. Yet
even in the late 1920*8, it was necessary for Hitler and Goebbels
1 D Agathon, op. cit.
42 Youth After Conflict
to proclaim their earnest desire and effort to preserve peace.
One of Hitler s campaign arguments was that as a "Frontsoldat"
he had experienced the horrors of war and would bend every
effort toward keeping peace. The generation inflamed by war
songs and war slogans arose later; they were not the youth of
the early 1920 s, but the children of the young soldiers of 1914-18.
Pacifism was a leading note among young people all over
Europe after World War I. The Oxford Pledge, involving a
personal promise never again to fight for God and Country in
any war, was spoken by hundreds of thousands of British youth
and echoed in America and on the Continent. If their strong
rejection of war could have stopped it, there would have been
no World War II.
The internationalism of the youth of Soviet Russia brought
a new element into the picture. They were taught the inter
national solidarity of the working class and to regard war as a
monstrous device of capitalist imperialism. At the same time
the need to defend their own Fatherland against hostile capitalist
(and later, fascist) nations, called for a strong nationalism. Over
a decade or two there was a slow resurgence of Russian
national patriotism.
The internationalism of youth in other European countries
usually did not include the idea of friendly co-operation with the
U.S.S.R. The Soviet Union was not admitted to the League of
Nations until eight years after Germany had been accepted, and
she was the only nation to be expelled from the League. The
Social Democrats favored international co-operation with Com
munists, Only in Czechoslovakia and in France was there a
substantial group of non-Communist youth who sought friendship
with the U.S.S.R.
8. INTEREST IN OUTDOOR SPORTS
Another feature of most European youth movements after
World War I was a strong emphasis on sports and the outdoor
life. On a summer Sunday in the 1920 s, the fields within and
about every large European city were crowded with young men
and young women, hiking or playing football (soccer) or
engaging in other outdoor games. The term "weekend" was
taken over into the other languages of Europe.
Alix 5 * says, "A passion for sports now prevails." "After the
last war youth turned to the stadium," says another French
w Alix, op. tit.
European Youth After World War I 43
writer, an anonymous colonel. 6 * " [French youth] engage in
sports with the enthusiasm of neophytes," writes True, " in 1919.
"Youth needs a discipline and finds it in sport," observes
Marie Diemer. M
Cyril Falls ** finds the heroes of World War I rapidly replaced
by, "a cult of professional players of games who share the throne
with the kings and queens of the cinema world." Contributing
factors were the decreasing hours of labor, growing knowledge
of physical hygiene, daylight saving time, "early closings of
certain days of the week, growing unemployment, and increasing
provision for vacations." Most of these changes occurred since
the war. Brereton* approves the great increase in sports but
regrets the "wave of betting which has swept over the country"
as an accompaniment of the interest in competitive contests.
The German and Austrian youth, more than those of Britain
or of any other nation on the continent, devoted themselves to
the outdoor life. The German youth movement in its first
romantic stages was an attempt to escape from the artificiality
of city life and to regain wholeness in contact with Nature.
Every Sunday and holiday crowds of boys and girls, wearing
shirts open at the neck, shorts, and hiking shoes, carrying
guitars and banjos, started for the fields and woods. At night
they came home, still singing, the girls with wreaths of wild
flowers in their hair. Every town had its Jugendherberge or
youth hostel to give shelter at minimum expense to groups
of young people hiking across the country. No other country
entertained the Olympic Games with more enthusiasm than did
the Germans. When the Nazis took over control of German
life they found a well-established and widespread participation
in sports, requiring only a little modification to substitute mili
tary sports for the purely recreational activities which had grown
up after World War I.
9. PLEASURE-SEEKING
It is no noteworthy phenomenon when older people accuse
youth of devoting too much energy to the pursuit of pleasure.
M "Que Fait-on pour Notre Jetinesse?" La Revue des Vivants (1935),
9 :1.315-17.
08 Marie Diemer, "Carence de TEducation," La Revue des Vivants (1935),
1 :33-47.
59 Falls, op. tit.
w Brereton, op. tit.
44 Youth After Conflict
That is a chronic social tension. But the generation following
the First World War had a few distinctive opportunities. The
young people of 1920-25 were the first youth group to incorporate
movie-going as a regular feature of their lives. So the glamour
and diversions of Hollywood became influential in the lives of
young people all over the world. The young people dressed
differently, talked differently, permitted themselves new free
doms, because they were imitating the stars seen in pictures.
Adventure and romance have always been the heritage of
adolescence, but now these impulses were re-enforced by
experiences which the adults seldom shared. The movies did
much, in Europe as well as in America, to create the "flaming
youth" of the early twenties.
The influence was not wholly bad. Some British leaders
believed that drinking among young people declined because
youth were at the cinema instead of hanging around the pubs.
With the movies came jazz bands and new styles of social
dancing. Chouquet" 1 wrote in a journal for the war generation
about the still younger adolescents :
The Charleston is an admirable mirror of the life of youth. Its
diabolic distorted rhythm reflects the rhythm of their lives.
The spirit of love has been vulgarized, materialized, speeded
up, and mechanized Youth typically has a taste for the
exotic. Jazz gives this sense of the exotic, with its barbarous
sounds and disregard of the rules of the musical art.
10. SWIFTER TEMPO
Another chronic difference between youth and age is in tempo
of life. Youth is in a rush ; age takes its time. Complaints on
this score seem particularly marked for the postwar generation.
Quite possibly motorcars, movies, and the new dance tempos
had something to do with it. But terms like "restless" and
"feverish" are applied to European as well as to American youth
in the 1920 s. Delaru-Mardrus says, "The predicament of this
generation can be summed up in the phrase, on n a plus le
temps/ (there is no longer any time). Quelle hate fievreuse,
et quelle assurance! (what feverish haste and what self-
assurance!)" Politeness suffers, says Gautier, because "more and
more, young people whom we meet nowadays seem to have time
for nothing more than hurried automatic gestures One must
moye fast and in the right direction."
61 Cfeouqttet, op. cit
European Youth After World War I 45
The same complaint is heard in England. Triggs" 2 sums up
youth s pleasures by saying that "since the war speed is the chief
feature in youth s recreation." Brereton refers to the "universal
speeding-up tendency of the age." He finds a "short-circuiting
of infancy, childhood and boyhood," with boys and girls under
sixteen smoking and carrying on to make believe they are young
sophisticates. At the other end of the scale, men over sixty learn
jazz dancing to keep up with the pace of the youngsters.
11. T^E NEW REALISM
Van Bunnen, speaking for Belgian youth, said, "The war
shattered our intellectual peace because it made us doubt, for
the first time, ideas and assumptions, the basis of which it never
occurred to us to verify, and which to have doubted would have
seemed absurd or criminal The reason for this searching of
conscience, for this revision of values, the prestige of which had
too long duped mankind, was the conviction in us of the
abnormal and monstrous nature of war in general and of the
World War of 1914 in particular!. . .Like Descartes, we wished
to doubt everything so we can reconstruct on the foundation of
the indisputable." 8 ^ True sees an indication of superficiality in
the popularity of William James "who has a practical and
indigent philosophy which amounts to the negation of phil
osophy." Yet later he adds that youth "forces itself to penetrate
to the nature of things, to discover ultimate causes, to explain
the inexplicable!"
Louise Creighton writes hopefully : tt
The old must cherish no delusion that they know and
understand what the young are wanting. Even the most
sympathetic, the most wide-minded among them, have little
idea of the ferment in the minds of those of the younger
generation who think. Everything is questioned, the old
sanctions are swept away, and to destroy seems the ^ first
necessity. Yet in all the seeming chaos of ideas and opinions,
there reigns an indomitable search for truth, an unflinching
determination to get at realities.
42 Warren Triggs, "Youth and Pleasures" in Alan C Johnson, (ed.)
Growing Opinions: A Symposium of British Youth Outlook, (London:
Methuen, 1935), p. 240-55.
K A Van Btmnen, op. cti.
** Creighton, op. cit.
46 Youth After Conflict
Milton Stauffer" says of youth throughout the world, "Every
where there is a questioning of the sources of authority; a
testing of old foundations; a demand for reality. In all fields
one is impressed with the fact that it is not simply the employ
ment of a new method, but the manifestation of a new attitude
or new spirit. It is a spirit of earnest protest against sham and
formality, a spirit of searching inquiry after vital truth, a spirit
of adventure and willingness to pay great prices to find the
truth that liberates."
There were cynical aspects to the new realism. Boys who had
earned high wartime wages were on the dole before they had
achieved any stability in their vocational life. Eager and
Secretan M said of such youngsters : "The outward signs are clear
enough. The boys are no longer young hopefuls; they are
premature cynics Their wit is getting bitter and self-des
tructive Ambition is obviously absurd."
Andre Maurois 5 * refers to a similar predicament for French
youth. "Ce fut un grand danger pour la generation qui vint a
l age d homme tout de suite apres la guerre, que les trompeuses
facilites qui lui furent offertes. Une prosperite artificielle, la
chute vertigineuse de la monnaie, creaient alors de redoutables
illusions." (A grave danger for the generation reaching manhood
immediately after the war lay in the deceptive opportunities
offered to them. Artificial prosperity and the dizzy collapse of
the currency fostered formidable illusions.)
SUMMARY OF DESCRIPTION OF EUROPEAN YOUTH
All over Europe, after World War I, much the same comments
were being made about youth. Youth rejects the authority of
their elders; they have set themselves above traditional moral
codes; they are even questioning the foundations of religion.
Youth seeks more and more practical education. Girls demand
and receive equality with young men, not only in vocation and
politics but even in freedom of sex behavior. Youth is marching
behind the banners of economic and political change. Youth
has rejected nationalist symbols and is seeking a world organiza
tion. Sports, movies, and jazz symbolize the younger generation.
"Stauffer, op. cit.
** W. M. Eager and EL A. Secretan, Unemployment Among Boys (London :
J. M. Dent and Sons, 1925), 164 p.
"Andre Maurois, La Jeunesse Avant Notre Temps (Paris, Flammarion,
1937), 46 p.
European Youth After World War I 47
Life has speeded up so that youth has no time for gracious living.
Youth is seeking a new and more realistic philosophy, rejecting
the assumptions on which they were nurtured.
The similarity between these statements and the comments
being made at the same time about youth in America or in China
is striking. Youth in the aftermath of World War I reflected a
Zeitgeist which knew no national boundaries. But was this
outlook a product of the war, or rather to be interpreted as a
stage in a longer process of intellectual and social evolution,
which would have been reached at about the same time whether
there had been a war or not? After we have described what
happened to American youth after World War I, we shall
attempt to distinguish war s aftereffects from the more general
social trends.
CHAPTER III
AMERICAN YOUTH AFTER WORLD WAR I
THE ENERGIES OF YOUTH
The American young people who reached adolescence shortly
after the First World War were the most talked-about youth
generation in human history. They were the Jazz Age, the
Flappers, the Sheiks, and Flaming Youth. Earlier in American
history the problems- of youth were not distinguished from those of
any other age group. Historians have not found it necessary to
study youth as a distinct unit. If young people weren t satisfied
with economic opportunities at home they pulled up stakes and went
West for land or gold or sheer adventure. The closing of the
frontier was only one of the factors which brought! youth to the
fore, after 1918, -as a minority requiring special attention from the
rest of the population. Other contributing forces will be analyzed
in -the succeeding chapter. The concern of this chapter is to reflect
the characteristics of this unique postwar; generation of adolescents.
Youth and age have always had their conflicts. Chaucer wrote,
"Youth and elde is often at debaat" Winifred Kirkland is 1 typical
of a number of writers of the early 1920 s in arguing that there was
nothing new or special about the controversy over modern youth. *
"Among history s most incessant repetitions/ she said, "is the
conviction of adolescense that it is staging something brand new
in the matter of sophistication/
The gap in understanding, however, between adults and
adolescents seemed to be unusually { wide in the period after World
War I. The following Atlantic Monthly editorial 3 of 1922 could
hardly have been written in any other period of American history :
Antagonism between generations seems to be inevitable and may
as well be recognized and dealt with, not denied and smoothed
over, just because we wish that it did not exist. The old and the
young are as far -apart in point of view, code, and standard, as if
they belonged to different races. An Englishman, and a French
man are not more unlike than an old man and a young man ; and
it is as impossible to interpret one to the other. A different
"Winifred Kirkland, "Grundyism," Outlook (1921), 127: 509-10
* "Elder not Better,** Atlantic Monthly (1922), 130: 570-72.
48
American Youth After World War I 49
language is spoken in both cases; the morality is different; the
temperaments are divided by a channel as wide as the Straits of
Dover; the ideals are not the same ; the sense of humor, the sense
of taste, and the scale of values are totally dissimilar. . . . Let us
frankly if regretfully accept as a premise that the two
generations are natural enemies, suspicious of each other, critical,
distrustful, unsympathetic, and hostile,
"The hour of the aged has passed and the hour of youth has
come/ said Charlotte Oilman * in> another magazine discussion. An
editorial in the Ladies Home Journal of the same year refers to
"jazz, joy-rides, road-houses, and cheek-to-cheek dancing, and
petting, and cigarette smoking, and hooch-drinking and all the rest
of the mischief which the twentieth century! Satan has found for idle
hands."*
The quantity as well as the striking quality of comment indicates
that during the aftermath of World War I there was something
more than -the chronic misunderstanding between youth and age.
The number of magazine articles indexed in, the Reader s Guide and
pertaining to the conduct of youth is shown graphically in Figure I.
At -the close of the war, in 1918, the amount of such discussion was
negligible. It rose rapidly through 1920 and 1921, reaching a first
peak in 1922. By 1926 eight years after the close of the war
the volume of agitated writing about youth was at its maximum and
twenty times its 1918-19 level. Then it declined, to rise again during
the depression, but with a different emphasis.
Before 1920, the term "youth" was not needed as a heading in the
New York Times Index. The first listing, in the summer; of 1920,
referred to an editorial in defense of youth. There were several
references in 1921 and 1922, and thereafter many items under this (
heading, "reaching a total of twenty-one in 1926. The Literary
Digest t conducted a roundup of opinions about contemporary youth
in 1921, and found the theme so popular, that a second inventory
was attempted the next year.
During the 1920*s youth emerged from its identification with the
rest of the population. Youth became aggressively conscious of
itself and the rest of the country became uncomfortably conscious of
youth. The foundation was laid for the appearance, a decade later,
of a Youth Congress, a Youth Bill, a Youth Commission, and a
National Youth Administration.
3 Charlotte P. Oilman, "Vanguard, Rear-guard, and Mud-guard, 1 * Century
Magazine (1922), 104: 348-53.
4 Charlotte P. Oilman, "Idle Hands," Ladies Home Journal, June, 1922,
50
Youth After Conflict
FIGURE 1
Number of magazine articles listed in Reader s Guide to Periodical
Literature concerned with conduct of modern youth. 1918-31.
50
48
46
44
42
40
38
36
34
. 32
30
r a*
o
^ 26
24
| 22
20
2 .8-
16
14
12
10
8
&
4-
2
1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 (926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931
YEAR
American Youth After World War I 51
In some measure, a similar differentiation of youth could be found
in other countries. Stanley High, in his Revolt of Youth, envisioned
a world-wide uprising which didn t come off. The following
paragraph from an editorial in a religious journal leads to the
same expectation : s
The war set loose tremendous forces that had been ; gaining power
for years. The young Turkey party, the young China movement,
the revolutionary forces in Russia, Persia, India, Japan, Korea,
Egypt and Latin America are all signs of young life and most of
these movements are protests against ancient evils. Youth has
grasped the steering wheel in order to choose a new and better
course.
THE CHARGES AGAINST YOUTH
In America it was not the economic or political ideas of youth
which occasioned concern it was their violation of the previously
accepted code of modest, upright conduct. A circular letter sent
out by the Literary Digest 6 in 1921 to student editors, college
administrators, and editors of religious publications, showed that
60 per cent of the college people and 90 per cent of the religious
leaders were, disturbed over the evils in the way young people were
dancing. The editor of the newspaper of a large high school for
girls in New York City criticized her contemporaries for -the way
"we dissipate our energies fussing, dancing, picnicking over the
weekend, and appear totally unprepared for Monday s recitations,
if we appear at all. T
A college student editor is more severe. "The pride of the girl
today is in the fact that she is ignorant of nothing. No doubt the
extremes to which we have gone are to some extent due to the moral
laxity resulting from a war period, but in my estimation we shall
never return to those conditions existent! prior to that time. To the
girl of -today petting parties, cigarette smoking, and in many cases
drinking, are accepted as ordinary parts of existence. The girl who
will not permit a kiss from any fellow who pleases her these days is
partically nonexistent. As regards cigarette-smoking, I know that
70-80 per cent of the girls I am acquainted with, indulge girls
of good families whose ^mothers may not feel inclined to accept this
5 "Youth Movements In Europe and Atnerka," Missionary Review of the
World (1923), 46: 503-4.
"Is the Younger Generation in Peril?" Literary Digest, (1921), 69: 9-12.
* The Bluebird, Julia Richman High School. Spring, 1920.
52 . Youth After Conflict
high percentage, but they are not with their daughters at dances,
par-ties, etc., where smoking -by the girls is most common. The
modern girl is an extremist. She dresses in the lightest and most
flimsy of fabrics. Her dancing is often of the most passionate
nature, and I believe the modern dance has done much to break down
standards of , morals." 8
A professor put the charge this way: "Vague complaint and
disapprobation, when boiled down, show that they (young people)
are under suspicion on the counts of, briefly, dancing, drinking,
kissing, motoring alone and often at night (alone means together) ;
in the case of girls dress is included, or rather going about with legs
and arms bare, and without stays." *
More emphatic is a college president. Dr. Charles J. Smith,
President of Roanoke College, says; "In every age some women
drank liquor; a few even enjoyed a smoke; many of -them threw
away their honor ; but the world has never known the turning loose
of such an army of hard-drinking, cigarette-puffing, licentious
Amazons as walk our streets and invade our campuses today. . . .
What can be done when the daughters of the so-called* best* people
came out attired scantily in clothing* but abundantly in paint, with
a bottle of liquor not on the hip but in the handbag ; dancing as
voluptuously as possible in order to be attractive and appear
popular ; calling for frequent intermissions to give them opportunity
to quench their thirst from the bottle : and then interspersing this
with violent petting parties in the luxurious retreat of a big
limousine ?"l
In the Digest inquiry of 1922 a minister expressed fear that the
new standards were becoming permanent. "There has been a very
decided break in the moral level, and it now looks as if the waves
of immorality and indecency of a little while ago have become such a
torrent the public has decided there is no use attempting tc? repair
the breach, and get back to the old channel of prewar standards of
living and conduct Much that shocked the finer sensibilities a few
months ago is now regarded as quite the thing to do/ u
More academically Charlotte Oilman sums up the difficulty : "The
young women have, in the words of the hopelessly stammering
lecturer, totally repudiated their two tutelary deities of past times,
* Literary Digest, dp. cit.
8 A Professor, "The Young Person," Atlantic Monthly (1925), 135: 217-23.
. 10 Charles J., Smith, "Canine Destination of the Young Folks Doubted,"
Literary Digest (1924), 80:32
11 A Minister, "The Case Against the Younger Generation," Literary
Digest (1922), 73: 38-42 y
American Youth After World War I 53
Duty and Decorum. They seem to acknowledge no duty, visibly
practice no decorum : and as to marriage, once their only goal, many
prefer what they proudly describe as free union 1 .""
A returning veteran is quoted by the Headmaster of Phillips
Academy. "I found that I had come back to a Sodom Widespread
drinking by old and young alike ... laxity in dress, manners and
conduct among young people everywhere, parental indifference or
connivance." "
Two of the most thoughtful and more carefully reasoned
contemporary indictments were stated by George Albert Coe and by
Mirian Van Waters. Coe " sees the commonly charged faults to be
"a craze for excitement, immersion in the external and superficial,
lack of reverence and respect, disregard for reasonable restraints
in conduct and for reasonable reticence in speech, conformity to
mass sentiment, lack of individuality, living merely in the present,
and general purposelessness." Miriari Van Waters, then Judge of
the Juvenile Court in Los Angeles, wrote : 18
Institutions everywhere are in flux, family, school, church,
industry, and even political parties are being reorganized. In
morals, the old is not dead and the new is not strong enough to
stand, and youth dances out into the streets, eager and untaught,
and impatient of the hubbub of voices trying to remake the
social order.
In the meantime we must live ! cry the young people. The press
and the "movies" and many other organs of social expression
say by implication, that greed, or, display, or cruelty, or violence,
or bloodthirstiness, or blind sex are perfectly usual, normal and
desirable ways of living, indulged in by interesting and important
people. . . . Most disastrous of all, there is in these times no vigor
ous, wholesale denial of false standards. Youth is tremendously
confused, and if it practices virtue it can hardly believe in it It
is an age of extreme tolerance of all kinds of social standards and
bitter criticism of existing social institutions.
The humor of a period is an index to some of its basic
psychological attitudes. It is pertinent, therefore, to recall a popular
joke of the 1920 s. A college boy had a "blind date" with a co-ed.
op. tit.
8 Alfred E, Stearns, "Give Yottth Its Chance/* Wom&tfs Home Companion,
May, 1922.
14 George Albert Coe, What Ails our Youth (New York, Charles
Scnbner*s Sons, 1924), 173 p.
"Miriam Van Waters, "The Juvenile Court as a Social Laboratory,"
Journal of Applied Sociology (1923), 7: 318-21.
54 Youth After Conflict
They got in his car and drove off. After a bit he offered her a
cigarette.
"Care for a smoke?"
"No thank you/ she replied, "I don t smoke."
They drove on a bit and he brought out a pocket flask.
"How about a little drink? This is really good stuff. Right off
the boat."
"Mm-mm," she said, shaking her head. "You see, I don t drink."
Ruefully the gallant gentleman pocketed his flask. He drove
along a quiet shaded road and parked the car.
"Well, you neck, don t you?" he inquired as he put an arm
around hen
"Oh no!" she said.
"Well, for crying out loud !" he exclaimed, "What do you do- for
fun?"
There was a mischievous gleam in the girl s eyes as she answered,
"I tell lies!"
Two writers from the perspective of a decade later have made
excellent inventories of the ferment of the twenties. Malcolm
Cowley finds eight basic and dynamic ideas underlying the
cultural changes : "
1. The idea of salvation by the child (Rousseau-like faith in
nature.)
2. The idea of self-expression.
3. The idea of paganism (joy in the well-formed, well-used body) .
4. The idea of living for the moment.
5. The idea of liberty (freedom to do as one pleases).
6. The idea of female equality.
7. The idea of psychological maladjustment.
8. The idea of changing place (see the country, live abroad).
Frederick Lewis Allen, editor of Harper s, probably the best of
the thoughtful magazines of the period, compressed his analysis to
six closely related -themes : 1T
lft Malcolm Cowley, Exile s Return: A Narrative of Ideas (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1934), 308 p.
"Frederick L. Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the
Nineteen Twenties (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931), 370 p.
American Youth After World War I 55
1. Increased sex freedom.
2. Rejection of Victorian propriety.
3. Resistance of prohibition and censorship.
4. Religious skepticism.
5. Contempt for the bourgeois "the old lady from Dubuque"
6. Resistance to mass-produced culture.
THE POSTWAR SEX MORES
When youth of the 20 s were -accused of being wild, reckless,
and extreme, there was just one kind of behavior central in the
mind of the critic. Modes of dressing, dancing, driving, and
drinking were criticized mainly because these might contribute to
that main problem. Much of the dynamic, both for the flapper and
also for the vivid condemnations uttered about her, originated
consciously or unconsciously in sexual energies. One of the major
social changes following the First World War was undoubtedly the
franker expression of sex interest, especially by girls.
The problem began to be regarded as serious during the war
years. An editorial in the Ladies Home Jaurnal (January, 1918)
reports :
Young girls are responding to the lure of the uniform. They are
tempting young soldiers on the street and at the movies. ... It is
not fair to expect our boys to hold fast to their standards when
every artifice is used by these girls to break down those
standards.
In an article written before the Armistice 18 we read:
...there appears ... something less wholesome, innocent, and
American creeping into the relationships of young people
of the high school age. We do not need to go to the
Juvenile Court or to the social settlement workers for proofs.
Our choicest suburbs, such as Lake Forest, near Chicago, are
invaded. The revelations of the Orpet trial speak trumpet-tongues
of a change in the conditions and ideals of high school life. There
are many stages, from a slight deline in the modesty of the girls,
a little loss of respect in the way boys talk to -them, all the way
to the unspeakable happenings that those know who 1 stand where
they can see the Niagaras of vice pouring over the rocks in our
great cities.
18 E. K. Larrisson, "The Association of Boys and Girls in the Teens/*
Education (1918), 39: 142-8.
56 Youth After Conflict
If girls... and boys are less self-restrained, intoxicated with the
age s trend toward exciting pleasure, bound to have the present
thrill without thought of cost, what are we going to do about it?
In 1919, Association Men, the Y.M.C.A. publication, referred to
(page 724) "the wave of vice which is sweeping over midwest
cities like the flu epidemic."
A "Mr. Grundy" in 1920 makes a terse summary of what he
sees: "the perfect freedom of intercourse between the sexes; the
unchaperoned motor flights at night; the intimacies of modern
dancing; the scantiness of modern dress, and the frankness of
conversation between young men and girls." 10
An English writer, visiting the United States about that time,
reports : "First, it has to be admitted that with the end of, the war,
accompanied in America by the defiance of the prohibition law, we
have entered upon a stage marked by an immense loosening of the
rules understood as governing the conduct toward one another of
well-bred youths and girls." *
A college dean concludes : "Thanks to the fiction magazines, the
Sunday supplements, vaudeville and the movies to say nothing of
realism and problem plays the least curious child is now a complete
cynic at fifteen, and the slightly precocious could read Beaudelaire
at twelve with perfect understanding and without a quiver of
dismay." 21
A newspaperman who had been about a great deal in all circles
of society was frankly shocked when a well-bred college girl of the
twenties told him she had no use for marriage or children. "I
shall take a lover, of course, because I realize that I am a woman." M
Mr. Crowell said this new generation made his hair stand on end !
Some reported that new sex behavior without being disturbed by
it, but this tolerance was not the fashion. One writer described a
weekend dance at the club. Millie s behavior was drawing a lot
of comment from the oldsters.
Millie was giving a rather finished demonstration of what they
called cheeking* with a nice-looking youngster who didn t
seem to mind it in the least ---- 1 didn t see how much harm
come of it, except, possibly, to Millie s make-up. M
Sodety b y Mn Grundy," Atlantic Monthly (1920), 125: 606-12.
wvYn Ratchffe, "The License of the Youngsters/ Century (1921), 103:
390-96.
McConn, "On Losing One s Disillusions," Nation (1922) 114- 395
OWe11 " Interview wi th a Young Lady," New Republic
y *
. B. Stewart, "Youngsters vs. Oldsters," Scrttner s (1925), 78: 125-27.
American Youth After World War I 57
Elizabeth Benson in a similar mood explained: "This daring in
sexual matters is mainly theoretical, being largely confined to reading
Freud and using plain language. Their bold sexual experimentation
rarely goes farther than kissing. However, they are tolerant of the
occasional girl who has lost her virginity, provided that it was
given for love, and not just casually." 24
This moderation contrasts with the almost obscene fury of the
Ladies Home Journal (November, 1921). They launched, in 1921,
an "anti-jazz crusade" and they left out nothing which might
titillate those who thrilled with virtuous honor over the doings of
the wild younger generation. A Mr. John R. McMahon explored
for these eager readers the night spots of New York. He tells of
the women smoking, the cocktails, the close embrace of dancers, the
young women with no corsets, the girls with older men. Speaking
of "petting parties and necking parties" he warns: "If caresses
continue to be cheapened they will have less value than a Polish
mark !" By February, 1922^ Mr. McMahon has reached the sinful
Middle West and is reporting how "boy and girl couples leave the
dance hall in a state of dangerous disturbance." He is appalled
by "blatant disregard of even elementary rules of civilization; the
absence of privacy in conduct that in many cases is amenable to
statutory law." (A beautifully vague but suggestive circumlocution.)
"We must always expect a few casualties in social intercourse/ says
the excited investigator, "but the modern; dance is producing little
short of a holocaust." While common people are naturally all for
decency, "the< high society flapper is, still going the limit/ He
suggests that jazz will have a harmful genetic effect. In the next
generation, "instead of real men, and women, we may reasonably
expect an augmented stock of lounge lizards and second quality
vamps/* Or perhaps there will be no children at all, "When
bachelor men and girls can have so much fun speaking
euphemistically out of the ultra dance, why should they sacrifice
careers and burden themselves with family cares?"
Turning to comments by the younger generation about themselves,
there is fairly general recognition of a majof change. The young
editor of Mountain Echo, a newspaper of Pacific Union College,
declared himself a downright pessimist. "The sexual is flaunted
everywhere, and through constant view of the suggestive and
salacious, the public conscience, seared or paralyzed, takes it as a
matter of course. . . . Jazz is a little more reckless, the movies a little
34 Elizabeth Benson, The Younger Generation (New York: Greenberg,
1927), p. 75-104.
58 Youth After Conflict
more obscene", the dances a little more daring, and manners a little
more loose than last year. More girls are smoking cigarettes and
are aspiring to be vamps and flappers." 25
A young woman agrees that "it is almost impossible to get away
from the subject of sex today. It is talked over in polite and
impolite salons ; it is discussed in Park Avenue hotels and in Child s.
There are books about it. There are plays about it. There is even
a science about it." 28
Tt was charged that "in some of the student publications of
women s colleges appear articles that grade from the risque to the
salacious." 27 "A brief search fails to locate publications that would
seem to warrant such a description. The results of our scrutiny of
several student publications from New York City high schools and
colleges during the period 1918-25 will be reported later in this
chapter. The stories did not seem to be much more "advanced"
than the "knight rescues lonely princess ; they fall in love, are
married and live happily ever after" pattern. The most daring tale
in the Bluebird, published by Julia Richman High School during this
period, was entitled "Belle s Escapade." Belle was bored, so she
slipped away to Greenwich Village. There she was "picked, up" in
a cafe and took her new boy friend on a tour of the sights of that
section. Later, to make everything proper, he turns out to be the
son of a friend visiting her mother. One article in the Mercury,
published by the men at College of the City of New York (January,
1923,) went so far as to raise doubts about marriage. The young
writer thought love was grand, but believed marriage destructive
of freedom.
It is more likely that criticism was directed at the humor in. some
of the- student publications. This frequently approached the level
set by the then popular magazine College Humor. A few jokes
from student publications of the period will show the type :
Scene : A couple car-riding.
He : "My clutch is awfully weak."
She: "So I ve noticed."
She:
He
j : "What do you think of a fellow who makes a girl blush ?"
: "I think he s a wonder."
25 "
5 "The Case Against the Younger Generation," op. cit.
2 *Anne Temple, "Has Youth Deteriorated?" "Reaping the Whirlwind"
Forum (1926), 76: 21-6.
21 Lillian Edgerton, "Is Good Behavior on a Vacation, Too?" Delineator
July, 1920.
American Youth After World War I 59
A class of boys was being examined in geography :
Teacher: "Name the zones."
Youth: "There are two zones: masculine and feminine. The
masculine is either temperate or imtemperate; the
feminine is either torrid or frigid."
Teacher: "Why is chemistry like love?"
Pupil : "Because the lower the gas, the greater the pressure."
"What makes you so popular?
He asked the speedy young spark.
And she said with a grin
As she powdered her chin
f l keep all the boys in the dark !
These may sound rather tame in the 1940 s but undoubtedly they
caused some gasps of dismay in homes of the 1920 s.
Later in the chapter we shall try to present another interpretation
to balance the one-sided view of youth which arises from these
selected quotations. It is enough for the moment , to note that the
parents, teachers, ministers, and youth leaders now in their forties
were the youngsters about whom the women s magazines of the
1920 s became so disturbed. While changes in the sex mores of
youth did occur and are still taking place, the adults in America
today constitute a solid demonstration that the youth of the 1920 s
did not go wholly to the dogs.
One relevant kind of data is found in the census report on
illegitimate births. There has been a slow steady increase since
the data were first reported in 1917. At that time there were
thirteen illegitimate registrations for each thousand live births (white
race only). In 1920 there were fifteen per thousand; in 1925,
sixteen per thousand; and in 1930, nineteen per thousand. A
peak was reached in 1935 with 21.4 per thousand. The rise has
been due in considerable measure to changes in >the registration
area recent additions have been the socially backward regions
and to changes in reporting practice. Some enlightened states have
discontinued the requirement that legitimacy shall be reported. The
data do, however, challenge any idea that the postwar youth
constituted a special problem with respect to birth out of wedlock.
No marked or sudden rise is discernible.
There must have been thousands of girls who horrified the
straitlaced mothers of a generation ago, who talked the latest slang,
rolled their stockings, wore short skirts, applied rouge and lipstick
60 - Youth After Conflict
in public, smoked cigarettes, drank cocktails, danced ragtime bunny
hugs, necked in parked cars, stayed out late or even sometimes all
night, who then, to the surprise and confounding of all dire prophets
of doom, picked a stable young man, settled down to keep house
and raise a family, earned a place in the respect of the community,
and today are a little worried about their adolescent daughters.
APPEARANCE
Fashions change, and there is a certain amount of hubbub over
each new style. The general tendency toward a new beginning
after all wars encourages sharper breaks away from previous styles
of dress. Much of the criticism of youth after World War I began
by reference to bobbed hair, lipstick, rouge, or knee-length skirts.
The high collars and peg bottom trousers of the college boys of
1920 seem much more outlandish today than do the flapper
costumes, but more ado was made over the girls at that time.
One official of a youth-serving organization reports that she was
nearly expelled from Ohio Wesleyan in the spring of 1922 for the
offense of having bobbed her hair an act regarded as most
unbecoming in any student, but especially in a senior, expected to
set a good example.
There were, of course, all degrees of conformity to the flapper
aprm. One describes herself as follows:
If one judges by appearances, I suppose I am a flapper. I am
TYithin the age limit. I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood.
And *(oh what a comfort it is !) I powder my nose. I wear
fringed skirts and bright colored sweaters, and scarfs, and, waists
with Peter Pan collars, and low-heeled "finale hopper" shoes I
don t use rouge or lipstick or pluck my eyebrows. I don t smoke
(I ve tried it, and don t like it) or drink or tell "peppy stories."
I don t pet 2 *
Bishop Edwin H. Hughes of the Methodist Church made
headlines one day by asserting that the older generation had gone
in for some Qdd styles in its youth.
Don t you remember when the young people used to bang their
hair let it faH all over the forehead? As between banged hair
and bobbed hair, I take the bobbed variety.
Remember those balloon skirts? When two women met on the
sidewalk, one had, to step off to let the other pass. As between
* Ellen W. Page, "A Flapper s Appeal to Parents," Outlook (1922),
132:607.
American Youth After World War I 61
the old hoopskirt and the present styles, give me the short skirt
of today.
I have heard it stated that the song "Yes! We Have No Bananas"
was a sign of the degeneracy of the times. But what were you
singing, you pious old steward and you staid old church trustee,
when you were young? You were singing: "Pharaoh s daughter
on the bank. Little Moses in the pool; She fished him out with
a telegraph pole, And sent him off to school." Now let us be
fain As between taking sacred characters of the Bible and
making hilarious songs about them and the song, "Yes ! We Have
No Bananas/ I prefer the bananas. M
A very sensible reaction was that of the student editor who
answered the inquiry from the Literary Digest, saying:
Too much concern is being manifested over these matters of dress
and dancing. They are no more 1 a problem today than they were
fifty years ago. . . . They are solely questions of individual
reaction. *
MANNERS
An observation which is found frequently in discussions of youth
of the 1920 s is that they had lost refinement and gentility, and
had become pert and vulgar. They don t give up seats to older
people in public conveyances, they don t greet the hostess when they
arrive at or leave parties, they jostle their thoughtless way ahead.
They talk slang or worse.
The elegantly nurtured female can startle with the noun "guts/
but she is reaching out after adjectives which had been exclusively
a male prerogative treading on the heels of the cultured male
who came back from the trenches with a mouthful of oaths, not
exactly strange, but unfamiliar in their new atmosphere. *
Lillian Edgerton, writing in Delineator, speaks of "a voice in
peacock notes that shrilled halfway across the ballroom" and she
exclaims : "Manners ! There are no manners nowadays T **
Another writer links the laxity of speech and manner to a more
general deterioration:
What does glaringly distinguish this period, among those who
consider themselves \ most "advanced** and who superciliously
29 "The Good Old Days/* Literary Digest, (1924), 83: 35-6.
w "Is the Younger Generation in Peril?" op. dt.
81 Stephen Gwynn, "On Being Shocked," Living Age (1924), 322: 281-83,
52 Edgerton, op. cit.
62 Youth After Conflict
condemn the nineteenth century is ... a coarseness and looseness
in speech, dress, manner, and habit of life, and a wholesale
resistance to any restraint. *
The "Ladies Home Journal does this sort of insinuation still
better. "The flapper daughter who drinks whiskey, smokes
cigarettes, wears diaphanous, clinging frocks, parks her corset at
dances, and rolls her stockings below the knee ... a type that has
substituted the brazenness of the harlot for the dignity, sweetness,
and naturalness that were our old-fashioned idea for good
manners." M
The young people themselves are inclined to be critical of the
decline in manners. A college editor writes :
Our manners lack dignity, poise, self-respect, a respect for life s
sanctities. Irreverence characterizes both manners and manner.
Anne Temple, while blaming much of the talk about youth on the
older generation s salacious concern about the sex interests of
youth, does admit some fault.
My quarrel with the young people of today comes with quite
another matter the loss of a thing which some call innate
refinement. We lack a certain dignity of charm and refinement
which despite their silly conventions and their inhibitions our
fathers and mothers are not without. *
Others found the gay insouciance rather charming. A bit of high
school verse will show youth s not unfavorable impression of itself :
Two dazzling eyes
With baby stare
A little smile
And cute bobbed hair,
Two dancing feet
A shoulder sway
A silly laugh
A vamping way
A crowd of men
A social whirl
And there you are
The Modern Girl! 86
1 Gilman, op. cit.
*"Jazz," Ladies Home Journal, November, 1921.
5 Temple, op. cit.
8 The Erasmian, May, 1922.
American Youth After World War I 63
Mark Sullivan tells a story quite indicative of the greater freedom
with which profanity was used in the twenties. What Price Glory,
produced in 1925, brought some of the milder language of the
trenches to Broadway. The story concerns two neat and proper
elderly ladies "who entered into the spirit of the play so thoroughly
that at the end, one said to the other, Shall we get the hell out of
here? Not/ replied her elderly companion, until I find my
goddam glasses / w
AMUSEMENTS
Young people are always more adept than age at having fun.
They normally crave company, music, excitement, dancing,
adventure, and love. Older people always seem to feel that all this
is being overdone. Postwar generations of youth seem to get more
than th$ usual share of criticism along this line.
A high school principal said, for publication : **
The rank and file of small-town and city school young people
are amusement-mad.
Another commentator at about the same time wrote:
They pursue pleasure with an ardor that leaves the more recently
emerged Puritans of an older -generation astonished and aghast. M
The target of most criticism was that successor of syncopation
and ragtime, the music that s known as jazz. This music and the
accompanying dances gave its name to the whole decade following
World War I. An indispensable accompaniment of jazz was the
saxophone, combining qualities of reed and brass. One interpreter
of the twenties wrote :
As for the sounds a saxophone player could achieve, there was
almost no limit to them The saxophone could imitate the yowl
of a cat, the moo of a cow, the baa of a calf, the whinney of a
horse., .banging doors, howling winds, honking automobiles...
a yawn, a grunt, a belch. A skillful player could toot and he
could tootle, he could blare and blast, could bleat and blat, he
could chatter and he could coo The saxophone was sensuous, it
was "music in the nude." It was the instrument of the
twenties. *
"Mark Sullivan, "The Twenties," Vol. VI of Our Times, New York:
Charles Scribner s, Sons (1955), p. 377-8.
88 The Case Against the Younger Generation, op. cit.
89 Florence G. Woolston, "Girls and then Some," New Republic, (1922),
30:77-80.
48 Sullivan, op* cit.
64 Youth After Conflict
"Jazz," wrote Paul Whiteman, "is the folk music of the machine
age." A college student s essay " suggests that other nations have
portrayed their essence in great novels, but the novel in America is
sectional. "The only common denominator/ says the youthful
writer, "for! the whole American nation has been found in jazz."
As early as 1921 the Literary Digest organized a symposium on
the current dance. tt Sixty per cent of the educators and 90 per
cent of the religious leaders condemned the way young people were
dancing. One student editor said: "The outstanding objection to
the modern dance is that it is immodest and lacking in grace. It is
not based on the natural and harmless instinct for rhythm, but on a
craving for abnormal excitement." Another wrote that some of
the new dances (e. g. the Charleston, the Big Apple, the Black
Bottom) represented "mere animal exhibitions of agility and feeling.
There is nothing of grace in them, and such dances serve as an
excuse for actions that would be severely censored anywhere but
on the modern dance floor." A college dean pompously concluded,
"There can be no question as to the deteriorating influence of some
of the modern dances and of the extremes in dress which have
appalled those who would conserve the youth of the nation."
Again it is the Ladies Home Journal which carries the most
violent expressions. An editorial begins, "The tenor of scores of
letters from our readers is that jazz-madness has descended on the
younger! generation and that it is beginning to be a forlorn hope to
cope with the problem." Traveling salesmen are blamed for
importing the fad from New York to the provinces, sending "local
high school girls and Sunday S.chool scholars squirming and
writhing." "
A later article in the same series gives a lurid description of a
Kansas^ City dance hall, "where several hundred young girls and
boys shimmied and toddled in a haze of cigarette smoke. Youth
here was not beautiful. It was prematurely aged, pale, seamy of
yisage, crafty of eye. The place was an academy of the
titiderworld."
The anonymous professor whose comments in the Atlantic
Monthly (February, 1925) we referred to earlier, is inclined to
view* the present with more perspective. "A hundred years ! ago the
, waltz was a scandal, sixty years ago it was possible to waltz with
(actiial or plighted), brothers, or cousins, but not with
-, Cdlfe& of the City of New York, March, 1925, Vol. 1-3,
t^ter Ybur^r Generation in Peril," op. cit.
- \* 0p. h
American Youth After World War I 65
outsiders. Fifteen years ago the tango afforded another scandal,
but the new dances by now are becoming a matter of course again."
A peculiarity mad craze of the twenties was the dance marathon.
This was imported from England about 1923. Couples dragged
themselves around a dance floor for ten, twenty, thirty hours and
longer. One fellow, leaving the floor, died of exhaustion. The
press must be given most of the credit for stimulating such contests.
Youth were more victims than promulgators.
An indication that some young people didn t take either the
discussion or the dancing too seriously is found in this bit from the
newspaper of a Brooklyn high school in 1923 r 44
The modern dance
Is no dance
In the first place
And
When youVe finally learned it
It is not modern
Anymore.
The second form of amusement to come under attack was the
moving picture. A college dean found the movies the source^ of
many disturbing ideas. "Is there any human weakness, folly, vice,
or crime, any horror of life or terror of the grave, that they have not
pursued to satiety in both text and picture and watched upon the
vivid screen? Vamps and cavemen and petting/ yeggmen and
stool-pigeons and passing the queer/ white mule* and snow*
if you, being an old fogy, are not dear about these terms, ask the
first boy or girl!"* 5
A third great and expanding area of youth interest was sport.
Baseball had become big business before the war, and with the
"fixing" of the World Series in 1919, took on some of the corruption
fanuEar in otiier profitable enterprises. Nevertheless the 1921
World Series* broke records for attendance and gate receipts.
Nearfy ten million persons each year paid admission to major league
ball games. In small towns, basketball was the chief center of
interest from fall to spring. Btssinessmen would close their stores
and drive in an impressive noisy caravan to back their local teaman
some hard-fought tournament. Boys of high school age in America
have never been so lionized by virtue of any other achievement as
they have been for pkying on winning basketball teams. Other
** The Ere&mtan, October, 1923.
op. tit.
66 Youth After Conflict
sports were not neglected. The fall season began with football
games before the smell of burning leaves, perfumed the cool autumn
air. Training for college football and often for high school teams
as well began as early as midsummer. Attendance at college
football games doubled in the period 1921-30. Hockey attracted
increasing crowds. Indoor swimming meets were held wherever
there were pools. In the spring came track meets. Tennis courts
and golf courses were built in small towns as well as in the parks of
great cities. Between 1916 and 1923 the number of public golf
courses in the United States increased from 743 to 1,903, a rise of
more than 150 per cent. Public tennis courts in Chicago doubled
in number from 1915 to 1930. "
The Lynd s found sport news had increased in the/ leading local
papers of Middletown from 4 per cent of all news in 1890 to 16 per
cent in 1923. Youth organizations added to the program. Soon
after the war was over a leader in girls work wrote : 4r
A variety of outdoor activities for girls clubs are suggested:
hikes, picnics, games, athletics, , military drill, gardening. The
former motor corps girls can take old folks home inmates out
for drives. They can give picnics for children. They can use
the money they make from dramatic shows to buy equipment for
local playgrounds.
Various public and private camps enrolled more than a million
youth each summer. American youth in the 1920 s probably had
more opportunity to play than has characterized any group of young
people in any country at any earlier period.
POPULAR SONGS ! ,
The songs of the twenties both expressed and helped to create; the
attitudes of youth. There had been ragtime music earlier, the "St.
Louis Blues" dated from 1914, and popular love songs are found in
almost every age, but after World War I the products of Tin Pan
Alley became more widespread, more numerous, and more frankly
erotic. The following list makes no pretense to completeness, but is
fairly representative of the better-known tunes. Many of these
titles will bring back a moving memory to those who were young in
the twenties.
**Data from Steiner s chapter on "Recreation" in Recent Social Trends in
the United States, Report of the President s Research Committee on Social
Trends (New York: Whittlesey House, 1930), p. 926.
47 Helen J. Ferris, "The American Girl s New Citizenship," Ladies Home
Journal, April, 1919.
American Youth After World War I 67
1920
Old Man Jazz
Japanese Sandman
Margie
Look for the Silver Linning
I was So Young (You Were So Beautiful)
Sally
Whispering
Broadway Rose
1921
I Never Knew
Ain t We Got Fun
Sheik of Araby
The Last Dance of the Ball (Three O Clock in the Morning)
Love Nest
Two Sweet Lips
1922
Say It While You re Dancing
Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean
Kiss in the Dark
Hot Lips
Carolina in the Morning
Bee s Knees
Running Wild
What llI Do?
Angel Child
Wonderful One
1923
Yes! We Have No Bananas
Oh Lady Be Good
Rose Marie
Crying for You
You ve Got to See Mama Every Night
I Won t Say I Will, but I Won t Say I Wont
1924
Prisoner s Song
Yes Sir, That s My Baby
Sweet Georgia Brown
Indian Love Call
Song of Songs
68 Youth After Conflict
Tea for Two
I ll See you in My Dreams
Man I Love
Let Me Linger Longer in Your Arms
Burning Kisses
1925
Show Me the Way to Go Home
Collegiate
Sweet Man
Sleepy Time Gal
Who
1926
Valencia
Tonight You Belong to Me
I Need Lovin*
When Day Is Done
Desert Song
That s Why Darkies Were Born
Baby Face
Always
1927
Or Man River
My Blue Heaven
Russian Lullaby
Kiss Before Dawn
Rio Rita
Can t Help Lovin Dat Man
Varsity Drag
Me and My Shadow
Girl of My Dreams
Watching the World Go By
Why Do I Love You?
1928
Ramona
You re the Cream in My Coffee
Crazy Rhythm
That s My Weakness Now
You ll Never Know
Lover Come Back to Me
Makfn Whoopee
: I Faw Down an Go Boom
American Youth After World War I 69
1929
Broadway Melody
Stardust
Moanin Low
Am I Blue
Sunnyside Up
If I Had a Talking Picture of You
You Were Meant for Me
Love Made a Gypsy out of Me
Song of the Vagabond
Pagan Love Song
Deep Night
When It s Springtime in the Rockies
Mean to Me
Body and Soul
Why Was I Born?
You ve Got That Thing
Just a Gigolo
One striking fact is that the war promptly dropped out of
consciousness. "Smiles" and "Tipperary" had become old folk
songs to be sung around campfires along with "The End of a
Perfect Day."
Special styles of singing are associated with some of these tunes.
The "blues" developed in the late twenties to the "torch songs" of
Helen Morgan and Libby Holman. When Helen Kane sang "That s
my Weakness Now," she put in "boop-a-doops/ 5 Earlier, crowds
of young people had naughtily been singing "Sheik of Araby" and
inserting, after each phrase, "without a shirt."
Folks songs had something of a vogue. The Y.W.C.A. issued
two volumes containing folk songs from many lands. Carl
Sandburg brought out his "American Songbag" in 1927, The more
obstreperous youth turned to such collections as "Songs My Mother
Never Taugbt Me," or "My Pious Friends and Drunken
Companions/*
SMOKING AMB BLINKING
Swearing was part of life hi the army or navy. Many a boy who
had been brought up to avoid profanity was surprised at his own
language after he d spent a few months in camp. The effect on
the young people back home has already been indicated. High
school boys and girls found themselves slipping into language that
disconcerted prim elders.
70 Youth After Conflict
A rather similar adjustment to smoking and drinking can be
traced. Cigarettes became, for the boys in the trenches, one of the
few available diversions or consolations. Men who would not have
gone into a saloon back home found wine and strong drinks
customary during their leaves in Paris.
The use of tobacco and alcohol was further stimulated, after the
war, by extensive propaganda. The prohibition battle and its
consequences will be discussed further in the following chapter.
One obvious fact, however, was that the liquor lobby was well-
financed in its campaign for repeal. A multitude of suggestions
reached young people, implying that while the servicemen were
overseas the bluenosed prohibitionists had snatched away some of
the chief delights of life. Stories and movies included the
bootlegger and the little restaurants where drinks called "tea"
would be served in a cup to the initiated. Not to know a place and
a name to mention as a password was to be naive, and what aspiring
youngster could cheerfully accept that appellation?
The campaign to promote cigarette smoking was more open and
aboveboard. It ranked as legitimate advertising. The gradual
introduction of the woman smoking is a classic in the history of
propaganda. At first all the ad s were of men smoking. Then
appealing adjectives were applied to cigarettes, suggesting
appropriate feminine qualities: gentle, mild, delicate, delightful.
Numerous billboards 1 showed beautiful women and the package
but no smoking. Then women appeared in pictures where men
smoked. Gradually they moved nearer the cigarette. A
memorable transition was the caption : "Blow some my way." The
woman wreathed in smoke was then so close that it was not clear
who was smoking. Another classic of advertising history was the
Chesterfield picture of grandma in her rocker, shawl over her
shoulders, peering back through her old-fashioned spectacles to be
sure no one was watching as she reached for the package. The
caption was : "Land sakes ! I do believe I ll try one."
Meanwhile there was considerable stir over smoking on college
campuses. Before the war, many colleges did not permit even their
men students to smoke on college grounds. At the University of
Illinois, in 1922, the girls demanded that one of thdr classmates
be expelled from the dormitory because she had smoked. Eastern
colleges became tolerant of smoking a bit before most mid-western
institutions did. Women were permitted to smoke in private
before smoking in public was sanctioned. A woman smoking in
a restaurant in New York in 1922 was still a sight to attract
considerable curious attention.
American Youth After World War I 71
When, in 1925, Bryn Mawr lifted the ban and set aside a room
where smoking was permitted, President Park explained that less
than half of her girls smoked, but that public opinion no longer
sanctioned inflexible rules against smoking. There was quite a stir
over this radical move ; the Literary Digest filled a page with quoted
newspaper comments, pro and con (December 19, 1925).
Most illuminating is the record in total cigarette consumption in
the United States.
TABLE 2. CIGARETTE CONSUMPTION IN THE U. S.
Data are from a graph prepared by the American Tobacco Company.
Year Total in round numbers
1910 10 billion cigarettes
1915 20 "
1920 50 "
1925 75 "
1930 120 "
1940 175
Before the First World War there was only a gradual increase,
comparable to that in the population. From 1915 to 1930 the
consumption shot up, increasing by 500 per cent, and the curve is
still rising.
There seems to be no evidence that the younger generation had
any lead over their elders in either drinking or smoking. The
wealthier classes were able to indulge more freely and conspicuously,
and this added some prestige to such practices. It was inevitable
that many young people would want to try smoking and, on occasion,
see what a "spiked" punch or a pocket flask could add to a celebration.
A few flagrant offenders, who might have been contemptuously
dismissed from notice if they had been older men or women, were
probably responsible for much of the criticism of the younger
generation. What seems to have happened was a gradual lifting
of the taboos in the culture, not a mad rush of youth toward
debauchery.
DELINQUENCY *
The supposed wildness of youth culminated in delinquency and
crime. There were several indications of what the press easily made
into a "crime wave." During the war, in many cities a few
youngsters, earning money and free from the supervision of parents
and school, were involved in scandalous escapades. Immediately
72 Youth After Conflict
after the war, with bootlegging the most promising way to get rich
quick, neighborhood, gangs became allied with "rings" of a big
business. Chicago gangsters became famous and some of them
were young men; many had "molls." The buildup culminated in
the murder of little Bobby Franks by two adolescent boys from
w,ealthyf Chicago families. Leopold and Loeb confessed, eventually,
that they had committed the crime for a thrill. There were vague
overtones of sex perversion. The case was sensational and
afforded impressive evidence of the degeneracy of profligate youth.
The sober facts are much less striking. Delinquency figures are
always difficult to interpret. Different cities classify crimes and
offenders on different bases. Even within the same city, delinquency
apparently goes up when law enforcement officials take a notion to
punish a group of offenders they have previously ignored or merely
reprimanded. It is ironical -that sometimes a drop in delinquency
figures is accompanied by laxity in enforcement and actual increase
of the objectional behavior. However, the mast careful interpre
tation of the available evidence fails to support the thesis of a wave
of delinquency after the war.
An editorial in the New Republic ** begins :
It seems to be an accepted axiom nowadays that our young people
are going to the devil. Press, pulpit, and publicist are agreed
that youth is wild and getting wilder. The college boy and his
flapper friend, it is charged, drink, pet, and are disrespectful to
their elders; while the neighborhood gangster, aided by his
youthful sweetie, and stimulated by the false courage of heroin
or cocaine, robs and murders with casual calmness long before
he is out of his teens.
Reference is- made to the famous Leopold-Loeb case. Figures
from fourteen cities of the Unitedj States, compiled at that time by
the Children s Bureau, are cited by the editorial to show how the
facts fail to fit the excited fears.
In nearly all of these fourteen cities the delinquency rates per
1,000 children of delinquency age were decidedly lower in 1924
or 1925 than in 1915. ^ There was a not very surprising increase
during the war period/ 1917 to and including 1919, but in; most
cities the downward trend thereafter was marked.
In Chicago before the war, rates were five or six per annum per
1,000, and in the period 1920-25, three or four per annum per 1,000.
Wild is Wild Youth?" New Republic, (1926), 46: 318-19.
American Youth After World War I
73
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74 Youth After Conflict
In New York the rate dropped from 11.1 before the war to 6.8
afterward.
Admission to institutions for delinquents (other than prisons)
would naturally have increased as modern penal methods became
accepted, but the rate actually dropped from 171.7 per 100,000
children in 1910 to 156.5 per 100,000 children in 1923. Other
data show no tendency for the average or modal age of crime to
decrease during the postwar era.
Walter A. Lunden made a report on delinquency in Allegheny
County, Pennsylvania, 1918-23, finding no consistent trend.
TABLE 4. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN ALLEGHENY COUNTY 6
Delinquency .
Year Boys Girls Total Business Index
111.3
101.7
109.6
78.7
92.1
114.7
Judge Franklin P. Hoyt of the Children s Court of New York
pointed out that the figures for 191?. on juvenile delinquency are
greater than for 1916 but less than for 1913 or 1915. He, Thieved
this due mainly to the social unrest of the times but said that "the
increase cannot be regarded as especially significant/ 351 However,
Judge Arnold of Chicago seemed very definitely to feel that the war
influences were very largely responsible for the increase in juvenile
delinquency in that city. M
The facts make it clear that however "wild" youth may have
seemed to the shocked readers of the Ladles Home Journal, they
were not engaging in activities serious enough to bring them to the
attention of the law.
TAME YOUTH
Comments on the wild youth were news; descriptions of the
conventional boys and girls who did what was expected, were not
50 Walter, A. Lunden, "Incidence of Juvenile Delinquency in the U. S. in
Allegheny County, Pa., 1918-34," The Federatcr, January, 1938.
51 Report of U. S. Department of Labor, 1918, 1919, p. 189.
82 Ibid, p. 189.
American Youth After World War I 75
often recorded. A teacher in an upstate high school in New York
tried out a questionnaire on some 800 students. M He found them
seriously concerned about improving the world. "Underneath the
boy s baseball grin and behind the girl s party laugh, it appears there
is an idealism overlooked by a myopic older generation."
Their first choice for "ideal character 1 was Lincoln; Florence
Nightingale came second. "Mother" had fifty votes. They reported
special pride, not in dancing, dress, or sports but in school
achievement (173 cases) thrift (217 cases) and helping others (283
cases). The writer concluded that they were "sober, practical, and
conservative enough to make any good radical despair of the future
of the world/ 7 The course of America twenty-fives years later
suggests that this teacher s observations had some basis in fact.
As one phase of our study, we undertook an exploration of several
high school and college publications in which young people of the
1920 ? s expressed their ideas in essays, stories, and poems. The
sample is not unselected, for the faculty exercises a guiding hand
and sometimes a censoring blue pencil on such school papers. On
the other hand, experience has shown that when young people feel
very strongly some different point of view from that of their elders,
one of the first places where it becomes apparent is in the
imaginative and argumentative products of those leaders of thought
who are more readily articulate.
In the Erasmian, a well-edited paper of a large co-educational high
school in Brooklyn, we studied all the published verse during the
early 1920 s. The following list of annotated titles is entirely
representative, and will indicate how conventional these young
writers were:
"A Plea" (want to be a free-roving gypsy)
"A Field Romance" (a butterfly and a flower)
"Summer Memories" (disrupt studying)
"The Tradition" (settlement and migration)
"Crimson Leaves in Autumn" (fall)
"The Song of the Brook" (murmur and babble)
"To the Bells" (Christmas is near)
"Lines to My Dog" (he loves me faithfully)
"Tomorrow" (plan in terms of the future)
"To Somneus" (tribute to God of Sleep)
"A Wish" (would like to visit China)
53 William I. Engle, "Undangerous Ages: Some Arresting Discoveries
Concerning the Ideals of our Supposedly Wild Young People," Outlook
(1922), 130: 379-80.
76 Youth After Conflict
"Cornet Player" (makes enemies of neighbors)
"The Stars" (on New Year s eve)
"The Embers" (memories)
"The Hate Vow" (hero sworn to revenge relents)
"At the Beach" (still haunted by teachers)
"Your Best" (persevere)
"June Latin at Erasmus" (hard to study in June)
"My Boyhood Friend" (we ve drifted apart)
"Home, Sweet Home" (movies and distance lend enchantment)
"The Last Shot" (soldier dies at Armistice)
"Regrets" (take heed, don t wait until too late)
"Mother" (can always depend on her)
"Daddy" (uncle took place of a father who died. Wise, kind,
patient, loving.)
"Our School" (best in the land)
"The Vision" (a miser decided to do good)
"Model Little Farmer" (will be good to his children, not strict
as his father was)
"The Harbor Light of Home" (statue of liberty)
"Somewhere Isle" (island of perfect happiness)
If we turn to stories, we find no more indication of rebellion.
In the Bluebird, published by Julia Richman High School, a public
school for girls in New York City, considerable stress was laid on
girl heroines who made careers for themselves, but there was
usually a happy ending with husband, home and children at least
in view. Valentine Day in 1918 brought the usual romantic love
stories. An editorial in that issue comments, "It is deplorable to
see young women so bent on practical education that they forget
refinement and good breeding." A gentle voice was recommended,
signifying gentility of character. In the January, 1919, issue, we
find "The Making of a Good Business : Woman" with emphasis on
punctuality, neatness, courtesy, and other familiar virtues. In that
issue, one slight indication of the new feminism appears in an article
called, "Bashful Beaus Need a Boost." In 1922, a "personality"
drive was on, to develop charming feminine virtures. Each section
teacher kept a "personality book" for recording revealing incidents.
One story told of a girl giving up her seat to an elderly man. As
she was leaving the car, a handsome young man slipped her a note,
which to her surprise, turned! out to be an anonymous praise of her
character. Christmas, 1922, brought a story of the Christmas Carol
type urwhieh a "Scroogeous" villain was befriended by a child, and
so transformed.
American Youth After World War I 77
A story in the Erasmian, 1922, leads to a contrast between the
fortunate lot of boys in school as compared with the poor boy who
has had to ! be out selling papers. "Music Hath Charms" is the
romanticizing of a girl about the flute player in the orchestra; it
is quite a letdown when she meets him. An editorial: "Don t be
Discouraged, Persevere !" A story : the girl writes good music, but
can t make a perfect song. It turns out that in order to write the
perfect song she must be happily married and have a baby. Another
story, "Old Houses," is a pitiful account of a girl who gives up
marrying the man she loves in order to take care of her father and
a crippled brother. Parents were usually idealized in these high
school stories. At Christmas : an article on Christmas in other lands
and advice to remember distant friends at least once a year.
January, 1923, begins with conventional New Year resolutions
and an exhortation to remember that people are often judged by the
quality of English they use. A story, "The Candle Star," is a sad
tale of a sister who waited faithfully for a brother who never
returned. "It Happened in South America" was written before
the "Good Neighbor" emphasis of the late 1930 s and tells the
predicament of a young man who must assassinate the President
and finds himself in love with the president s beautiful daughter.
A good symbol of these young people, so different from the
"flaming youth" stereotype, is a cartoon in thd Erasmian showing a
sweet, blond, naive-looking girl, with modest dress and long braids
and the caption, "The Kind of Freshie We Like to See."
The Julia Richman paper carried reviews by students of books
they d enjoyed reading. Among the authors frequently mentioned
were: Joseph C. Lincoln, John Galsworthy, Gene Stratton Porter,
Zane Grey, James Oliver Curwood, Joseph Conrad, Mary Roberts
Rinehart, and Jane Austen.
Three college publications, The Spectator, of Columbia College,
the Mercury^ and the Lavender, both of College of the City of New
York, were similarly analyzed. The Spectator in 1920 was giving
considerable space to the Student Volunteer Convention at Des
Moines, A delegate reported "what a changed face this old world
would have if the spirit of service were general" He told of his
newly awakened admiration for some of the great missionaries who
had addressed the Convention and observed "while we were in school
philosophizing, these men whom we had laughed at were
accomplishing something for human betterment." A few issues
later, a double column editorial deplores lack of emphasis on
character building; the writer asks why professors can t teach
78 Youth After Conflict
the "ethics of decent living." (This reminds the writer that the
valedictorian for the College of Letters and Science at the University
of Wisconsin in 1920 spoke for the graduating -class on "Moral
Education/ )
The Spectator went ahead in following* issues to campaign for an
honor system at Columbia. In 1921, in the Spectator, and editorial
deals directly with the influence of the flapper style dress an dancing
on the morals of young America. "The college, as part of the
community, must and does live according to the morals of the
community. Were moral codes established successfully and wisely
before the student entered school, college would not cause an
upheaval of these ideals. . . . College students lead as clean, sane, and
wholesome a life as is conceivable/
Another 1921 editorial reprimands "college pessimists" and urges
optimism as the key to success in college and in life.
In 1919, an article in the Mercury entitled "The Ascent of Man"
deplores youth that tries to act older, more sophisticated, and more
blase. Smoking and talking about adventures with women should be
regarded with a sense of humor as a Bohemian affectation. A 1920
article urges understanding instead of cynicism. An allegory also
1920 tells of a waitress who is thought by a child to be a princess.
The child asks where her castle is and the waitress says a witch
called Poverty has destroyed it. The child promises to slay that
witch when he grows older. An article in 1921 reports a
summer working in an office, and emphasized how boring such
routines become. Another deals with the daily chores of a plumber.
In 1925, at the peak of the youth rebellion, the Lavender carried a
five-page article, "In Praise of Puritanism," asking appreciation of
the contribution of the American tradition to "seriousness" and
"intensity" of living.
With examples like these before us, we can appreciate that the
attacks on youth called forth many vigorous defenses. A
student editor in one of the Literary Digest symposia" wrote:
The girls of the present day are as good as, and as bad as, the
girls of any generation. They have their fads and foibles, as
their mothers had before them and as their children will have
after them. But as a whole, they are just a little more sensible,
we think, a little more frank and honest with themselves and with
their friends, and a little more able to take care of themselves
without any, preaching from the smug members of the opposite
sex, than they have ever been before.
"Is the Younger Generation in Peril?" op. cit.
American Youth After World War I 79
In some of the comment there is the beginning of a positive
appreciation of the birth of a new spirit which might become a
valuable asset in the improvement of our society.
One wonders whether the outspoken candor of young people
nowadays, their frank comradeship, the equality with which they
give and take, may be only the first exuberance of a new and
more honest attitude toward life. w
Again :
The revolt of the younger generation is the natural and
wholesome reaction to an age which evaded reality, a revolt
against the patent absurdity of Victorianism. Beauty and
Idealism, the two eternal heritages of youth, are still alive. It is
a generation which is constituting the leaven in the rapid
development of a new and saner morality.
%
An editorial in the Nation tries to take the viewpoint of men
like Anatole France and George Bernard Shaw who are always
young in spirit and who "watch youth at their wild games with joy
thaf they are so strong. . . . The instincts of youth are precious as
nothing else is precious. Youth, viewed broadly, is always right
Viewed thus broadly, conservatism is the element of death and
radicalism is the element of life."
Herbert Croly concludes, " "The old have at least as much to
learn from the variability of youth as the young have from the
conventions of age."
Dr. William E. Gardner, then secretary of the department of
religious education in the Episcopal Church, declared: M "Youth
today has a sincerity of purpose and a will and a determination to
do good that has not been surpassed in any period of the world s
history. We are standing," he said, "in the presence of one of the
great youth movements of history ; we do wrong to condemn youth,
to decry it, or to suspect it"
Looking back today, with the advantage of seeing all about us the
men and women who were adolescent in the period after World War
I, we realize that both the great apprehensions and the great
expectations were overdone. The youth who were writing the
trite poems and stories and moral essays in their high school and
college papers turned out to be about what those efforts portended.
M Woolston, op. cit.
""Youth Is Always Right," Nation (1922), 114: 307-8.
57 H. Croly, "What Ails American Youth?" New Republic (1925), 41:
301-3.
58 "The Flapper As a Religious Force," Literary Digest (1923), 77:34.
80 Youth After Conflict
They were not hell-bent for dissipation, nor were they flaming
prophets of new age. The puzzle is how they acquired their bad
reputation.
WHY THE EXCITEMENT?
The evidence seems to show that no acute or widespread changes
were taking place in the moral standards of postwar youth. That
leaves us with the problem of explaining why such furor over a
fiction? The question ;is asked by a writer in the Ladies Home
Journal several t years before that magazine became the leading
purveyor of the myth. 09 The article ; reports very little difference
between the debutantes and college students of the contemporary and
the previous generation :
Why then, this to-do, these shudders, this general hue and cry
about the dreadful decadence of present-day youth, their shrill
disobedience, their scorn of convention, their rebellion against
precedent and denial of any authority save their own desires
and pleasures all of which are alleged to be unworthy and
perhaps improper? Why, when two or three elders are
gathered together, does the conversation invariably turn
on such topics as the way young girls dress nowadays,
the dissipation of young men, the way young people
dance, their frank speech, their general horrific wildness?
His answer . is twofold: (a) the few who are wild get the
publicity, and (b)" parents forget or ignore the exploits of their own
adolescence.
One factor which cannot be ignored is the postwar problem of
newspapers and magazines. Wild news suddenly became tame.
Some excitement was needed. This may have had a great deal to
do with what the Headmaster of Phillips Academy called, "the
stock stories and standardized horrors about the wildness of modern
youth/ One college editor commented, a "Some universities, it
will be noticed, receive much more unfavorable publicity than do
others. Investigation will usually prove that these institutions are
located near, or in, large cities where papers with a yellow tendency
are published/
"-; ^ Reese Carmichael, Those Dreadful Young Persons: A Popular Myth
Orf the Present Day," Ladies Home Journal, May, 1921.
. M "Alfred E. Stearns, Literary Digest (1922), 73:38.
Digest (1922), 73:34-8.
American Youth After World War I 81
Once started, such a fad becomes a "natural" for any preacher
or dean who might like to see his name in the headlines. A Spectator
editorial observes: 84
It seems to have become the mode for publicity-seeking persons
to burst into oratory against the contemporary system for higher
education, for the latest dances, the vogue in clothing, and bobbed
hair. No matter how obscure the individual may be, let him but
utter a scathing tirade against the present order and the halo of
fame falls above him.
Portrayals of youthful escapades have a circular effect. They
create what they describe. Youth is always in quest of a role
it takes the one that is offered it. "So much has been said, so much
written, that boys and girls are fully aware that they are a problem
and they enjoy the role. The flapper of fiction, plays, movies, and
newspapers offers a vivid pattern of modern young life and creates
a certain bravado and the necessity for living up to current
opinion." "
A debutante comments, "the more objectionable ones among 1 us
love to be talked about and, written about. Notoriety is the breath
of life to the girls and young men who like to shock and- scandalize
their openmouthed elders quite as much as they like to attract each
other by theif rather barbaric wiles." M
In this connection we recall the psychological insight of a story
written by a high school girl for the Bluebird in 1922. A flapper
sat on the curb of a busy downtown street, crying. A small crowd
gathered. A newspaper cameraman, happening by, takes a picture.
The heroine then walks happily away. "It has always been my
ambition to have my picture in the paper."
The need of the press for excitement, and the response of
pttbllclty-seekers, youtig and old, were part of the reason for the
crasade. Another must be related to the repressed wishes of the
censorious adults. "The chief fault is our own," said one com
mentator, 11 * "partly because we are responsible for smashing the
world, and partly because we ourselves always wanted to walk
and talk, audacious and tmdotlied, but possessed neither the courage
nor the frankness of otir cocmctioas. * Anne Temple, ** herself
^Spectator March B, 1922, p. Z
83 Woolstcm, op. cit.
* "Goodbye dear Mr. Gnindy, 1 * by a last year s debutante, Atlantic Monthly
(1921), 126: 642-6.
^Kirkland, op. cit.
w Temple, op. tit.
82 Youth After Conflict
one of the younger generation, psychologizes the elders in this
fashion: "This tremendous interest in the younger generation is
nothing more nor less than a preoccupation with the nature of that
generation s sex life. What people really want to know about us,
if they are honest enough to admit it, is whether or not we are
perverted, whether or not we are loose, whether we are what they
call immoral ; and their curiosity has never been completely satisfied/
There is muph in the tone of the comments of the time, from
Sunday supplements of Hearst papers, to the Ladies Home Journal,
and pulpit) oratory, which fits Miss Temple s explanation.
George Albert Coe is associated with the thesis that the adult
world was projecting its failing onto youth, and blaming youth for
behavior quite characteristic of the parental generation. His What
Ails Our Youth?" was an able and widely studied argument for
this position. The elders made the present society the present
society made modern youth. A breakdown of standards could be
found in adult practice before those standards were repudiated by
youth. In a later chapter we shall explore the social trends of the
twenties, but at this point it is important to note that the difference
between adult behavior and youth behavior was considerably
exaggerated in most articles about youth.
"Flapperism did not originate spontaneously among the younger
set.*. it was handed to them by their elders," wrote Freeman
Tilden. cs "In the use of all stimulants alcohol, coffee, and
liobacco we must confess that the young generation offends less
than the elder." 69 Mr. McMahon, in his series of articles on jazz-mad
youth, found faculty members often setting the example in smoking,
drinking, and even modern dancing. 70 The passion of the
middle-aged to appear young was a contributing factor. There is
no youthful excess like that of the adults who are trying to give the
impression of youth. Such an effort tends always to caricature.
"The wartime generation has no intention of growing up, and what
is worse, the generation just ahead of it has voluntarily demoted
itself and has, with all the disgusting coyness of which forty is
capable, stepped back into the ranks of youth. . . .Mother and even
grandma dress like flappers." 71 Miss Benson accuses the "fake
87 Coe, op. tit.
68 Freeman Tilden, "Flapperdames and Flapperoosters," Ladies Home
Journal^ May, 1923.
69 "The Young 1 Person," op. cit.
70 Ladies* Home Journal, February, 1922.
71 Benson, op. cit.
American Youth Ajter World War I 83
younger generation" of committing most of the excesses of drinking
and of sex behavior of which the adolescents are falsely accused.
A very pertinent editorial in the CorneUian, the student newspaper
of Cornell College at Mount Vernon, Iowa, n asks :
Who runs the resorts where the shameless parties take place?
Who is in charge of the booze-smugglers who get into this
country the liquor which graces the hip pockets of the modern
youth? Who controls the indecent amusements and publication
of obscene literature? Who writes the books and stories depicting
life so lurid that younger generation goes out of its way to
imitate their vices? Why, it is the older generation. If we are
going to condemn, let us get down to fundamental causes.
Criticism from the generation that was itself so tarred could not
help but widen the gap between generations. We turn now to an
exploration of some real differences between youth before and youth
after the First World War. It is natural to find a rejection of the
right of the adult world to demand loyalty and implicit trust, at the
head of our list
THE REVOLT AGAINST AUTHORITY
Basic among the social attitudes found in youth after Word War
I was an assertion of independence, a refusal to accept traditional
authority, and a zest for experimentation. It was the attitude of
pioneers endeavoring to work out something better than the models
offered by the past.
This is not a wholly new attitude for American youth. This
nation was born in a revolt led, in large part, by young men under
thirty. Henry Adams, in the classic report 7 * of the education of an
American youth of the nineteenth century, wrote: "Resistance to
something was the law of New England nature; the boy looked
out on the world with the instinct of resistance."
The 1920*s brought a more vigorous, conscious and explicit refusal
to follow the old paths. Of course there were still plenty of
conformists. Our review of school papers reminds us that the
iconolasts were a small minority. Most children, even in the
tumultuous twenties, still acquired from parents and teachers their
ideas. of right and wrong. Indeed, as we shall see, the readiness of
enlightened parents and teachers to place the reins in the hands of
72 "Who Teaches Vke to Youth?" Literary Digest (1925), 85:31-2.
73 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: 1906).
84 Youth After Conflict
youth may have had a considerable part in fostering youth s
independence. In such cases what looked like independence might
have been a special kind of conformity. Not a few adults were in
rebellion against the state of affairs of the time, and youth could
reject traditional adult standards while basking in the approval of
other adults.
Youth saw itself, however, as blazing new trails. One who
signed herself "A Last Year s Debutante" wrote an answer to a
criticism of youth published in the Atlantic Monthly by a "Mr.
Grundy." 74
You see, this generation wants to find things out at first hand.
We have been taught so many things that have been proved not
to be true, that we have naturally grown distrustful, and are
perhaps apt to- dismiss a fact as fancy just because it has, been
handed down to us as tradition, and we have not discovered it for
ourselves. . . . We are experimenting with vital things and we are
bound to make mistakes; only dear Mr. Grundy, don t let your
contemporaries judge us without realizing the seething, bubbling,
changing electrical world into which we have been flung.
Parents are seen by another writer TO as temperamentally opposed 1
to this exploratory, adventurous attitude of youth. The middle-aged
she finds conservative, pessimistic, reluctant to experiment, and
aware through bitter experience of how little can be accomplished.
These antipathetic attitudes "raise nothing less than a flame of
opposition from the young. The adolescent is rash, optimistic,
venturesome. He is sure on all subjects within his ken and perfectly
willing to experiment on any without his ken. He neither can, nor
desires to, profit by the experience of others. He wants to discover
for himself whether the paint sign on life is genuine He will
not take the word of another for any of the intoxicating possibilities
the world holds out before him."
Sometimes youth rebels, but usually it is easier to ignore.
For all practical purposes youth lives in a world of its own,
confident there is no other of any account. Once it fought its
elders; now it leaves them out. Once it revolted; now it goes
its own way Their attitude toward us is one of entire
inattention. It is useless for us to criticize them, though of
course we do. "
w ^Goodbye Dear Mr. Grundy" op. cit.
w Cornelia J. Cannon, "The Crabbing of Youth by Age," Atlantic Monthly,
(1923), 134: 787-96.
T ?Mary A. Hamilton, "Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid?" Atlantic
Monthly, (1026), 138: 197.
American Youth After World War I 85
A significant fact appears in a study of traits which high school
pupils in a typical Middle Western community most wished to have
in their parents." For mother, the first choice was good
homemaking ; for father it was that he spend more time with them.
But for both parents, the trait given next highest value was "respect
the child s opinions." Youth in the mid-twenties were unhappy over
the fact that so often adults dismissed their attitudes as "childish"
or "half-baked." But sometimes those who would have been glad
to listen were given no opportunity.
An oldster who is not unsympathetic and who envies youth "their
youth, their health, their energy, their opportunities to do things,
their unbounded expectations, their enthusiasm, their eagerness to
get at life, tear it apart and put it together again in better shape, . .
their independence, [and] their cocky assurance," regrets that they
still have no use for him. "They don t want any help. That s the
saddest part of it for me to have to stand aside, helpless, with
nothing left but to watch and hope." ra
The re-enforcement which the young people need they seek and
find within their own age group. "They feel that they are still
plastic, and they naturally wish to keep free of the mould. . . . Their
elder s tiresome notions. . .they are free in their own soft, silent
fashion to reject. At the same time they are subservient to the
ideas of this youthful herd they are a part of. Conspicuous
individualists they definitely are not." 79
Young people respond that they turn to one another because no
one else understands and sympathizes. "We are the younger
generation. The war tore away our spiritual foundations. . . . The
times have made us older and more experienced than you were at
oictr age. . . . Youth has many disillusionments. And youth does not
understand. There is no one to turn to no one but the rest of
youth whidi is as perplexed and troubled with its probems as
ourselves. Everywhere we read and hear the criticism and distrust
of older peopk toward ns. It forms ae insurmountable barrier
between us. How can we turn to them ?" *
A rather special problem was that of the children born in
America to parents who had spent their childhood in the Old World.
The great wave of young immigrants coming to our shores about
the turn of the century, were fathers* and mothers of the youth of
71 R. S. and H. Lynd, Middietown (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.,
1929).
78 Stewart, op. cit.
n Olivia H. Dunbar, "Spring of the Year," Yale Review (1921), 10: 565-75.
80 Page, op. cit.
86 Youth After Conflict
the 1920 J s. Several of the stories in the New York high school
magazines which we reviewed dealt with the conflict in ideas between
Italian born parents and American reared children. Parents who
especially valued their authority and who were especially suspicious
of freedom for adolescents, found themselves with very little
authority in a world which offered their children dangerous
freedoms. The battle was constant and furious.
One fairly widespread misinterpretation held that youth seeks
merely to be different from the parents. A natural conclusion
would be that if parents are conservative, youth will be radical ; but
that if parents are radical, youth will turn conservative in protest.
This seems to be the idea in, for example, the following passage :
All that youth ever desires is to be different from- parents, and
in that fact is reassurance. Today it is the fashion of young
people to lay all things bare. They are leaving absolutely nothing
to be revealed. Therefore the only way the next crop of boys
and girls can have their due of revolt is to cover everything up
again. n
The world has seen the generation of which Miss Kirkland was
writing grow old enough to have adolescent children of their own.
We may anticipate the discussion of a later chapter by noting here
that youth of the 1950 s are not moving in the direction she
anticipated. The children of conservative parents often are found
struggling toward freedom, while the children of liberal and radical
homes seldom engage in any such protest against the parental
outlook. There is something at work in this process of intellectual
emancipation which goes deeper than merely being different. The
revolt against authority is a one-way process, not a reversible
reaction.
How did the adult world of the 1920 J s respond to the spirit of
independence and inquiry in youth? A few traditionalists were
alarmed. A meeting of deans of women in girls colleges viewed
with alarm the slogan, "I ll try anything once." 82 A minister
waxed wroth over the irreverence. "A spirit of libertinism is abroad
among our youth. There is little or no respect for parents and
superiors in many of our homes and schools and churches. There
is an ominous absence of reverence for things sacred." M
81 Kirkland, op. tit.
82 "Danger Ahead," Ladies Home Journal, July, 1921.
83 "The Case Against the Younger Generation/ op. tit.
American Youth After World War I 87
The great majority of those who commented, during the I920 1 s>
on youth s new attitude of rejecting authority for independent
experimentation, seemed to find it wholesome and valuable. The
psychiatrist, then director of the National Committee for Mental
Hygiene, said: "Reckless behavior, while undesirable in itself, is
not, in many cases, necessarily a sign of moral depravity, but of a
healthy tendency toward normal adulthood. Some of the wild
things the adolescents do may themselves be wrong, but they are the
symptoms of the emergence of a very desirable factor in the
developmental period of life. 84
The anonymous professor, 85 whom we have quoted before,
expressed his appreciation in a telling sentence: "The quality for
which the world must rely wholly upon the younger generation
or go without altogether is intransigence."
"How do they see us?" asks another spokesman for the adult
world. "As frauds! They see us standing in public for ideas
and ideals which in private mean nothing to us whatever; as
snuffling moralities In talk which we trample in action ; as teaching
them notions by which we neither live not attempt to live ; as saying
one thing and doing another all the time/ w
The sense of guilt in the older generation contributed mightily to
the sense of independence in the younger. Adults who felt the
inadequacy of their existing social order hoped that youth, freed
from the traditional, would do better. It was a kind of
neo-Rousseauism take away the artifices and let Nature show a
better way.
Adults who impose their own thoughts on institutions, and their
worn-out interpretations of life, may be [youth s] greatest peril.
The youth sees through and hates hypocrisy and weak
complacency. YoutW characteristically is aflame with earnestness.
He is the rebel the eager questioner. He loves life and the
people in it. *
A Y.M.CA. secretary wrote : "*
The popular indoor sport of viewing with alarm seems to be
quite misdirected when it concerns itself with the younger
** Frankwood E. Williams, quoted by Watson Davis, "Youth s Revolt
as Science Sees It," Current History (1926), 25:97.
85 "The Young Person," op. cit.
88 Hamilton, op. cit.
87 O. R Lovejoy, "Youth and Some of Its Perils," Missionary Review of
the World (1923), 46:509.
88 Harry J. Baker, "These Young People s Minds," Outlook (1923),
134:670-71.
88 Youth After Conflict
generation. It is the oldsters, whose mental arteries are already
hardening, who give reason for alarm and pity For myself,
I find that these young people are rebellious chiefly in the sense
that they are too idealistic; they have not yet discovered, or are
unwilling to admit, how incorrigible the human animal is. ...
What we need is not so> much a League of Nations as a League
of Young People.
What are social laws but the opinions of the aged hardened into
fact? Revolt from them is as natural as eating. . . . The world of
forty and over is a syndicate for perpetuating the idiocies of
conventionality. . . . The young people are chiefly free, at any rate,
from the prejudices which have attached themselves like
barnacles to the disreputable hulks of middle age. They are
willing to be shown too willing, in fact.
The idealization o-f youth s independence fitted with progressive
education principles which were receiving favorable attention at the
time. Discussion methods were substituted for lectures or
teacher-dominated sessions. This called for a new type of teacher,
both in public schools and in religious organizations. A religious
leader asked far a new type of man to talk the language of returning
veterans :
Our teachers should be those who sympathize with the idealism
of youth, with his belief that the world can be revolutionized,
that progress is possible, and that the Golden Age is on ahead. It
is impossible for the reactionary of our church life to do
effective work with our young men, especially those who have
had the experience of war. The language that they speak, the
atmosphere that they breathe, is very different from that of the
Tory world. "
It called for faith in the potentialities of youth:
Our business as educators is to prepare our pupils gradually for
their coming stage of advancement. We can best do this by
avoiding too much supervision, and thus leaving to them
opportunities of right or wrong action, preparing them for, a far
more unlimited freedom from about thirteen onwards, in the form
of a genuine self-government which our schools hitherto have
scarcely ever adopted. . . . What we have to get away from is our
. perpetual distrust of childhood and youth.
* Robert W. Gammon, "The Church and the Returning Soldier," Religious
Education (1919), 14:5.
w Alice Woods, "Training the Child in Freedom," Religious Education
(1919), 14:1.
American Youth After World War I 89
Youth took over responsibilities beyond those which the prewar
world had offered. A minister working with college youth reported:
Especially since the war that proving time of youth there has
been ^ a revolt on the part of certain official leaders against this
position, and spontaneously have sprung up in widely distant parts
of the country experiments in allowing the young persons to fill
responsible positions in the church. Akin to this movement is
the "student church" where the students are in complete control. w
Typical of the new spirit was a conference on economic
problems held at Evanston, Illinois, under the auspices of the
Methodist Federation for Social Service, in- 1922. The student
delegates occupied the floor and did the discussing and formulation
of program. Experts were present, but were asked to sit in the
gallery and to speak only when the young people requested help on
some point.
A remarkable transformation took place in the Student Volunteer
Convention during the quadrennium 1920-24. The 1920 Convention
at Des Moines was dominated by the grand old heroes: John R.
Mott, Robert E. Speer, Robert P. Wilder, Bishop Francis J.
McConnell, Sherwood Eddy, T. H. P. Sailer, William Adams
Brown, and Fletcher Brockman. The 1924 Convention at
Indianapolis was organized by discussion groups. Harrison S. Elliott
and his associates trained discussion leaders. There were a few
platform addresses, but the Conference had become largely a youth
forum, organized about that new Trinity : Race, War, and Industry.
ASPIRATION TOWAKD EQUALITY
BquaEtarian sentiments increased in the world at large after
World War L In part this may have been stimulated by life in the
services wfeere men from every section and class lived together in
the same barracks 01} dugouts or ships. The system of recruiting
during the Civil War had not disregarded class lines so completely
as was true in 1917-18,
"The war has led the way," said a writer in religious education. 92
"Our young men are coming back to us with new outlooks and
interpretations. They have learned the essentials. They have
"Kenneth I. Brown, When Youth Does Not Sit on the Sidelines, *
Outlook, (1925), 139:107-10.
93 David Philipson, "Man-made Differences, and God-made Resemblances/*
Religious Education (1919), 14:5.
90 Youth After Conflict
discovered that a man s a man for a that, whatever be the religious,
racial or national label that has been manufactured for him by past
generations."
A larger factor was the rise of socialism and communism in
Europe. The period following World War I also showed a
vigorous development of the social gospel in, religious circles. The
Social Creed of the churches had been formulated in 1914.
Rauschenbusch s Christianity and the Social Crisis was published in
1920, his stirring Prayers of the Social Awakening reached a second
edition in 1921. The great steel strike of 1919 found Bishop Francis
J. McConnell the chairman of an investigating committee which
supported the claims of labor. Harry F. Ward published his Gospel
for a Working World in 1918, and his New Social Order in 1919.
Upton Sinclair had exposed the press in his The Brass Check
(1920) ; the colleges in his The Goose-Step (1923) ; and the public
schools in his The Goslings (1924). They Call Me Carpenter, an
interpretation of Jesus as a social reformer, appeared in 1922. The
social gospel was appearing in the literature of Sunday Schools and
church young people s societies.
In youth conferences and summer institutes discussion groups
considered how Christian ideals of brotherho-od might be applied in
industry. The vote for Norman Thomas as socialist candidate for
President, increased in many colleges.
At the same time it appears that only a small minority of youth
was affected by these radical influences. New York has usually
been a center in which leftwing thought has had a better chance than
in other parts of the country, but our examination of student
publications in New York high schools and colleges gives little
evidence of such ideas during the early 1920 J s. In 1920, the
Columbia Spectator 09 protested against an antisocialist editorial in
the New York Times but a large majority of the students that year
supported Harding, and a Spectator editorial at the time of his
inauguration called upon him to deal with "the radical foreign
element in our midst which is digging at the very vitals of American
liberty/* It will be remembered that this was the period of Attorney
General Palmer s raids on the Reds, and that New York State passed
the Lusk laws to get rid of radicals. Apparently most young people
accepted these measures without obvious pro-test. When Upton
Sinclair s The Goose-Step attacked reactionary control of the
colleges, the Cornell Daily Sun criticized him for unfair muckraking
81 Spectator (1920), 64 No. 131, p. 2.
American Youth After World War I 91
and the Columbia Spectator reprinted the rebuke.** A Spectator
headline in 1921 ran "Cumulative Reports Show Colleges Will Aid
R.R. in event of Walkout,"and the story indicated that students were
prepared to serve as strikebreakers. In numerous instances during
the 1920 J s students were enlisted to help break strikes. A deputation
of students went out from Columbia in 1919 to lead discussions in
secondary schools with the avowed purpose "to eradicate ultraradical
tendencies." The Columbia humorous magazine, the Jester,
published in April, 1920, an "Almanack," noting as remarkable for
the date April 4, Sunday, that in 140 A.D., 1,507 A.D. and again in
1,600 A.D, there were no strikes in America on April 4. This jest
was balanced, perhaps, by another item for April 24: "High Cost of
Living Committee decided family of five can live on $22.92 a week,
by watching for sales and by buying underwear cautiously every four
years."
The attitude that strikes are un-American and poverty a joke
might be thought to be a product of the relatively high socio-economic
class from which Columbia college students /come. However, the
outlook at College of the City of New York was similar in all
respects save one. The C.C.N.Y. Mercury carried a number of
jokes revealing that students weren t sure their education would pay
off. One ran:* "Da nolve of dat guy;" complained Jimmy, the
demon office boy, "offerin me six dollars a week. Wha s he think
I am? A college graduate?" A piece of "verse" entitled
"Graduation" * ended :
What are the graduates receiving?
Diplomas.
What for?
Most likely to wrap their lunches in when they go out to work
by the day.
Thus the lower economic background and greater insecurity were
reflected by more strenuous efforts of the individual to escape the
fate of other workers, rather than by an attempt to change social
conditions.
There seemed to be considerable justification for Elizabeth
Benson s 97 observation:
We are not crusaders. Socially speaking, we, the children of
crusaders, are in the rest period which usually follows strenuous
94 Spectator (1923), 67, No. 134, p. 2.
85 Mercury (1919), Vol. 42, p. 3.
"Mercury (1923), Vol. 44, p. 9.
S7 Benson, op. cit.
92 ^ Youth After Conflict
battles. We see, with the clear scornful eyes of youth, the faults
of our present day civilization. . . . We remain aloof. . .persistently
indolent so far as remedial action is concerned. We have
absolutely no desire, to march in parades with banners demanding
this or that The attitude of the younger generation of today is :
"To hell with the masses ! I m going to look for myself and give
my neighbor the same privilege."
Another interpreter contrasts the youth of America with the
youth of Europe who had become more active in political and
economic action. "Why are they [American young people] not
signing themselves Yours for the revolution ?" *
Several elaborate and far-fetched explanations have lately been
made by college professors and others who themselves are living
in the new day. They wonder why eager youth seems to be
co-ntent with the same old sun and moon. It must be that their
system of education is at fault
One reason is that they have some idea of the due, proportion of
things in public life and also a sense of humor. When they hear
excited gentlemen declaim that both parties are now absolutely
"rotten" and useless, they turn an incredulous ear The chief
reason why American, youth is refractory material in the hands of
makers of the new earth is this : Young men do not flame into
revolt against oppression, because they are aware of no oppression.
They will not take part in 1 a movement to attain God-given
liberties, because they know that they already have their full
share of them.
The radicalization of American youth did not occur in the
twenties ; it waited for the depression era.
The pattern of attitudes toward greater racial equality was much
like that observed on the economic front. There was a slow steady
advance in educational opportunity for Negroes. Lynchings had
been on the decline since the 1890 s, with a minor upspurt from
1918 to 1921 when war years and the Ku Klux Klan revival increased
violence.
Religious agencies were discussing race relations with eager and
earnest concern. "The Inquiry into the Christian Way of Life,"
was furnishing discussion guides and books to supplement those
ptit out by the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. The summer conferences
Negro spirituals and often listened to inspiring Negro
Rebellious Youth," School & Society (1920), 12:142-44.
American Youth After World War I 93
speakers. In 1915 the Y.W.C.A. had held an interracial conference
at Louisville, Kentucky, and begun co-operation with what were then
called "affiliating committees" working with Negro girls.
Back in most home towns, however, the picture was one of
continuing and even worsening prejudice. The Ku Klux Klan had
become an important political force in the Middle West. In July,
1919, white soldiers and sailors, inflamed by charges that uppity
blacks had insulted white women, raided Negro homes, killed four
Negroes and wounded seventy. Chicago and New York also
experienced something very like race riots. The Department of
Justice said Soviet Russia was the evil influence behind all this
ferment. In Knoxville, the National Guard was called out against
race rioters. In Omaha a mob stormed the new county building,
burned it, and lynched the Negro they sought. Students from
Baylor University, returning home from some friendly discussions
of race relations at Paul Quinn Negro Normal School in Waco,
Texas, on May 26, 1922, passed a mob busily engaged in lynching
a Negro who turned out to have been innocent of the charge against
him.
An indication of the divided state of opinion in the colleges is an
exchange of comment published in the Columbia Spectator in 1919.
A Negro student wrote a protest over the use, in the paper, of terms
like "darky." An editorial response said the term implied affection
and that the Negro student spoke only for his own prejudices which
other Negroes didn t share.
With so mixed a picture it is hard to generalize. Both the forces
of progress and those of reaction made gains in the postwar years.
Except for a small minority of Christian youth leaders, and a still
tinier group of socialist and communist youth, the younger
generation does not seem to have taken up the cudgels for race
equality- One point is clear tension in the area of race relations
increased after the war, and more attention, for better or for worse,
was given to the problem.
The one aspect of social equality in which youth were actively
concerned was sex equality. Politically this took the form of the
woman suffrage amendment, passed in 1919 and ratified in 192ft
Its many social aspects we have already mentioned as we discussed
the freedom of women to choose careers, to smoke, to swear, to
drink, and to express their sex feeling.
This is the one social change which is clearly reflected in the
writing of the high school students whose publications we reviewed.
94 Youth After Conflict
Editorials in the Bluebird of Julia Richman High School were
constantly reminding girls of the fact that their sex had played an
important part in winning the war, and that new opportunities
were opening up in business. One story told how a brilliant girl
hero had been more clever than the male chief of detectives in
catching a thief. Another girl hero caught a robber by hitting him
with a potato, accurately aimed and forcefully thrown. A tally of
stories showed 60 per cent during the years 1917-20 devoted to the
exploits of girl heroes. This figure becomes more significant when
we note that in the publication of the same girls high school in
1942-43 only 22 per cent of the stories emphasize this dramatic
success role for women.
While almost no one (except Ralph Easley, who was hired to
fight radicals and stirred up a scare wherever possible) was worried
about any tendencies in youth toward economic or racial
equalitarianism, the sex equalitarian trend aroused the expected
criticism from conventional adults.
A ninety-year-old British writer tells readers of the Ladies Home
Journal :
The girl of 1920 is no doubt a fine creature, full of self-reliance
and capability, in many cases thewed and sinewed, both literally
and metaphorically, like her vanquished competitor, man; but
has she not in acquiring these advantages lost something
something unponderable, not measurable by standards of utility,
and yet which to some minds seems as irreparable as that of the
loss of bloom to a peach or perfume to a flower? "
"It shocks us/ said another writer, "to discover that the demand
for sex equality, which we supported in the fond belief that the
women would impose their chaster standard on the men, turns out
in practice, and at the moment, to mean that women claim and
exercise for themselves the freedoms they used to deprecate in the
other sex. 10
Even among the youngsters there were many who didn t want to
advance too far or to fast. A revealing story in the Erasmian
(October, 1917) called "Pyramids and Personality" describes a girl
who wanted independence, a career and travel. She set of! in high
hopes for Egypt, but in the shadow of the Sphinx realized that what
her personality needed was not independence but the boy she left
back home. She returns to housewifery.
^Rhoda Broughton, "Girls Past and Present," Ladies Home Journal,
September, 1920.
100 Hamilton, op. cit.
American Youth After World War I 95
POLITICAL ATTITUDES
American young people, in contrast to those of Central Europe
or Latin America or China, were not political-minded after the First
World War. The "doughboys" wanted to get back to "God s
country" but most of them had in mind no plans for improving it.
An editorial in the Woman s Home Companion (December, 1918)
reassures anxious relatives that the soldiers won t be dissatisfied
with the old job and the old home town.
Our examination of student publications shows no more concern
with government than with economics. A Spectator editorial 191
supports the more critical approach in history which doesn t
necessarily make paragons of all American celebrities. A Mercury
(C.CN.Y.) poem suggests that those adept in graft, corruption and
double-dealing have a great future in politics. A Christmas story
in the Bluebird (Julia Richman High School) recommends that we
make the welfare of the whole community our concern, but is
specific only about the beggar in the subway. And that is all
certainly an impressive picture of youth s lack of interest in political
issues.
The advisors of youth, on the contrary, were deeply concerned.
Educational journals referred to "such pressing problems as the
establishment of a lasting peace, the enlargement of democracy here
. . .and perhaps most insistent, the great economic problem of a more
equitable distribution of wealth everywhere." 103
Milton Bennison, writing in the Journal of the National Education
Association, asks that the pupil deal more directly with present-day
problems :
He should know the principles involved in such public questions
as: the conservation of our natural resources; the public
ownership or public control of railroads and other means of
communication and commerce ; the, regulation of the prices of
commodities necessary to the public welfare; regulation of the
conditions of labor and safeguarding the standards of living
among workingmen; protecting the rights of children, and
providing, as nearly as may be, equal opportunity of development
to all. This type of study should be part of the education of
every American youth. les
101 Spectator (1924), Vol. 68, No. 96, p. 2.
1U2 M. L. Dann, Teaching Present-day Reconstruction Problems," N.Y.C.
Bulletin of High Points, March, 1919, VoL 1, p. 3.
10S Milton Bennison, "Direct Instruction in Citizenship in the High School/
Journal of the National Education Association (1918), II: 809-12.
96 Youth After Conflict
The State of New Jersey in May, 1919, introduced the
requirement of a "course of study in Community Civics and a
course of study in Problems in American Democracy/ Similar
provisions were made in -other states. Non-school agencies also
wanted youngsters to pay more attention to civic affairs. Helen J.
Ferris 104 told how working girls clubs co-operated with the
Consumers League, and with civic cleanup campaigns. She urged
girls to study legislation on labor and related problems. "Now that
women have the vote, they should keep informed."
This , all savors of adult pressure. Nowhere do we find
evidence of American young people active in governmental affairs
until the depression days.
INTERNATIONAL ATTITUDES
The wartime atmosphere of hatred did not linger long after the
Armistice. In student publications during the first two postwar
years there were occasional digs at "feeding* the Germans who
plundered Belgium" and occasional remarks about punishing the
Kaiser, but after 1920 no evidence remained.
During the war, there were articles supporting compulsory
military training but none of these appear in our survey after 1918.
In 1922, the Spectator complains that the campus is failing to give
half the support necessary, for a Reserve Officers Training Corps
unit. In 1924 Northwestern University was ousting young pacifists.
Youth opinion was idealistically international in the wake of
World War I. In December, 1918, a high school student paper
described the meeting at Versailles: "Here in the palace built by
despots, the representatives of the free peoples of the civilized world
will meet, not only to end war but also to right the wrongs of
centuries and to establish a peace that will be everlasting."
An article in the Spectator in 1919 105 reported a straw vote among
the colleges, showing all but unanimous support for the League.
An editorial (January 8, 1920) said, "A further result of the war
is the heightening of the average college man s interest in the
international problems of government growing out of the war and
especially those developing from the Peace Treaty and the League
of Nations Proposal." New courses in international relations and
peace problems were added at Columbia (Spectator, July 9, 1919)
and at many -other institutions.
104 Helen J. Ferris, op. cit.
m Spectator (1919), 64, No. 66, p. 1.
American Youth After World War I 97
A vote of summer session students at Columbia in 1919 showed
944 for the League, 785 favorable with reservations, 155 opposed.
Even in 1921, after Wilson s disappointment, the Spectator gives
thanks for "the Disarmament Conference with its promising future
for the Brotherhood of Man ," and indicates a belief that "the
world powers are started on the road to honest diplomacy and
universal peace/*
When, in 1924, the Senate abrogated the "Gentlemen s Agreement"
with Japan, the Spectator was aroused to vigorous protest. The
new immigration bill, the writer said, "has swept away most of
the efforts for -friendship and understanding which have been
accomplished by our State Department in the last twenty-five years."
(April 4, 1924.) In that same year an essay in C.CN.Y/s
Lavender entitled "Dulce et Decorum est" called for "the complete
destruction of the belief in war as a method of deciding international
questions/* Schools were urged by the student writer to teach
international rather than national patriotism, to tea^ch history more
objectively, to glorify the? heroes of peace rather than those of war.
Adult comment generally confirms the impression of a younger
generation quite zealous for international peace. "They are
discussing the questions of a League of Nations, of conscription, of
militarism, and they have felt the demand that all these problems
be fairly settled, and that they shall be so settled that another world
war will never occur. lfl *
The Y.M.C.A. was prepared to help students think along
international lines. In 1918, Association Press published Harrison
S. Elliott s Bmlding a New World. The foreword declared, "This
will be a different world after the war," and spoke of the spirit of
the Crusades being manifest in establishing a world democracy.
Tbe chapter titles indicate the scope of this youth project ;
I. Winning the War and a New World.
II. Significance of America s Entrance into the War.
III. American War Aims and Christian Ideals.
IV. Foundation for a New World.
V. Strategic Plans in the New World.
VI. to XL Far East, Mohammedan Countries, Africa, Russia,
Far Places.
XII. Forces Helping Internationalism.
XIIL America s Opportunity and Response.
1 Gammon, op. tit.
98 Youth After Conflict
Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools in
New York City, wrote: 107
...Every high school curriculum should embrace not only a
course in American history but also a knowledge of recent
European history. We are no longer an isolated people. The
experience of peoples across the sea has become an essential part
of the experience which should guide us in the settlement of the
problems of government as they arise.
Sir James Barrie, speaking to students in Scotland, addressed
himself to the youth -of the world, urging them "to form an
international league of youth ready to say to all governments, We
will fight each other only when we are sure of the necessity. "
In the early twenties, at Princeton, New Jersey, the National
Student Forum of America was organized to discuss America s entry
into the World Court. British students sent over co-operative
delegates during the next few years. In 1926 the N.S.F.A. became
a member of the C.LE. (International Conference of Students).
This organization helped to give expression to the international
outlook of American students in the twenties. The National
Student Forum laid particular stress on student exchange. Case
studies of foreign students in some American colleges and how they
helped to build a world-conscious youth movement are given in a
Survey article of 1923. 108
This was the generation, as Miss Cannon says, 10 with "a childhood
that denied itself bread and sugar to save the Belgians ; that adopted
French brothers and sisters ; that saved its pennies for the sufferers
in the Near East; that bought canned milk for Russian babies."
The small, manageable! world, centered about the United States, had
been outgrown.
It fills one with a deep sense of tragedy to look back today at the
hopes of youth in those years following the First World War. If
sincere aspiration to end all war would do so, there could have been
no events like those that broke out in 1939. While youthful
idealists were committed to world co-operation, the management of
affairs was not in their hands. Nations yearning for peace were
not prepared to take the steps necessary to maintain it. Education
107 N. Y C Bulletin of High Points, October, 1919, 1:8.
108 "Neighbors : The Youth Movement Comes to America," Survey (1923),
49:463-65.
1M Cornelia J. Cannon, "The Crabbing of Youth by Age," Atlantic Monthly
(1923), 131:787-96.
American Youth After World War I 99
for international co-operation reached too few young people, and
failed to give even those it reached a realistic understanding of the
forces at work within and among nations to create another and
more devastating war.
DEMAND FOR EDUCATION
The postwar period was characterized by an acceleration of the
steadily growing demand of young America for education. The
nation was shocked to learn of 120,000 illiterates in the American
Expeditionary Force and far more among those rejected by the
draft. Professor Bagley, in September, 1918, expressed the
national concern. "We have become suddenly aware that educational
backwardness and intellectual stagnation in any part of the
country may handicap the progress and imperil the safety of
the nation as a whole When we of the educational world
are astounded to learn that there have been hundreds of
communities in this country where boys and girls have grown
to manhood and womanhood in utter ignorance of American
ideals and institutions ignorant of the very language of our country,
and even nurtured upon alien ideals brought to them through the
medium of an alien tongue it is pretty clear that we have been
thinking of education and planning for education too exclusively in
the limits of our circumscribed local units. . . .
"If England in this most critical hour of her history can
deliberately decide to advance the limit of compulsory schooling to
the age of eighteen ; if France, struggling so bravely to defend not
only herself but the entire world against a ruthless aggression, can
even in the midst of that struggle plan to keep her boys under
educational direction until the age of twenty, shall we, living in
comparative security and abundance, confess that we are unequal
to the taskr 1 "
The ink was not dry on the Armistice when the educational drive
began. Under the direction of Professor John Erskine, courses were
offered abroad to soldiers awaiting repatriation. About 180,000
took elementary school refreshers ; 27,000 took high school subjects ;
22,000 were ready for college work.
Then Congress made special provision for the education of
returning veterans and they crowded the campuses. In 1919 the
fall enrollment on many campuses was 300 per cent of the prewar
uo William C. Bagley, "Education and Otir Democracy," Journal of the
National Education Association, (1918) 3: 54-57.
100 Youth After Conflict
enrollment. "Record-breaking attendance" was headlined for
summer schools and regular terms of 1919 and 1920. In 1920
college attendance for the nation as a whole was 50 per cent above
the 1916-17 level. This was a spurt due to the backlog of
war-diverted youth, but it is even more important to note that the
tides did not recede. Enrollment in secondary schools in 1930 was
double what it has been in 1920. College enrollment in 1930 was
double the high point of 1920. The junior college came into
importance during this period, jumping from perhaps 15,000
attendants in 1920 to 70,000 in 1930. The back-to-school movement
became a stay-on-in-school movement. In many communities pupils
no longer left school at eighth grade, but in normal course stayed on
to finish high school. While the government financing of education
for capable veterans was in process, many hoped that it might
continue as a national policy. An editorial in Spectator in 1918
expresses the judgment that the Student Auxiliary Training Corps
should lead to a peacetime training program in colleges. That hope
was not realized but youth went to college in increasing numbers,
despite the lack of a program of public aid.
Expressions from youth themselves declare a confidence in the
contribution of education. This is the theme of numerous editorials
in high school and college papers. In Miss Page s "A Flapper s
Appeal to Parents" she says, "Most of us, under the present system
of modern education, are further advanced and more thoroughly
developed mentally, physically and vocationally than were our
parents at our age." 111 A famous college teacher is inclined to
agree. "There has never been an age in history, I suppose/ wrote
William Lyon Phelps of Yale, "when boys and girls would not rather
play than work. But I do not believe there has ever been a time
when so many young men and women took an interest in intellectual
things comparable to what may be observed today. This is partly
owing to the closer connection between studies and life." M
That is not to say there were no problems connected with the mass
influx into higher schools. The veterans did not always adjust easily
/to school nor did the schools adapt sufficiently to meet the needs of
the older students. One observer commented:
The ex-soldiers appear to the principal to! be irresponsible, unable
to concentrate. They walk out of class abruptly, saying they
111 Page, op. cit*
A m WIHam Lyon Phelps, "The American Home and the Younger
Generation/ World s Work. (1924), 48:658-42.
American Youth After World War I 101
can t stand it any more, and this is felt to have a demoralizing
effect on the school. ... A former officer compares them to a spring
which has been under great pressure, which, when pressure is
removed, springs into the air all aquiver, m
Some argued that college would be dusty and dull for boys who
"had, been through the fiery ordeal of the battlefield. . .had seen life
in the raw and had drunk so deep of experience." "It is good to
recall/ 5 says the writer of "Topks of the Times" 114 that all the
solemn warnings of twenty-five years ago about what the fires of
war would do to the souls of the young and to the established life
values in general how all this prophesying in the realm of the spirit
came to naught. The vast majority of the boys came back to school
simply and modestly and picked up their studies where they left off."
One very noticeable consequence of the war was increasing
demand for the practical in education. During the war ten New
York City high schools offered co-operative courses so that boys and
girls might alternate weekly between school and industry ; ^In
consequence, hundreds of young people combined practical training
and business or industrial experience with their academic pursuit?.
"The co-operative course," wrote Superintendent Ettinger, "offers
the solution of many of the perplexing problems in education, both
vocational and cultural, and solves in part the problem of vocational
guidance and placement." " 5
An enormous and more lasting contribution to practical education
was the Smith-Hughes Act. Trade and continuation schools,
supported by Federal Funds, were established in all major cities.
Young people were restless about their traditional courses.
"Latin is- a dead language and Spanish should be substituted," said
the Erasmkm. An article in the Mercury called the current
ciimaihim both superficial and musty. The Spectator in 1919
reported **The trend seems to be toward practical courses instead
of the iQtefiectaaL"
A few old-time scholars resented this emphasis upon application.
The "Professor" whom we have quoted above, charged youth with
loss of "InieflectaaHty the disinterested love of things of the
intellect for their own sake." 1 *
Anna Steece Rkfaardsoo, "Why Don t They Settle Down?" Woman s
Home Companion, November, 1919.
*New York Times, October 26, 1944.
U5 William Ettinger, "The Life-Career Motive m Education. Journal of the
National Education Association (1918), 3:41-44.
""The Yotmg Person," op. cit.
102 Youth After Conflict
A college dean said, "In universities, although there is increased
registration in practical or useful courses in preference to classics,
there is a less serious attitude on the student s part." 11T One high
school teacher explained to the mothers of America that while "boys
hate books" and "most red-blooded lads hate the classics," he could
get youngsters interested by anecdotes. 118
Educational leaders more often, however, welcomed and endorsed
the demand of youth for a more functional education. Studies of
transfer of training had pretty well undermined the belief that
certain traditional subjects had special merit for training the mind.
Courses entitled "Problems of Democracy" were recommended, as
we noted earlier, to replace more formal and academic appoaches
to social science. Professor Milton Bennion told the school
administrators : ua
The high school graduate, with his commencement prize essay is
commonly an object of indulgence or pity on the part of
experienced men, largely because his notions of public affairs are
too ideal, in the ethereal sense of that term. This of course is
due to the fact that the whole course of his education tends to
estrange him from the concrete problems of citizenship as they
are. Furthermore, the young citizen s failure to understand these
problems and to harmonize his ethereal idealism with practical
success, often causes him to throw overboard all idealism and set
about the attainment of practical success with little regard for
principle.
That magnificent pioneer in the study of adolescence, G. Stanley
Hall, outlined a curriculum as modern as the recent "Education for
all American Youth," prepared by the Educational Policies
Commission at the close of World War II, a quarter of a century
later. 120 ,
Health would be of primary concern in every school. Biology
would "give a scientific basis for personal and social hygiene, and
open up vast vistas in its application to men by way of eugenics."
Physics must be "rescued from the antipedagogic, narrowing and
exclusing methods imposed upon it by college texts" and applied to
117 "The Case Against the Younger Generation," op. dt.
118 Roscoe G. Stott, "What I Know About Your Boy" (A critical study of
the high school lads of America) . Ladies 3 Home Journal, September, 1920.
119 Meeting of the Department of the Superintendent of the National
Association, February 25, March 2, 1918.
120 G. S. Hall, "The Viewpoint of a Psychologist as to the Courses of Study
Which Will meet the Future Demands of a Democracy." Pedagogical
Seminar and Journal of Genetic Psychology (1919), 26 :10-99.
American Youth After World War I 103
automobiles, airplanes, and submarines. "The goal of all historical
teaching should be the living present."
Few schools were ready to undertake so drastic a reconstruction
of their work, but curriculum revision became a common, enterprise.
Yale, Princeton, Barnard, and other colleges decided to modify their
excessive emphasis on the classics.
Another change in education, which was made necessary by the
fact that a larger and less academically select student body was
entering the secondary school and college, was in the direction of
adjusting to individual differences. Here again, psychological
research had opened the eyes of many educators to large differences
in pupil abilities. A religious educator was in full accord with his
colleagues in other areas of education when he wrote: 1 *
We must recognize the existence of differing mental abilities and
types. . . . Everyone acquainted with children knows that some are
quick and others slow ; some are imaginative and others prosaic ;
some are symbolically-minded while others are motor-minded;
some are sub-normal, others are normal, and still others are
super-normal. Each of us will doubtless recall friends who have
a genius for literature or science or business or mechanics or art
or music or what not, coupled with a corresponding indifference,
inability, or even antagonism to certain other things. Few
administrative problems are more difficult than that of serving this
heterogeneous constituency.
A distinguished leader in secondary school education, Dr. John L,
Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools in New York, made
the same argument : m
The pressing problem before the high school in these days of
reconstruction is the rediscovery of the individual. To this end
we must no longer seek to cast men in one mould. We must
recognize diversity of gifts, diversity of tastes, diversity of
aptitudes and aims. The high school in the services of democracy
must therefore diversify its curriculum, modify its methods, define
more clearly its tasks, and meet as far as possible the individual
need of each pupil. In its desire to take the easier course and
deal with pupils in classes, it must not be allowed through mass
treatment to scrap the children. It must rather scrap its
organization, its aims, its methods.
121 F. O. Erb, "Organizing the Yotuig People s Department of the Sunday
School/ Religious Education (1919), 14:5.
^Tildsley, op. tit.
104 Youth After Conflict
Another aspect of the concern for individual differences was the
beginning of psychological clinics. The Commonwealth Fund began
during the 1920 s its program to train specialists in mental hygiene.
As early as 1922 one psychologist described the work in schools
as follows : "*
In school systems having large numbers of children, specialists
whose whole time was devoted to the study of children s mental
powers, behaviour, and peculiarities were added to the staff. This
branch of the service was called by different names. . . . Whatever
the names, the purpose is the same: to study children as
individuals and fit them as far as possible into a complex school
system, and if necessary to suggest helpful changes in that system.
Finally it should be noted that the revolt against authority also
affected educational methods. Under the leadership of Dewey,
Kilpatrick, Coe, and many others, "critical thinking" became a major
value. In his classic on postwar youth, "* Dr. Coe wrote : "How
different the teacher would be and how different would be the place
of both student and teacher in the social structure if teaching were
understood to be, first and foremost, the stimulation of students to a
critical examination of the values of our civilization/ Reviewing
this book, Herbert Cro-ly, Editor of the New Republic added: 125
"Education which does not prepare young people to choose for
themselves becomes a serious obstacle to the salutary mobility and
versatility of human life."
We see then, in the wake of the First World War, a great
quantitative expansion of education, and qualitative changes in the
direction of an education which is: (1) closer to the practical
problems of living; (2) better adjusted to individual differences;
and (3) more concerned with helping pupils think and choose for
themselves. Each of these changes appears as a change in the
attitudes of youth as well as in the Institutional arrangements. More
young people wanted to stay on in school. More counted on college.
These were more impatient with rigid, formal, and academic
curricula. They expected individual adaptation and insisted upon a
chance to do their own thinking. These developments, however,
concerned the few. Most young people in America in 1920 had
dropped out of school without going past the ninth grade. Most of
128 Bertha, K. Luckey, "The Psychological Clinic," Journal of the National
. Education Association (1922), 11:229.
m Coe, op. cit.
m Croly, op. a>.
American Youth After World War I 105
them were taught subjects having little relation to life, were
subjected to uniform requirements, and accepted it all with apparent
docility.
RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK
During the war the churches back home received from chaplains,
and others, numerous moving anecdotes of faith and mysticism,
leading some to the expectation that war, having brought young men
face to face with tragedy and death, would send the boys home with
a greatly increased interest in religion. Any such expectations were
disappointed. The results of experience were well summed up in
the statement: 128 "No man has discovered a clear, strong- voiced
religious note emanating from the war front. The war has not
bred a conscious faith, neither has it bred agnosticism." Data on
church membership and church attendance support the conclusion
that changes were much less than had been anticipated.
The revolt against authority, which we discussed earlier, had
important implications in the field of religion. Young people did
not trust their ministers any more than they trusted parents or
teachers. A New Republic ** editorial reminds readers that science
and the rising power of the state have weakened religious dogma.
"Hard-boiled youth," it is asserted, "are justified in rejecting a
religion of opinion or of conventional conduct." And what does
youth then put in place of the authoritative revelation? "At
present, so far as we can see, they do not bother much about it.
They are quite content to eat and drink, swear and sing, work and
love, and now and then pretend to be sorry for themselves."
The hold of the fundamentalist tradition was weakened, at about
tliis time, by the controversies with the modernists. Darrow and
Willam Jennings Bryan put on the front pages of newspapers the
trial of Mr. Scopes, in 1926, for teaching evolution in Tennessee,
Young people, better educated than their parents, in larger proportion
accepted the findings of biology. College? youth was strongly with
Harry Emerson Posdiek in his dramatic controversy with the
fundamentalists of tiie Presbyterian Church.* 2 *
Some orthodox doctrines like those relating to the devil and
hell-fire had been waning in influence before the war, and simply
128 "What Is the Religions Note from the Front ?** Association Men, April,
1919, p. 612.
127 "They Want to Know," New Republic, (1926), 49:150-2.
128 He resigned the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Qrarch in New
York in 1924, rather than avow the traditional Presbyterian doctrines.
106 Youth After Conflict
dropped out of consideration for postwar youth. Even the sense
of sin, as distinct from a recognition of wrongdoing, disappeared
from youth s vocabulary.
Yet there was general testimony to a high degree of spiritual
idealism among these same young people who were outgrowing the
old doctrines. These comments cited in a Literary Digest sympo-
The Presbyterian Advance said that in our colleges of today
Christian idealism is more manifest than ever before, the principles
of the Christian religion more generally accepted and acted upon,
the Bible more effectively taught and a Christian world-vision
more dominant.
They are more frank, impatient of control, perhaps, but
straightforward, idealistic and ready for sacrificial service when
religion presents its great motives in sane and clean-cut fashion.
May I go farther and add my own conviction that the postwar
spiritual slump of the last five years has not been a slump of
young people at all, but rather of middle-aged people. For
instance, college men and women are more ready today to apply
the principles of Christ internationally than any other class of
people.
The student pastor at the University of Oklahoma finds, "the
students of today dare to live dangerously, and refuse to walk the
path of authoritarian, ancestral religion."
The Atlantic Monthly s "professor" 13 declared :
Religious, after their own fashion, they are, with an amazing
energy, and while dogmas may be laid aside to be recast once
again in a more creative or intellectual age, they are translating
their principles into conduct which we well might emulate. True,
they shall never know the consolations of religion, but they may
indeed never need these, and to the rewards they earn their right.
The best currents of ethical thought to-day flow through the minds
of students and their just-elder contemporaries. The little groups
that are pledged not to go again to war, not to lend their strength
to break strikes, not to wrong our common humanity by racial
enmities, are growing and spreading as waves bring in the tide.
These people are more nearly international-minded than we are,
just as their outlook on life is larger and more impersonal.
"The Sons Better than Their Fathers," Literary Digest, (1924), 81:34.
"The Young Person," op. cit.
American Youth After World War I 107
One of the young people, speaking for his generation declared : " l
A keen interest in political and social problems and a determination
to face the facts of life, ugly or beautiful, characterizes us as it
certainly did not characterize our fathers. We won t shut our eyes
to the truths we have learned We are also quite fatalistic in
our outlook on the tepid perils of tame living."
The contrapuntal voice of the less sophisticated youngsters must
now be heard. We recall the preposterous naivete of the high school
stories about character transformed. Further examination of these
school papers discloses that faith in a cosmic Santa Claus who
always brought about happy endings went unchallenged by writers,
fellow pupils, or teachers. It was the pattern, also, of the
Hollywood movies. The mounties always got there in time to save
threatened virtue. In one high school story we encountered, an
orphan, working as a maid, got into trouble and was extricated by
a house guest from Canada who loved her and married her. In
another, a robber gives his loot to an old maid for her trousseau. In
a third, a father deserts his child after the mother s death; later
a fire in an orphan asylum sends that child to his home and reunites
them. The girl in another story, who saved her honor and didn t
use the good idea she got from someone else, eventually won the
prized" scholarship. In a fifth story, a girl who sacrifices her party
dress to secure medical treatment for her brother finds that her
boy friend loves her in t the old dress and wants to marry her after
all. There is no trace in these youthful writings of a discovery older
than the Book of Job, that the righteous are not always and
inevitably rewarded by love, wealth, and fame.
It is not surprising, therefore, that some young people during this
period became drawn into Frank Buchman s circles and what became
known as the Oxford Movement. The idea of being the elect of
God, and being given Divine Guidance in every crisis, appealed to
some of the youth of the 1920*3, as it does to some youth always.
The postwar period brought out a number of expressions of
dissatisfaction with the church. Age as welt as youth supported the
generalization that hypocrisy and cant in the churches obscured the
idealism of Jesus, but this idea was particularly attractive to young
people engaged in conflict with the church over dress, music, dancing,
smoking, and other such issues. A returned soldier described his
dissatisfaction with the church after he returned from France : "*
131 J. F. Carter, Jr., "These Wild Young People," by One of Them.
Atlantic Monthly, (1920), 126:301-4
132 A. C Williams, (Gunner Corps) "Why Aren t the Young Men in the
Churches?" Woman s Home Companion, October, 1919.
108 Youth After Conflict
I am restless and ready for adventure. Christ lived a life
saturated with thrills, and yet the interpretations 1 hear are that
Christ s life was full of disappointments 1 find the church
catering to men of wealth but teaching 1 that a man should not be
much concerned with these things. . . . Neither smoking nor
drinking assumes the place in my mind as the world s greatest
evil. But I find the church making it one of its chief jobs to
fight these things. . . . The church says nothing of the new
democracy, the future military policy of this country or our
present social unrest. Yet these are vital questions to every
young man.
Charles A. Selden s 133 article has a subtitle, "Millions of Young
Folks Are Quitting Because of Inadequacy of Bible Instruction/
and emphasizes the babyish tone of some Sunday school songs and
practices. A few months later another article in the same journal 184
maintains that they are an "intensely spiritual generation, not
church-going as a whole, but strongly religious." This writer
maintains that youth are working out their own private creeds and
joining radical movements which dave essentially religious aims and
characteristically religious zeal. He finds the most successful
churches with these young people to be community churches and
other "semisocialist new religious groups." The reasons for youth s
alleged disaffection for the traditional churches are said to be three :
too much denominational controversy; inadequate provision for
social life; and lack of opportunity for 4 - discussion of doubts about
the Bible and Christian doctrine.
The challenge to denominationalism is one of the clearest and
least disputable characteristics of the religious outlook after the First
World War. Life in the armed services had brought boys away
from the petty conflicts of many small communities long racked by
church feuds ; it helped them get acquainted with men o-f all and no
religious affiliations and to discover that corresponding differences
in character were less than they had supposed. Chaplains were
assigned to all Protestant boys regardless of denomination and there
were many instances of priests and rabbis who, serving as chaplains,
won respect outside their own religious group. It was therefore
m Charles A. Selden, "What Do They Learn in Sunday School?" Ladies
Home Journal, May, 1923.
^John Farrar, "The Younger Generation and Religion. They re Not
Godless, but They Won t Go to Church. Why?" Ladies Home Journal,
October,
American Youth After World War I 109
not surprising that the young people became more tolerant. One
college pastor wrote of this trend : "*
Another evidence of a religious renaissance is the insistent and
increasing demand for religious tolerance and co-operation To
our young people today denominational differences mean very
little ; this is inevitable when young and old are in the main ignorant
of the original issues or divisions. The differences which exist
today differences of ritual or ceremony or church organization *
are considered unimportant. I know of no group to whom
denominations mean so little as the college students of America.
There remains to be reported the still more skeptical outlook of
an undetermined number of young people. In college papers an
occasional contribution reveals a writer .who can t find any
reassurance in the universe. A poem called "A Thought" is taken
from the C.C.N.Y. Mercury for March, 1919:
I saw the massive cakes of ice out on the river shattering each
other through no will of their own,
And thev reminded me of men, shattering each other through no
will of their own.
A longer poem from the same publication in June of 1921, is
called "Extremes?" A believer strolled along the highway, "firm in
the belief of His protection," and was struck by a vehicle and killed.
A skeptic also walked the highway, "And believing not in motion
nor in signs," he too was struck by a vehicle and killed.
John P. -Marquand, writing in a recent symposium, gives an
excellent resume of the outlook of "the bitter bloc of disillusioned
youth." 138
In the last war we were sustained by some such simple belief,
but in ffae confusion of thought and In the release of the hidden
forces which followed upon the Armistice, for many of us this
belief evaporated By the end. of 1919 we were witnessing the
breakdown of past concepts which we had been taught were
implicit. Such idealism and such hopes as we had conceived
would arrive with the word of tomorrow, were vanishing already
in the aroused rivalry of nations and in a growing social struggle.
Instead of having won a new world to be constructed somewhat
on the lines of Tennyson s Lockdej Hdi we discovered that
185 Kenneth L Brown, Tooth Hare No Patience with Sham," Outlook
^Thomas H Johnson, Return to Freedom: The Affairs of Our Time and
Their Impact on Youth. (New York: G, P. Putnam & Sons, 1944), p. 127-29.
110 Youth After Conflict
the war had brought an aftermath of bankruptcy, disease, and
hatreds ; and a weary loss of faith. Those of us who came back
from the war and those who had been too young to go formed
a bitter bloc of disillusioned youth. When the restraints of
wartime were removed from us, the conventions which we had
been taught, the platitudes of patriotism which we had learned,
seemed very hollow. Most of us were filled with a desire to live
in the present and to hate the past and to distrust all pious
sentiments and to distrust the future, and many of us live so still.
The result has been the melancholia, the realism, the fatalism, the
dypsomania, and the extravagance of postwar America. From
both the social and the literary point of view the decade which
followed the last World War and the first years of the Roosevelt
administration form a most amazing epoch, and this brings us
again to the books it produced. You 1 might call it an age of the
sad young men, or the age of maladjusted youth, or the age of
disbelief. I think it might be well worth the time of any of your
generation to make a rather careful study of this era which you
as returning soldiers may face when the present war is over. We
had suddenly discovered a revulsion for what we had tried to
accomplish, a distaste for it, and a disbelief in it. You can see
it in the pages of the fiction of that period, much of it as distinctly
dated now as the earlier works I have already mentioned. You
can see the fierce scorn for the stupidities and the tyrannies of
war in The Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos and in The
Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings. You can find an even
clearer picture of your fathers world in the writing of a man
who was in many ways the greatest artist of my time.
It surprised me very much a little while ago to find that young
men are not all reading now the works of Scott Fitzgerald. When
I mentioned his name to a young writer, suggesting Fitzgerald as
a literary model, I was amazed to find that he had never read a
word that Scott Fitzgerald had written, and I suddenly realized
that the era which had formed so much of the thought of my
generation was also over. I should advise you, though, to read
not only for pleasure, but even more for instruction, This Side
of Paradise; The Beautiful and Damned; The Great Gatsby.
There is a sort of indirection in these novels and in the behavior of
ttieir characters which will make you see the hopelessness of
a postwar decade and may make you understand a little why
your fathers and so many of your father s friends may have
sf>oka wry cynically of their effort in the last war and of its
waste.
American Youth After World War I 111
An extreme manifestation of the disillusionment of the period was
an alleged wave of student suicide. Data are not available to
indicate whether suicide by youth was actually more frequent in these
years than earlier or later. The dramatic and tragic case of Jean
Starr Untermeyer at Yale (1927) was one of the most publicized.
It was followed by four more within a month.
As we shall see more clearly in the following chapter, it was the
writers the advanced thinkers who were "lost." The greater
part of American youth were only mildly aware of some changes
taking place in their religious outlook. They condemned ecclesiastical
hypocrisy, distrusted the authority of religious officials, and were
impatient of denominational distinctions. They felt no need for
some of the old doctrines and knew that others were being called
in question. Throughout all the discussion many perhaps most
continued to believe pretty much what their fathers and mothers
had taught. There was no sharp decrease in church membership or
church attendance in the ensuing decades. Such changes did occur
in emphasis within the church, took place slowly. Hell-fire was
mentioned less often. Literal interpretation of the Scriptures was
replaced by a modern use. Teaching methods were adapted to
characteristics of various age levels. Social life was encouraged.
The revival hymns gave way to some with sounder thought and less
catchy tunes. Occasionally Protestant churches merged ; frequently
they co-operated. The youth of the 1920 s reached middle age, and
the zeal and fire died down into a complacency much like that which
they had earlier condemned.
YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS
Youth in America did not spontaneously set up nationwide
organizations* The great youth organizations for American young
people have been the public high school and the various church young
people s ocgaBJzatiotis. These, as well as most of the recreational
agencies for youtli, were tinder adult auspices and leadership.
Before the World War, a Blunter of youth-serving agencies had
begun their work. The Y.M.C.A. began back before the Civil
War; the Y.W.CA. shortly thereafter. The Young Men s
Hebrew Association began, in 1874; the Yoting Women s Hebrew
Association in 1903. The first Christian Endeavor group met
in 1881. The Amateur Athletic Union of the United States
dates back to 1885. The student Volunteer Movement was
launched in 1888. The Junior League of the City of New
112 Youth After Conflict
York, bringing together young people of the upper economic
and social class for social and service activities, began to
function in 1900, but the Association of Junior Leagues of
America was not set up until 1921. The World s Christian
Endeavor Union was organized in 1902. The Woodcraft League
was brought into operation by Ernest Thompson Seton about 1902;
the American Boys Club Federation was organized in 1906. Young
Judaea came into existence in 1909. In 1909 the Boy Scout
movement spread from England to America. In 1912, at the home
of Juliette Low in Savannah, the Girl Guides, later to become Girl
Scouts, were organized. The Campfire Girls had held a public
ceremonial in 191 L The Boy Rangers of America were organized in
1913 ; the Pathfinders of America in 1914. Thus, club organizations
for youth were well-started before World War I broke out.
The period during and following the war showed a rapid growth
of these youth organizations, and the inauguration of many more.
In 1911 there were 5,000 scoutmasters; by 1921 there were 32,345,
an increase of over 500 per cent in the decade. Scouting became
such a popular concept that a series of agreements and court suits
in 1918-19 restrained other agencies from using the term "Scout."
In 1919 President Wilson recognized the agency, proclaiming a
national Boy Scout Week.
The Smith-Lever Act, passed in 1914, laid the foundation for the
4-H clubs which, under the leadership of county agents, began an
important service to rural youth.
The Girl Reserves, a teen age organization under Y.W.C.A.
auspices, began its work in 1918. The Order of Demolay, a
Masonic youth program, dates from 1919. An undenominational
agency for women the American Women s Association, began in
1922. Phalanx clubs for young men were organized by some
eastern Y.M.C.A/S in 1921, but did not spread nationally until the
1930*8. The Amateur Bicycle League of America started rolling
in 1920. Pioneer Youth of America, under liberal and labor
leadership, was lattnched in 1924. The Columbian Squires, a junior
order of the Knights of Columbus, intended for Catholic boys
fourteen to eighteen years of age, was founded in 1925. The
agriculture program of the high schools led, in 1928, to
organization of the Future Farmers of America. Thus the
saw a rapid expansion of agencies designed to channel the
older boys and girls, young men and young women.
oomiEttfmty surveys showed that most of this
f>fa aiBoog middle-class and upper-class youth.
American Youth After World War I 113
The prosperous suburbs of big cities were over-organized with many
agencies competing for the out-of -school time of youth. In
working-class neighborhoods, however, few organizations made
progress. Most boys and girls belonged to no clubs. The
organizations also differentiated on an age basis. The youngsters
of fourteen to sixteen liked the program offered to them. After
the age of sixteen they began to drop out of schools, out of Sunday
School, out of the Scouts or the settlement club. Young people
eighteen to twenty-five were seldom in national organizations.
Not all the club service for youth was organized nationally.
Social and athletic clubs in unknown numbers flourished in every
city and in many small towns. There are data to show that the
number of members who paid dues of $10 a year or more to such
clubs, doubled during the decade from 1920 to 1930. These were
more successful in reaching older youth.
Many other activities were carried on by community centers,
often associated with schools. From 1919 to 1924 the number of
school recreation centers increased 124 per cent.
A study of the programs of national youth-serving agencies during
and after World War I indicates continuity rather than
transformation. Most of them carried on with the same ideals, the
same officers, and virtually the same methods.
Of course there were some adaptations in program. During the
war, all organizations promoted liberty loans, food conservation,
health, and first-aid training.
In the period after the war there seem to have been three
noticeable trends. One was toward a more international outlook.
Tte Campfire Girls made kits for Belgian war orphans and set up
a program for international understanding. The first International
JamljOTee of the Boy Scouts was held in London in 1920; the second
in Cbferfi^eii m 1924. The Girl Scouts ran an International Canip.
A second tead itas toward professional rather than vofanleer
leaders for y& groups. Almost all of tbe ymitii-serviiig;
organizations began tm a basis of volns-teei* kadbr^bifx As the
movements grew, the difficulties increased The Y.M.CA. and
Y.W.CA. developed specialized traismg programs for the Boys
Work Secretary or the Girls* Work Secretary. In 192Q the Boy
Scouts held their first national training conference! for Scotit execu
tives. Thus a beginning was being made toward the development of
the grotip work prof esskm, which took fond a decade later.
Most of the youth-serving agencies show a third characteristic in
the postwar period, Most of them moved away from the centralized
114 Youth After Conflict
prescription of program toward greater local autonomy and more
appeal to youth initiative. The Boys Work Secretaries of the
Y.M.C.A. fought during most of the twenties over the merits of the
older type of "well-run" program, laid out by the Secretary, and
those of the new project-type curriculum, worked out on the spot
from the purposes of the youngsters. The publication of Abel
Gregg s Group Leaders and Boy Character and of Dimock and
Hendry s m description of a camp with a freer and more democratic
curriculum, contributed to the newer emphasis. In 1926, the Girl
Reserves decided to drop their honor and merit system, to do away
with prescribed rituals, and to substitute more discussion and
decision by local groups of girls. The 1926 Convention of the
Y.W.C.A. was organized as "an experiment in collective thinking."
A survey of Hi-Y clubs in 1927 suggested that the name of the
" Bible Study Groups" be changed to "Problem Discussion Groups/
using the Bible as a resource rather than as a text. The transition
in the conventions of the Student Volunteer Movement has
previously been described. The World Conference of the Y.M.C.A.
at Helsinki, in 1923, was organized by Harrison S. Elliott on the
basis of discussion groups the first attempt of the sort on an
international scale.
Along with the emphasis on current problems came, inevitably, a
growing concern with social policy. Young people s discussion
groups of the 1920 s tended to be critical of capitalism, opposed to
race prejudice, and in vigorous opposition to war. In boy-girl
relations they were for increased freedom under the self-imposed
control of ideals.
A study of organizations on college campuses during the 1920*s
showed a marked increase in extracurricular activities. This began
before the war. Using a point system for weighting different
degrees of participation, the average senior at Wesleyan University
In 1900 carried 246 points; on the same scale in 1910 the score had
risen to 427 points. There was vigorous protest, after World War
I, against compulsory chapel and, after more or less struggle, most
church colleges succumbed and changed to a voluntary system.
After World War I the traditional college literary societies and
nrusic societies were noticeably weaker and many died out.
Oratorical contests were dropped and the formal debates of prewar
"* A. J. Gregg, Group Leaders and Boy Character (New York: Association
Pfress, 1924).
***I3edly S. Dimock and Charles Hendry, Camping and Character (New
York: Association Press, 1929).
American Youth After World War I 115
years^ became forums on current issues. National fraternities and
sororities thrived during the twenties. Student government and
honor societies were likewise vigorous. A small group of "radicals"
on each of the larger campuses was usually active in some kind of
"social problems club/ or in a youth organization of the Socialist
or the Communist party. Organized veterans were not an important
factor in campus life for more than a year or two after the war.
Reference has been made earlier to the National Student
Forum of America, which came into being in 1924, and was
probably the closest approximation in this country to a youth
initiated and youth led movement. Organizations of students tend
to be ephemeral, A strong leadership emerges, but two or three
years later they are all out of school and their successors are not
always able to carry on. Hence American students during the
period between the wars saw a number of agencies rise meteorically
and then quietly disappear. The National Student Forum lasted
some fifteen years, or longer than most. The depression years
brought the American Student Union, the American Youth Congress,
the International Student Federation, the United States Student
Assembly, American Youth for Democracy, Committees of
Correspondence, and numerous bther attempts to unite forward-
looking young people. Some of these still survive, but as a rule
the longest lived are those that have the sponsorship of an
established adult organization.
is "POSTWAR YOUTH A CORRECT CONCEPT?
As we bring to a close this long review of the characteristics and
activities of American young people after World War I, it may be
helpful to gather thd high points in a brief summary.
Young Americans after the First World War emerged as
"Youth/* a distinct group with special problems. "Youth" were
everywhere discussed, criticized, defended. Out of the controversy
some points emerge dearly.
Girls of the I92(Fs followed a new fashion. Their dresses were
shorter, they bobbed their teir, they began to use lipstick and
powder puff. In response to a national campaign of the tobacco
companies, increasing numbers of girls and women took up smoking.
In the general defiance of prohibition, numbers found drinking
smart. Jazz dancing was more extreme than its predecessors.
Young people* talked more frankly about sex. Petting may have
become more common, although this is debatable. All this was
played up in newspaper and magazine campaigns.
H6 Youth After Conflict
During the early 1920 J s there was a great increase in movie
attendance. Baseball attendance remained high, while crowds
following basketball, football, and hockey increased. Facilities for
golf, tennis, and swimming were added to numerous communities.
A characteristic attitude of many young people during this
postwar period, was rejection of the authority of adults. They
wanted to be independent, to experiment for themselves, and perhaps
to find out better* ways than the older generation had known. This
attitude stood out especially in the children of foreign-born parents.
Young people showed a great readiness to accept greater equality
for women, and a moderate expansion of interest in international
affairs. They wanted no more 1 war, and thought this might be
achieved. Concern for economic or racial equality was limited to
a small group in liberal Christian or radical circles. Youth was not
organized as a political force.
Opportunity and demand for education expanded rapidly. The
kind of education sought was increasingly practical and focused on
problems of living. The entrance into schools of a youth population
so different in ability and interests from the select academic minded
group of the past, led to new curricula and new concern for
individual differences. The questioning spirit encouraged more
critical thinking.
Religious attitudes moved slowly away from the orthodox position.
There was dissatisfaction among youth with the church, and
especially with the emphasis on denominationalism. The social
gospel began to interest many.
Youth did not set up its own organizations. Youth-serving
organizations under adult control multiplied. Their programs
showed the general postwar pattern of greater interest in
international affairs, and greater freedom for youth to participate
in planning its own affairs.
Having reviewed changes in several parts of Europe, as well as in
the United States, we are now ready to try to analyze the forces
making for alteration in the outlook and behavior of youth. How
far can the changes be traced to the war? What other factors are
important to consider? The results of this analysis should lay a
foundation for predicting the behavior of youth after World War II.
CHAPTER rv
THE AFTEREFFECTS OF WAR
Some social scientists are so impressed with the unique
features of each land and time that they are skeptical of any
generalizations about wars as such. Others, among whom
Waller 1 is a recent and distinguished example, have been so
impressed with the way in which history repeats itself after all
wars from ancient to modern times, that they feel free to use
illustrations with very little qualification because of any special
circumstances of the time. Both approaches must be used and
integrated. If we are to understand what happened to young
people after any war we shall be confronted with a cultural
complex, some elements in which are war-determined, others a
product of the particular stage of a particular society. In this
chapter we shall present some of the generalizations which seem
to apply to all great wars in modern times. Without exception
these influences have been apparent in the after effects of the
Civil War, of World War I both in Europe and America, and are
becoming clear for World War II. In the following chapter we
shall return to some of the social trends which characterized the
early 1920 ? s in America and provided the specific historic context
for that generation of "flaming youth."
WARS SPEED TECHNICAL ADVANCE
Wars afford a great stimulus to technology. We referred
earlier to McKay s sole-sewing machine which transformed the
shoe industry after the Civil War. Of even greater importance
was the development of techniques of bridge-making which
facilitated extension of roads and railroads across the still un
developed West. World War I brought the airplane forward
and laid the technical foundations for commercial aviation. It
also matured truck and auto transport so that the automobile
industry became the great postwar economic stimulus. World
War I advanced radio to the stage making- commercial broad
casting feasible. In World War II atomic energy overshadows
other important developments like heavy bombers, radar, and
penicillin. The reason for the rapid technical advance during
wartime is simply the concentration of men, money, and materials
I Wiilard Waller, The Veteran Comes Back (New York; Dryden Press,
1944).
117
118 Youth After Conflict
*
which we are then willing 1 to provide. There is no reason to
suppose that a similar expenditure in peacetime research would
be any less productive. What war does is to provide a psycho
logical justification of beneficial research which the public is not
yet prepared to undertake merely in order to enjoy the fruits of
the technological advances. A small beginning is now being
made toward continuous Federal support for research. This
may prove to be one of the far-reaching advances from World
War II, for it will be cumulative. If from these wars we shall
have learned the advantage of heavy research investment we
shall provide a basis for a continuous flow of revolutionary
technical discoveries. Youth hears about wartime advances
and is prepared for exciting postwar innovations, many of
which prove to come slowly or not at all. The impact on
young people, however, is to increase their interest in technical
training and their readiness to welcome new mechanisms.
WARS ENCOURAGE CENTRALIZATION
The movements of modern armies require co-ordination of all
aspects of life. Economic production must be planned for war
needs. Conversion and postwar reconversion tend to require
planning on a nationwide and sometimes an international scale.
In the Civil War, men learned techniques of business organiza
tion which were applied in the late nineteenth century to the
formation of industrial combines or "trusts/ Out of World
War I came international combines which have been attacked
under the name of "cartels." During World War II there was
very little difference between the control over manpower,
resources, production, and distribution exercised by the Soviet
Union and that exercised by Britain and the United States.
The exigencies of war demanded large-scale economic planning
under centralized control. After the war some of the central
controls are relaxed but others are found too desirable to give
up. Britain now proposes to nationalize coal, iron, steel, and
perhaps other industries. There is thus an increment of regi
mentation and nationwide planning added to the life of each
postwar generation. Veterans may dream of starting a little
business of their own; actually many more find themselves
taking jobs within the vast and expanding bureaucracy of the
large corporation or of government.
A 1920 editorial in the Spectator, student newspaper of
Columbia College, linked together two recent events a nation
wide conference of Christian students at Des Moines, and a
The Aftereffects of War
Harvard-Oregon football game. The writer s observation was
headed: "A National Viewpoint," and emphasized the tendency
"to centralize interests and eradicate provincial distinctions."
He regarded this centralization as an undeniable product of the
"one nation" experience during the war.
WARS DISRUPT FAMILIES
Men are away from home for months or years. Husbands and
wives establish new patterns of sex adjustment. The returning
veteran, since the days of Ulysses, has faced family complications.
War leaves many children to grow up without the usual parental
supervision and discipline. Father is away and mother must
work. Cyril Burt, 1 writing of his unusually careful study of
delinquents in London during the early twenties said :
The war, of course, was constantly removing, either tem
porarily or forever, the controlling hand of a father or big
brother; the mother had thereupon to work during the day,
and would be absent throughout the very hours when the child
needed her vigilance at home. Families so diminished or
bereaved have helped greatly, during recent years, to swell the
ranks of youthful crime. In other instances, upon one ground
or another, the child himself may have long been separated
from his parents, living for a large portion of his early life
with a foster mother, or with a relative, or in an institution
away from home. Such intervals of absence have always a
more or less unsettling effect, and when the growing child,
perhaps on account of the trouble he gives, is handed along
from keeper to keeper and changed about from place to place,
it is hard to expect any solid habits of self-discipline to develop
or any steady code of right behavior to be formed.
Women, while the men are away, must take over duties
formerly carried out by the opposite sex. They earn money, buy
for the family, manage property, conduct banking, repair furni
ture, conduct legal affairs, and necessarily develop independence.
Inevitably women discover that they can handle some of these
things better than the returning husband can do them. Wars
thus contribute to recognitions of sex equality, but by the same
token they disturb family relations which have been predicated
upon feminine dependence.
2 Cyril Hurt, The Young Delinquent (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1925),
619 p.
120 Youth After Conflict
The loss of many young men reduces women s chance of
marriage, stimulates keener erotic competition, and forces many
young women to earn their own living. Thus some of the effort
of girls after wars to attract attention takes the form of ^ uncon
ventional dress and behavior. New vocational opportunities may
be substituted for the career of wife and mother.
WARS PROVIDE FULL EMPLOYMENT
Everyone is needed during the strain of war production. Boys
and girls, old people, the handicapped, are all utilized. Wages
are high, and an employee s market prevails. This sets expecta
tions which the postwar world does not fufill. Boys may have
left school for work and be reluctant to return. Children of
sixteen may earn more during the war than father can earn after
the war, which doesn t help their respect for parental wisdom.
Whole communities grow up around war industries and suddenly
threaten to become ghost towns when war employment ends.
Unemployment during reconversion may remain chronic unless
large new industries spring up. Unemployment became charac
teristic of most of Europe within a decade after World War I.
In Britain, in January, 1921, there were three juvenile applicants
for every available job. Since youth is overpaid during war and
neglected during the postwar crisis, the effect is to make young
people receptive to ideas of revolutionary change.
WARS FOSTER INFLATION
Sp much of what is produced in war is destfoyed that there is
a shortage of consumer goods. Full employment and high wages
add to the purchasing power but the goods are no longer avail
able. Prices tend to rise, and if controls are introduced various
black market operations evade them. This inflation continues
for a few years beyond the end of the war itself. The situation
during and after the Civil War and again in World War I, gave
opportunity for a few to grow immensely wealthy while millions
fost all their savings. The price rise reduces real income of all
workers, and promotes unrest in what is normally a
class.
,,is a psychological aspect to the full employment that
prairies which must not be minimized. One of life s strong
is to meet challenges, to aspire to high goals, and to
them Even before America entered the war, it was
tiiat thousands of men were getting a psychological
The Aftereffects of War 121
"lift" from being called to Washington to help plan huge national
undertakings.
War gives everyone the sense that he is important and needed.
For youth this is especially important.
Anyone who has had occasion to observe a group of girls in
the schools and colleges of this generation knows how tre
mendous is the store of surplus energy for which there is no
biological outlet and which too often fails to be sublimated as
it might well be into other forms of service. The quantity of
such energy which the war showed to be in reserve should not
have been a surprise to the teachers or observers of youth.
No more should it have been a surprise that those whom we
thought of as mere boys should have suddenly and "successfully
taken up heavier labors and larger responsibilities than they
had known before. *
It is not merely a matter of channeling energy, as properly
emphasized in the Nation editorial. It is even more a matter of
personal and social integration. People get their own internal
economy organized in response to the strenuous demands made
upon them. In pioneer days the task of survival in a hostile
environment kept energies at top pitch. In the Soviet Union,
the tasks of construction were laid out to give every young man
and woman the sense of being vitally needed in a vast and
important enterprise which called for every possible ounce of
effort. Only in war do the capitalist nations achieve such
employment of human resources. A major problem of postwar
years is the consequent letdown when youth and adults no longer
feel needed.
Wj&itS SEPAItATE THE GENERATIONS
Wais are fottgfat by youth. In World War II, many a man
still nader forty was dismayed to discover that he was regarded
as a too old** for ifae combat activities be desired. Youngsters
regarded as too lumattttfe to be allowed a latchkey or the family
car suddenly found ijieniselves la positions of vital responsibility.
After the war, a aew Mud of separation emerges. The linking
of the older generation witfa the catastrophic blunder of war
makes it necessary for ycmtli to reject the teachings of that older
generation and forces youth to seek new ways of life. The
normal rebellion of adolescents against old-fashioned parents
"Release of Youth," Nation (1920), 110:674
122 Youth After Conflict
and teachers receives rational re-enforcement because the older
generation has so obviously and miserably failed.
"The war," wrote Elizabeth Benson 4 (a child prodigy, thirteen
years old and a college sophomore at the time of this writing) "is
responsible for our discovery that our parents are not super-
creatures of infallible judgment, that our government is not the
divine and impregnable institution that we had been taught to
consider it when we practised the flag drill in grade school." She
goes on then with more specific charges: the unlovely passions
and bitter prejudices shown by adults during the war; the
restrictions on free speech and imprisonment of conscientious
objectors; the profiteering; the misleading propaganda; the
pettiness of men in high offices. She concludes: "We never
really had a chance to venerate our elders.**
Anna Freud, writing during World War II on "War and
Children," analyzes the experience in this way: The parents and
teachers try to teach children to control their aggressive im
pulses. The child, however, learns that the whole adult world,
including these same parents and teachers, has unleashed
aggression on a terrifying scale. Hence^ the normal formation
of the superego does not take place. The child has a vague
sense of having been let down and this focuses later in all
manner of charges of hypocrisy against the older generation.
The loss of so many of military age left many families with
an actual age gap between the prewar old folks and the postwar
young folks. War aged some of the older people prematurely
and further increased difficulty in living with teen-agers. The
transition generation which might have helped each to under
stand the other was destroyed in the war or perhaps so changed
by the war as to feel even more strange to the home situation
than did the too old and the too young.
WARS AFFECT CHARACTER
It is easy to find numerous pronouncements about what wars
do to participants, but not easy to find convincing evidence. It
seems reasonable to expect that years spent in the army or navy
should bring about changes, but it is not clear that those changes
are alike for all men.
One of the easier generalizations is made by William Lyon
Plieips : * "la attempting to form any estimate of the present
p~ cif.
* Pfeeips, op. rif.
The Aftereffects of War 123
moral standards of American youth we must never forget the
war. Evil begets Evil : and as war is the most monstrous evil
characteristic of human society its after effects are bound to
be bad."
A student editor * says the war caused "a warping of the moral
fiber/ giving the youth a "spirit of freedom, self-reliance, and
self-esteem bordering close on recklessness."
One more constructive effect is the broadening influence of
association with new people. Provincialism is broken down by
travel and by a variety of contacts. Men who would not other
wise have left their home community traveled to camps in other
parts of the country, then perhaps to foreign lands. Within the
army they mingled with men from all sections, various national
cultures, different religions, occupations, and levels of education.
A man may stitl retain a lot of his old prejudices but at least he
has come to know people with quite different feelings. The
weakening of religious denominational ties is one outcome of the
broader experience.
Waller 7 lists among the characteristics of soldiers during all
wars in all lands and times: sexual escape; rebellion, griping,
and boredom ; lack of money ; intoxication ; and an ethic that
justifies killing. When veterans return and, for a short time, are
idolized by younger boys and girls, some of these personality
consequences of the army years are carried into the culture
of youth.
The effect of constant exposure to maiming and death is
difficult to analyze. A common report is that men become callous
and indifferent to suffering which would once have moved them
powerfully. Case studies reveal that the experience of killing
creates in some men a sense of guilt which may be repressed but
wMelt finds expression in heightened irritability or anxiety.
A typical expression is the following, reported by Lionel G.
Short, a British soldier in the First World War:*
The most significant experience of those war days was our
intimate acquaintance with death. It lost all mystery and
strangeness. And, with tliat, there disappeared a great deal
of mystery and beauty ol life. Nothing seems to be quite
worth while after sttch adventures. It is no use telling us
* Literary Digest, 73: 38-42,
7 Waller, op. cit.
* Symposium: "Modem Youth and Its Ways," Living Age (1920), 307:
45-50.
124 Youth After Conflict
that war improves character. We know better than that. But,
perhaps, with the turning of the years, we shall recover some
thing of the beauty of life that is now dead within us.
The economic attitude set up by war is less obscure. Pillage
and looting have always been the soldier s prerogative. Military
discipline has tightened since Sherman s troops lived off Georgia,
but the latest reports on G.I/s abroad indicate that ill-feeling
toward America is still being bred by the behavior of occupation
forces. Property may be "requisitioned" with greater formality
today, and black market operations may involve more co
operation with unprincipled civilians, but there is little in the
experiences of army life to strengthen respect for the property
rights of others. It does not necessarily follow that these
attitudes carry over into civilian life. The expectation that men
used to killing would come home "killers" has not been con
firmed. So it may be that the army-fostered attitudes toward
expropriation, liquor, women, and gold-bricking will remain in
the compartment called "war experience" and show little
transfer to home behavior. The stories get told, however, and
younger people hear them, and the moral sanctions seem not
quite so firm and inviolable as they once were.
WARS ARE FOLLOWED BY A REACTION OF SELF-INDULGENCE
Wartime shortages and deprivations build up a hunger for the
return of the old luxuries. The experience of death and destruc
tion fosters during the war itself a strong impulse to enjoy life
while we still live. Wrote Ernie:* "To crowd every possible
hour of the day with gaiety and distraction was the inevitable
reaction from months and years of toil, privation, horror, and
danger." Another writer w warns :
We must expect much irritability of nerves and temper, a
natural desire for ease and comfort and for the enjoyment of
all those things of which men have been so long deprived. We
,; faaH probably see a revolt against rules and discipline and
, ordered ways, and there will be a sense of separation from
at home who have not shared their bitter experiences.
IL EnaJe, "Tlie Revolt of Youth," Nineteenth Century and After
The AjtereQects of War 125
In recent wars the reaction has been quite as much in evidence
among civilians, as among the men laying aside the uniforms.
The black-out in Britain Jed naturally to the feeling expressed
in a song about getting lit up when the lights go up again. The
postwar rush of civilians for nylon hose or heavy cream seems
selfish and sordid in comparison with their willingness to
sacrifice during the war. It will not be surprising to find selfish
pleasure-seeking a dominant characteristic of youth who grow
up with adults who are trying to make up for wartime
deprivations.
WARS CLOSE AND OPEN EPOCHS
Wars are natural markers on the time-line of history. Prewar
(antebellum) suggests one civilization : postwar, another. Actual
differences are exaggerated by this contrast. Events that began
somewhat before or somewhat after the war are viewed later
as having started with the war. The end of World War II
called forth in the Times of London the following quotation
from Samuel Johnson:
In every life there are certain pauses and interruptions which
force consideration upon the careless, and seriousness upon
the light, points of time where one course of action ends and
another begins; and by the vicissitudes of fortune... we are
forced to say of something, "This is the end."
A war closes every major chapter in history, and most new
chapters open after a war.
Differences between prewar and postwar youth are found to
fee gruffest IB those countries which undergo revolutions. Wars
pceelpltifce ferofatioiis, especially in the losing nations. Hence
after World War I a socialist revolution first appeared in
Germany, Atistria* aad Russia, Changes in the life of youth in
America, France* and Britain were less marked than changes in
the vanquished eonBtriea After the Civil War there was a more
marked reconstruction in the Softtb than in the North, yet even
in the victor nations, the period before the war seems hopelessly
remote. It is transferred back to grandfather tales. It is as
though the war set tip a barrier which he contemporary mind
doesn t cross. "Before the war" is almost synonymous with the
fictitious "good old days." The "real" events and experiences
are deemed to be those since the war.
126 Youth After Conflict
WARS DISAPPOINT THE VICTORS
A double column editorial in the student newspaper of
Columbia College (the Spectator), ushering in the first peace
time summer session, in 1919, concluded: The prospect is
bright war and desolation behind, peace ahead, and above all,
the impetus and inspiration that should come with victory!"
During the dark days of war people look forward to the dawn
of peace and focus all their hopes on it. The sacrifices of war
seem justified only by immense achievements. Morale is sus
tained during war by the reiterated expectation of great gains.
Since actual changes are so much less than those hoped-for
changes, the inevitable result is disappointment and cynicism.
After Reconstruction had been nullified, the status of the Negro
was not what Abolitionists had sought. The world, supposed
to have been "made safe for democracy," nourished new des
potisms. No war has yet ended war. Young people in postwar
epochs rediscover that wars accomplish little, and turn naturally
to pacifism or cynicism.
LONG-TERM SOCIAL CHANGES
The characteristics of youth in the 1920*s can only in part be
accounted for by these residues of war. Youth all over the world
was responding to changes in technology, in economic life, in the
arts and philosophy which would have appeared at about that
time even had there been no war. The next chapter will report
some of the long-term social trends which gave a context for the
behavior of young people growing up in the wake of World
War I.
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST FLOWERING OF MODERNISM
The decade following the First World War saw the first
flowering on the American continent of a fresh new spirit best
called "modernism." There was a modern technology, a modern
novel, modern poetry, modern music, the modern dance, modern
architecture, modern furniture, modern psychology, modern
education, modern social thought, and "modernism" in religion.
Much of youth s language and behavior which puzzled the adults
in the twenties grew out of a half-awareness of this transforming
Zeitgeist.
It is the thesis of this chapter, and one central to the entire
book, that the modernism which flowered after 1918 owed very
little to the war, but was the natural outgrowth as the term
"flowering" implies from seeds planted several decades earlier.
In this chapter we shall explore the modernism of the twenties,
to see whether it emerged full-blown from the prostrate head of
Mars, or whether a keen observer might not have found even
before the war clear indications of the growth of the new spirit
which came to prevail
TEE WAR AN INADEQUATE EXPLANATION
, Surprisingly few of the many writers concerned with the
problem of flaming youth in the 1920*5 looked beyond the war
for the cause of their difficulties. The shock of a terrible world
war, coming after the early years of the century when American
life had seemed so stable and so calmly progressive, so disturbed
adult emotions that no other explanation was sought. A few
writers sensed that the war was not the whole answer. Regina
Malone, for example, wrote, 1 "In one sense the revolt Jof our
youth] is an aftermath; but it is doubtful if the war did more
than precipitate a condition which had been developing for
several decades. The thunder had been rumbling for years, and
the simultaneous explosions of war and thunderclap were
coincident only by chance."
* Regina Maione, "Has Ycmth Deteriorated: The Fabulous Monster,"
Forum (1926), 76:26-30.
127
128 Youth After Conflict
Another discerning analyst of his time was S. K. Ratcliffe.
He wrote almost at the beginning of the new period, "We can
make little headway in our study unless we remind ourselves
that disruptive forces in the field of morals had worked their
way deep and wide even before the war." He saw the new
departure of youth as following lines laid out by four intellectual
changes of the past half century :
(1) The general intellectual emancipation from traditional
orthodoxy after the middle of the Nineteenth Century ; (2) the
revolution that accompanied the Darwinian statement of the
ancient doctrine of biological evolution; (3) revolt against
reason A noble and gracious William James at Harvard, a
brilliant Henri Bergson in Paris, invited their enraptured
students to consider how small a part of our waking life is
subject to reason, and to observe what poor specimens, as
rational beings, we all are; (4) that unlimited charter of the
modern spirit, the new psychology.
He refers especially to the theories of Jung and Freud, and
says that "we are now beginning to realize what [the doctrine
of the unconscious and frustrated instincts and energies] means
as high explosive in the region of personal behavior and social
ethics." Of this revolution, the author states : "And we have to
realize that for ourselves and them it amounts to the most serious
crisis of the spirit that the modern world has met."
While Mrs. Gerould 8 sees the breakdown in religion as an
independent cause rather than as itself a product of long-term
trends, she too goes far beyond the war in her explanation of
modern youth:
It is everything. . . . Give the motorcar its due share of respon
sibility. Give the rnovie more blame, please, than it has hitherto
received. Give the war some but not too much, for all this
antedates the war. Give the radical intellectuals a little, for
their tendency to howl down everything that has ever, any
where, been of good repute. Give a lot of it to the luxury of
the nottveaux riches : a luxury which inevitably, at first, finds
ocpression in pampering the body. Give prohibition a little, if
, only as an earnest of the vast blame it is going to have to
sfeonlde? in the next decade or two. And give all you can heap
Tbe License of the Youngsters," Century Magasme
.Qoroaid, "Reflections of a Grandy Cousin," Atlantic
The First Flowering of Modernism 129
up to the general abandonment of religion. For the abandon
ment of religion is probably most responsible of all, since it
bears a casual relation to most of these other facts. . . . When, as
a social group, we threw over religion, we threw over
probably without meaning to most of our everyday
moral sanctions.
ALL THINGS NEW
"The new generation," these young people were called by the
editors of one of the representative anthologies of the period. *
The spirit of modernism emerged so suddenly after the war that
it is not strange that most adults were taken by surprise. For
the first time in the history of the world, change had speeded up
to the point where renaissance could be compressed into a decade.
To appreciate the dramatic transformation, consider the back
ground of the midwestern doctor who was still living in the
Middletown described by the Lynd s in the mid-twenties : *
Within the lifetime of this one man, local transportation has
changed from virtually the "hoof and sail" methods in use in
the time of Homer; grain has ceased to be cut. . .by thrusting
the sickle into the ripened grain as in the days of Ruth, and
threshing done by trampling out by horses on the threshing
floor, or by flail ; getting a living and making a home have
ceased to be conducted under one roof by the majority of the
American people; education has ceased to be a luxury-
accessible only to the few; in his own field of medicine, the
X-ray, anaesthetics, asepsis and other developments have
feaded to make the healing art a science ; electricity, the tel-
fpfaooe, telegraph, and radio have appeared; and the theory
ef erofatroa has shaken the theological cosmogony that had
reigp&i far oentoies. . . . The log farmhouse of his fattier was
ceoed Jaside without plaster. ,. all meals were cooked before
the great loicibe fireplace... bread being baked in the glare
of a large curbed i^ffectar set before the open fire. At night
the rooms were Bgfetel if tte open fire and by taiow dips
Standard time was tui&Wm; few, owned watches When
the fire went out. . .the boy ran to a neighbor s to bring home
fire between two boards; it was not until later that the first
box of little sticks tipped witb sulphur startled the
neighborhood.
*V. F. CalTerton and S. D. Sdrroffcaiisen (Eds.), The New Generation
(New York: Macaiilay), 717 p.
5 Lynd, op. cit. f pf>. 1042.
130 Youth Ajter Conflict
The homely wisdom of pioneer life prescribed that chidren be
passed through a hole in the trunk of a hollow tree to cure
"short growth" ; hogs must be slaughtered at certain times of
the moon or the bacon would shrink. .. .Bleeding was the
sovereign remedy for fits, loss of consciousness, fever, and
many other ills
Men and women went miles and spent days in order to hear
champions argue disputed political or religious points. People
"got religion" and were "awakened to sin" at camp meetings. . . .
The Word wove its influence closely about everyday acts.
Most of the change from the old world to the new had taken
place within the lifetime, not only of the old folks, but of the
young people themselves. Boys and girls born in 1900 were just
coming out of high school when America entered the First
World War. They were in their twenties during the postwar
decade. What was that world like into which they had
been born?
A noteworthy description has been given by Mark Sullivan : "
In his newspapers of January 1, 1900, the American found no
such words as radio, for that was yet twenty years from com
ing; nor "movie," for that too was still mainly of the future;
nor chauffeur, for the automobile was only just emerging and
had been called "horseless carriage" when treated seriously,
but rather more frequently "devil wagon" .... Doctors had not
heard of 606 or of insulin Farmers had not heard of
tractors, nor bankers of the Federal Reserve System.
Merchants had not heard of chain stores nor "self-service," nor
seamen of oil-burning engines. Modernism had not been added
to the common vocabulary of theology, nor "futurist" and
"cubist" to that of. art. Politicians had not heard of direct
primaries, nor of the commission form of government, nor of
city managers, nor of blocs in Congress, nor of a League of
Nations, nor of a World Court Neither had they heard of
"wet" and "dry" as categories important in vote-getting. . . .
There were but fifteen Amendments in 1900 and the last had
been passed in 1869 The newspapers of 1900 contained no
mention of smoking by women, nor of "bobbing," nor per
manent wave, nor vamp, nor flapper, nor jazz, nor feminism,
nor birth control. There was no such word as rumrunner,
nor hijacker, nor bolshevism, fundamentalism, behaviorism,
Nordic, Freudian, complexes, ectoplasm, brain storm, Rotary,
Sullivan, The Turn of the Century, VoL I, Our Times (New York:
Qiarfcs Scritaer s Sons (1926), pp. 22-8.
The First Flowering of Modernism
131
Kiwanis, blue-sky law, cafeteria, automat, sundae; nor mah-
jong, nor crossword puzzle. Not even military men had heard
of camouflage ; neither that nor "propaganda" had come into
the vocabulary of the average man.
The conviction that old ways must be given up and that a
new era was dawning can be found in many fields. The follow
ing list of titles will illustrate the spirit of the time. This list
does not include the really fundamental revolutionary contribu
tions of Freud, Einstein, Veblen, Parrington, Dewey, and other
great innovators of the period. Those will be discussed later.
Here we see the repercussions in the writing of men and women
who were caught up in the yeasty ferment of the culture. The
social scientists wrote about "reconstruction" ; the international
ists thought they saw a "new world order"; each science was
prefaced by "new"; there were a "new psychology," a "new
morality/ a "new day for the church," modern poetry, modern
art, and, of course, "new schools for old."
THE MODERN OUTLOOK EXPRESSED IN BOOK TITLES
Social Science
1918 Follett, M. P.
1919 Cleveland, F A. (Ed.)
Johnson, F. Ernest
Lavell, C. F.
Ward, Harry F.
Weldman, Edwin (Ed.)
Woodruff, C. R. (Ed.)
1920 Nokn, John
Ryan, John A.
1921 Hart, A. B.
MacDoeaH, WiHam
1922 Schlesinger, A. M.
1923 Eddy, G. Sherwood
Williams, Robert
1924 HcCIure, W. M.
1925 Locke, Alain (Ed.)
Merriam, Charles
The New State
Democracy in Reconstruction
New Spirit in Industry
Reconstruction and National Life
New Social Order
Reconstructing America
New Municipal Program
New Ideals in the Planning of
Cities, Towns, and Villages
Social Reconstruction
New American History
New Constitution for a New
America
New Viewpomts m American
History
The New World of Labor
New Ltfibour Outlook
New American Commercial Policy
The New Negro: An Inter
pretation
The New Aspects of Politics
132
Youth After Conflict
1926 American Academy of
Political and Social
Science
Bogardus, E. S.
Lewisohn, S.
1927 Bailey, D. C.
Nolen, John
1928 Pink, L. H.
Schlapp, M. J.
1929 Gibson, J. W.
1929 Lauck, William Jett
Meakin, Walter
Modern Crime
New Social Research
New Leadership in Industry
New Approach to American
History
New Towns for Old
New Day in Housing
New Criminology
New Progress of a Race: or The
Remarkable Advancement of
the American Negro
New Industrial Revolution and
Wages
New Industrial Revolution
International
1919
1920
1921
1922
1924
1925
1926
1927
American Academy of
Political and Social
Science
Batten, S. Z.
Gamewell, M. N.
Sorley, W. R.
Comerford, Frank
Fenwick, C. G.
Hicks, F. C
Hobson, J. A.
Bowman, Isaiah
Bowman, Isaiah
Aabert, L.
Whelpey, J. D.
Faost, A. K.
Clark, Thomas Curtis
GiDespie, E. A.
Dorothy
International Reconstruction
New World Order
New Life Currents, in China
Reconstruction and the Renewal
of Life
The New World
Political Systems in Transition
The New World Order
Problems of a New World
The New World
Supplement to the New World
Reconstruction of Europe
Reconstruction
New Japanese Womanhood
The New Patriotism: Poems of
World Brotherhood
The New Russia
The New British Empire
The New Humanity,
The First Flowering of Modernism
133
Science
1919 Haldane, J. S.
1920 Yerkes, R. M. (Ed.)
1922 Moore, W. L,
1923 Davis, K. C.
Haas, A. E.
Wiggam, A. E.
1924 Hill, H. W.
Mann, W. E.
1929 Conger, G. P.
WInslow, C, E. A,, and
Hahn, M. L.
1930 Whitehead, C. S.
Psychology
1921 Tansley, A. G
1922 Miller, H. C.
1923 Miller, H. C.
1924 Harnei, C. F.
Porah, J. W,
1925 Barrett, E. J. B.
Gordy, J. P.
Spurr, F. C.
Sfr^feeke, J. J.
1929 Valentine, C W.
New Physiology
New World of Science
New Air World
New Agriculture for High Schools
New Physics
New Decalogue of Science
New Hygiene
New Theory of Evolution
New Views, of Evolution
New Healthy Living.
New Eugenics
The New Psychology and Its
Relation to Life
The New Psychology and the
Teacher
The New Psychology and the
Parent
The New Psychology and the
Preacher
The New Psychology and the
Bible
The New Psychology
The New Psychology
The New Psychology and the
Christian Faith
New Method of Mental Testing
New Psychology of the Un-
Philosophy
1918 Spaiilding, E. G.
1919 RandaD, J. H.
1920 King, Henry Churchill
1921 Effis, Havelock
1922 Gibson, A. E.
1926 Randall, J. H.
The New Rationalism
Spirit of the New Philosophy
New Mmd for the New Age
The New Spirit
New Light on Living
Making of the Modern Mind
134
1927 Besant, Annie
Durant, Will
Wood, James
1928 Drake, Durant
Evans, D. L.
1929 Lawrence, William
Religion
1919 Speer, Robert E.
1920 Harper, W. A.
Saunders, J. R.
Shenton, H. N.
Smith, H. B.
1921 Betts, George H.
1922 Holmes, John Haynes
1924 Bampton, J. M.
Fosdick, Harry E.
Kaplan, M. M.
1925 Ames, Edward Scribner
Harlan, R.
Langdon-Davies, J.
1926 Archer, J. C.
Eddy, G. Sherwood
1927 Alldredge, E. R
Jacobs, T.
Palmer, A. W.
1928 Jones, Rufus M.
Parrish, Herbert
1929 Park, John E.
Wark, H. E.
t, Art, etc.
1917 Monroe, Harriet
1919 Ritteafeotise, Jessie B.
Youth After Conflict
New Civilisation
Transition
New World Vistas
The New Morality
New Realism and Old Reality
The New American
New Opportunity of the Church
Reconstructing the Church
Cross and the Reconstruction of
the World
Christian Aspects of Economic
Reconstruction
New Earth
New Program of Religious
Education
New Churches for Old
Christianity and Reconstruction
Modern Use of the Bible
New Approach to the Problems of
Judaism
New Orthodoxy
New Day for the Country Church
Nezv Age of Faith
New Approach to Missionary
Education
New Challenges to Faith; What
Shall I Believe m the Light of
Psychology and the New
Science?
New Challenge of Home Missions
New Science and the Old Religion
New Christian Epic
Netv Quest
New God for America
New Horizons
New Era in Missions
The New Poetry : An Anthology
Second Book of Modern Verse
(First, 1913)
The First Flowering of Modernism
135
1920 Untermeyer, Louis
1921 Wilkinson, M.
1922 Bynner, W.
Pertwee, E. G.
1923 Soffici, Ardengo
1924 Cheney, S.
Pach, W.
1925 Calverton, V. F.
Pearson, R. M.
1926 Parsons, M. P.
1927 Potter, R.
Rittenhouse, Jessie B.
Wilenski, R. H.
1928 Frank!, P, T.
Frisbee, I. F.
1929 Carter, Htmtly
ChaKf, L. H.
Kreymborg, A. (Ed.)
Studio Magazine
Todd, D.
1930 Cheney, S. W.
Education
1919 Dewey, Evelyn
Kilpatrick, William H.
Pearson, F. B.
1923 Coffings, EHsworth
HaS, Bottom
Mirick, G. A.
Roman, F. W.
1925 American Academy of
Political and Social
Science
Hamilton, A. E.
1926 Boldsen, Thyra
K3patrick, William H.
The New Adam
New Voices
New World
New Spirit in English Verse
5*ur Essays on Modern Art
Primer of Modern Art
Masters of Modern Art
The Newer Spirit: a Sociological
Criticism of Literature
Hmv to See Modern Pictures
New Poetry
Modern French Art
Third Book of Modern Verse
Modern Movement in Art
New Dimensions, The Decorative
Arts of Today in Words and
Pictures
The New Age (poems}
Nezu Spirit w the Russian Theatre
New Dances
New American Caravan
New Architecture
New Interior Decoration
New World Architecture
New Schools for Old
The Project Method, The Use of
the Purposeful Act in the Edu
cative* Process
Reconstructed School
An Experiment with a Project
Curriculum
New Thrift
Pr&gressvue Education
New Education in Europe
New Values m CMd Welfare
The Red Boy and the New School
New Type of Man and Education
Education for a Changing Civil
ization
136 Youth After Conflict
Peffer, Nathaniel New Schools for Older Students
Washburne, Carleton and
Stearns, M. M. New Schools in the Old World
1927 Weyl, W. E. New Democracy
Wood, T. D. and
Cassidy, R. F. New Physical Education
1928 Cobb, Stanwood New Leaven; Progressive Educa
tion and Its Effect upon the
Child and Society
Rugg, H. and
Shumaker, Ann The Child-centered School
Steiner, Rudolf New Art of Education
Wilson, Lucy L. New Schools of New Russia
1929 National Congress of New Force in Education
Parents and Teachers Newer Ways with Children
O Shea, M. V.
The above lists could have been multiplied if all the titles
prefaced by "modern" or "contemporary" had been added.
Authors wrote of modern accounting, advertising, airbrakes,
anaesthetics, architecture, astronomy, astrophysics, auction
bridge, automobiles, ballads, banking, biography, biology,
bleaching, bonesetting and so on down through the alphabet to
modern woman, woodcuts, worship, writers, yard operation and
Yiddish poetry. If it didn t say "modern" it was out of tune
with the postwar spirit.
What lay back of this pervasive sense of having left the dead
past burying its dead, and having emerged into a new day?
MODERN TECHNOLOGY
It is an axiom of social science today to seek the causes of
social change first in technological change. This rule itself was
in large measure a contribution which grew out of that fresh
awareness of change during the twenties. 7
After the war, our technical power rose at a staggering rate.
Typical of many other curves of industrial efficiency, are the
on production of iron ore per man-year of labor, as shown
5.
^ Hie $jesS& of William F. Ogburn, Social Change with Respect to
*^ (New York: Viking Press, 1922).
The First Flowering of Modernism 137
TABLE 5. PRODUCTION OF IRON ORE PER MAN-YEAR OF LABOR *
Year Tons Produced by One Man-Year
1900 800
1919 1250
1929 2500
The twenty years from the turn of the century up to the end
of World War I brought a 56 per cent rise in efficiency ; but the
single decade of the twenties brought a gain of 100 per cent.
The same pattern is shown in even more striking fashion by
the growth in harnessed water power. Hydroelectric installa
tions increased their power output sixfold during the life of this
one generation from 1900 to 1930. But the increase during that
one last decade the momentous twenties equalled all that
had been installed in the United States from the beginning of
time down to the end of World War L
The years immediately after the war, 1919-1921, showed a rise
of 22 per cent in industrial productivity or about 7 per cent a
year. During most of the twentieth century the growth has
averaged only 3 per cent a year. This doubling of the rate of
growth may well have been a consequence of the application by
industry of techniques developed for war purposes. The
consequence was a tremendous lift in standards of living.
The increase was found on the farms as well as in industry.
Table 6 shows the horsepower used on farms in the
United States.
TABLE 6. HORSEPOWER USED ON FARMS IN THE UNITED STATES *
Year Millions of Horsepower
1900 23
1910 27
19S20 37
71
TTfee same pattern is repeated a gradual acceleration in use
up to fie end of the war, then during ihe next decade a growth
nearly equal to all that bad been achieved before that decade
began.
Combining in one Sinter many figures OB , physical production
in the United States, Hie National Bureau of Economic Research
reports that an index of ICO for 1913, the last year before the
* Recent Social Trends m the Zfmted Stetes: Report of the President s
Research Committee on Social Trends, {New York; McGraw-Hill, 1933),
p. 70. This volume will be referred to fiereafter la this chapter simply as
Recent Social Trends. By permission from McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.
* Recent Social Trends, op. dt., p. 101.
138 Youth After Conflict
war, rose to 119 by 1919, an increase of 19 per cent. But by
1926 this index mounted to 153 a rate of gain nearly twice
that of the 1913-1919 period.
This rise in wealth was not, of course, distributed to all alike.
The war made 18,000 new millionaires, and the Brookings
Institution study 10 made at the end of the twenties showed that
0.1 per cent of the families at the top of the income scale had,
in total, as much income as did the 42 per cent of all families at
the lower levels. The sudden affluence of the few affected the
standards and expectations of the many. And there were sub
stantial gains all down the line. For example, Sears, Roebuck
and Company put out 500,000 catalogues in 1900; it went up to
2,000,000 by 1910; to 5,000,000 by 1920, and to 7,000,000 by the
end of the twenties.
The psychology of the "nouveau riche" needs to be worked out
for a nation as well as for single families. Prosperity can be
very disturbing to ideals of hard work, thrift, and abstemiousness
long enforced by scarcity. There was still poverty in the
United States in the 1920*s a great deal of it but never
before in history had so large numbers of people enjoyed so
much abundance. The technological advance alone could very
well account for a new interest in leisure, a susceptibility to
dissipation, an easy-come, easy-go morality, a superficial
optimism, and a blind faith in divine sanctions for the present
social order.
THE AUTOMOBILE
Outstanding among many technical developments which
flowered after World War I was the passenger automobile.
This innovation fits very neatly the curve of growth we have
described. It began in the 1890*8 and developed slowly.
Overlands, Cadillacs, and Packards were being made in 1902;
Fords and Buicks in 1903. Many young people of the twenties
could remember when the first "devil wagon" was bought by
some reckless sport in their home town. Perhaps they yelled
with other youngsters, "Get a horse." During childhood, these
young people told Ford jokes, and may have sung, "Get out and
get under/* The writer recalls a boyhood trip of a formidable
forty miles which included four tire changes, due to punctures or
blowouts. Roads were still built for horses too narrow for.
f>assing cars, the hills too steep, the surface sandy or muddy.
Learen, et al, America s Capacity to Consume f (The Brookings
: Waslmsgtoa, D. C, 1934), p. 56.
The First Flowering of Modernism 139
In 1912 came the self-starter; before that one got out and
cranked. In 1912 President-elect Woodrow Wilson rode to his
inaugural in a motorcar. Mark Sullivan remarks, "The distance
between the Wilson automobile and the Taft carriage was, in
time, four years; in material change it was fully twenty
centuries." u
The twenties fulfilled the description by a writer a decade
earlier who had said,
This is a get-things-done-quick age. It is a ready-to-put-on-
and-wear-home age, a just-add-hot-water-and-serve age, a
new-speed-record-every-day age, a take-it-or-leave-it-Fm-very-
busy age."
What did all this swift advance in techniques of production do
to people? To young people especially?
Contrast this long slow evolution with the pace of events after
the war. Surfaced rural highways increased tenfold in little
more than a decade. In one year, 1920, 2,000,000 cars were made,
and there were 9,000,000 in use. In 1923, 3,600,000 were made.
In 1924, Ford celebrated his ten millionth car. A good index
of the increasing traffic is found in the casualty figures. No
deaths from automobile accidents were recorded in 1900; there
were very few in 1910; by 1920 there were 9,000 fatalities, but
these increased to 29,000 (over 200 per cent) by 1930.
The social impact of the automobile was very great. It became
the principal form of recreation in America, as judged by volume
of expenditure. In 1929, the American people spent about
$10,000,000,000 on recreation, and of this, the recreational use
of tlie passenger automobile accounted for more than 40 per cent
Expenditures on baseball, football, foreign travel, camping,
dancing, theatres, or movies came nowhere near the cost of
automobile travel.
It provided country boys and girls with a chance to enjoy city
facilities for school, shopping, health service, and recreation.
Cars contributed coasiderably to the relaxation of behavior
standards, because they removed young people from the careful
supervision which parents, teachers, ministers, and other neigh
bors had been accustomed to exercise. A writer in the Literary
Digest offered one of ttie earlier dissertations on this theme : M
1 Mark Sullivan, Our Times, Vol. II, p. 269.
Ljfcjutyd, 1911.
Literary Digest, 1924, 82:35.
140 Youth After Conflict
In other days the boy paid court to his "girl" on an ivied
porch or in a cozy parlor, under the watchful eyes of a mother
or the stricter vigil of a maiden aunt. If he took the girl
"buggy riding/ it was necessarily for no great distance, and
the return was usually long before the stars had begun to fade.
The courting couple were never far from some sort of chap-
eronage. Impressionable and impulsive, they lived within the
exterior restraints of a community observation and judgment,
in face of a direct family and community control, which were
a considerabe safeguard. But nowadays the gay young gallant
steps on the gas, and the pair are soon beyond any sort of
parental or other surveillance.
The anonymous couple danced differently in the remote
roadside dance hall than they would have at a young people s
society sociable. The auto facilitated all kinds of bootleg opera
tions. When parked, it afforded comfortable privacy. "Pickups"
became common experience and there arose the recurrent joke
about the girls who had to walk home.
THE AIRPLANE
The airplane, although it got a start soon after the automobile
(the Wright brothers flew in 1903 and Louis Bleriot crossed the
English Channel in a plane "in 1909), developed more slowly.
There was no great stir when Alcock and Brown, in 1919, made
the first successful transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to
Ireland, It was only a "publicity stunt" when, in 1926, Evans
and Wells took a plane around the globe in twenty-eight days.
The one really exciting celebration was aroused by Lindbergh s
flight to Paris in 1927. He became, literally overnight, the idol
ized hero of millions of American youngsters.
Trie Contrast between the profound effects of the automobile
and the slight effects of the airplane in the 1920 s gives us a
guiding principle which will be of service when, in the last
chapter, -we try to predict what social changes will do to youth
attitudes in the l^s.
; Tfte new inventions with which social psychologists and
^AiealOTS interested in a given generation of youth must reckon
espadialiy are not the brand new ones but those which are about
to <&fter upon the phase of steepest use in their curve of use.
Tbfe -wfi ordinarily be at least a decade or two after the pioneer
j^MStihaoealsL larentiofis born about the same time children are,
aafe tifefe m Ipfely to t>e exerting their maximum influence when
The First Flowering of Modernism 141
those children are becoming adult. This lag seems to offer a
little relief from the dizzy feeling that unexpected change may
assault our lives and programs of education from any direction
at any moment.
THE MOVIES
Second only to the automobile as a factor contributing to a
transformed outlook in the twenties came the motion picture.
The growth of this influence parallels closely the increase in
use of cars.
The first motion-picture machines, like the first automobiles,
appeared in the 189G s. In the early 1900*8 came the nickelodeons.
The first long story successfully filmed was The Great Train
Robbery of 1903. By 1915, Mary Pickford and Francis X.
Bushman were established and Charlie Chaplin was beginning
to get attention.
It was not until after the war, however, that there arose a
generation of young people who went regularly to the movies
once or twice a week. Concern over the moral standards of
Hollywood led in 1921 to the appointment of Will Hays as the
first "czar" of the industry, to keep productions within acceptable
limits of taste. In 1926, Warner Brothers and Western Electric
announced the sound film and for a year or so there was serious
debate in the magazines on the relative merits of the familiar
silent films and the new "talkies/ Youth went for the "talkies."
This was the period of .maximum expansion In the industry.
Attendance doubled in the five years after 1926. The movies,
like the automobile, became an important part of the daily living
of most young people. There they learned about life, love, crime,
file-latest fashions, the current song "hits," and the new dances.
Affirfce in 1930 was estimated at from 77,000,000 (Edgar
Dak) i* US/m/m (Recent Sbzwl Trends) each week, a figure
large enosgfi to include Almost everyone not In the cradle, the
hospital, or tlie jail
It Is difficult to know the Mud ami the extent of the effects of
the movies of the 192*s on yoting people. Several investiga
tions 1 * were attempted.
There were occasional reports of youthful bandits who
admitted that they were conducting a robbery or holdup as they
M H. J. Forman, Onr Home Made CMldrvn (New York; The Macmillan
Co, 1933).
142 Youth Ajter Conflict
had seen it done in the movies. The question remained, however,
whether the movie furnished an incentive or merely a few tech
niques to embellish what the gang would have been doing
anyhow. May and Shuttleworth found that children who
attended the movies most often were less stable emotionally,
had a poorer deportment record and less self-control, cheated
more at school, and were less co-operative than those who
went infrequently.
More direct evidence was found by Thurstone and Peterson,
who gave attitude tests before and after certain films. Sons of
Gods brought a substantial increase in favorable attitude toward
the Chinese, and this persisted even after nineteen months.
Welcome Danger had the opposite effect it increased suspicion
toward the Orientals. The Birth of a Nation had the anti-Negro
effect which had been often charged against it. Four Sons
increased sympathy for the Germans and antipathy toward war.
Street of Chance led to more severe disapproval of gambling.
The evidence consistently supported the plausible assumption
that attitudes are influenced by the vivid experiences which
movies provide.
Analysis of the content of movie programs brought out the fact
that youngsters were seeing there scenes which they would have
been most unlikely to meet in their home town environment.
Crime, sex, and adventure play a major part in film stories.
Professor Blumer of the University of Chicago found that 50
per cent of high school pupils said they got their ideas on love
and love-making mostly from the movies.
The following list of movie titles, all from films shown in the
192CPs, suggests that if there were no other influences at work,
these pictures in themselves might well have accounted for:
(1) the impression of a generation of terribly wild and flaming
youth; and (2) such actual license as was practised. Remem
bering how the movies step carefully around any honest
treatment of sex, one is almost nauseated by the suggestive,
hinting, leering, obscene connotations of these titles:
SEX FILMS OF THE TWENTIES
The Sheik Paid to Love
Ar@&ian Love Love Mart
One Wonderful Night Gigolo
Paradise The Mad Whirl
Forbidden Fruit
The First Flowering of Modernism 143
The Marriage Circle Trifling Women
Should a Wife Tell Ladies of Ease
Husbands for Rent The Joy Girl
Mad Love Lady of the Night
Temptation A Woman of Paris
Passion Flame The Gold Digger
One Week of Love The Taxi Dancer
Twin Beds Love Em and Leave Em
WUdness of Youth Manhandled
Madness of Youth The Love Expert
Risky Business In Search of Sinners
Why Be Good? Flesh and the Deiil
Reckless Youth Daughter of Pleasure
Our Dancing Daughters Male and Female
A Woman of the World Other Men s Wives
Scrambled Wives Afraid to Love
Week-end Wives Night of Love
The Married Flapper
The gangsters of the post-prohibition era were glorified in the
movies as well as in the press, usually under the guise of warning
against crime. The following feature pictures played their part
in the build-up:
Partners of the Night Tenderloin
Kick in Chicago After Midnight
One Million Jewels Underworld
Outside the Law The Dragnet
The Unholy Three The Racket
There were many evidences that movies set styles in appear
ance, in slang; phrases, and in conduct. When, about 1917,
Theda Bara created the role of the "vamp," her hair-do, her
dresses, aad her tactics were imitated by thousands. When girls
yearned for a Sheik lover like Rudolph Valentino, the boys
practiced for the parL Clara Bow, as the short-skirted, jazz-
crazy "It" girl, was another prototype. The fact that the pictures
were seen by young people in groups, not each by himself as
one might read a book, greatly increased their potency in
influencing the mores of youth. **
15 M. Sberif, The Psychology of Social Norms (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1936).
144 Youth After Conflict
Professor Charters, who directed the most far-reaching studies
of the influence of moving pictures on youth, reached the
following conclusion:
The motion picture is powerful to an unexpected degree in
affecting the information, attitudes, emotional experiences, and
conduct patterns of children. The content of current com
mercial pictures constitutes a valid basis for apprehension
about their influence on children. lft
Certainly the movies did a great deal to create among young
people a craving for money, night clubs, expensive clothes, big
cars, and the other trappings of luxury. Boy and girl delinquents
more often reported themselves as wanting to get the money for
a good time, than as imitating any particular crime. We shall
have more to say a little later about the values sought by youth
and adults in the 1920*s but the Hollywood pattern was among
the most influential. It operated not only through the scenes
shown on the screen but also through a flood of "movie maga
zines" which told in story and picture how the stars lived and
loved in luxury.
Now, in fairness to the movies, we must present a list more typical
of the pictures seen by children from homes that exercised more
supervision. Young people who went to the movies only when there
was something especially good showing probably saw a list more like
this:
1920 The Mark of Zono Our Gang
Humoresque The Covered Wagon
The Kid
1924 The Thief of Bagdad
1921 The Three Musketeers He Who ^ s l pped
Camdle Greed
The Four Horsemen Merton oj the Movies
1922 Orphans of the Storm ?&& Pan
Blood and Sand Be Brummel
Foolish Wives irk0 - ~ r OT _, ,_,. ^ t
r ~ 1925 The Phantom of the Opera
Lorna Doone T j */r
T> t . rr j Sally, Irene, and Mary
Robin Hood So Big
Safety La$f Grass
fl* Ten Commandments The Gold Rush
Grmw Goddess The Freshman
The Big Parade
The First Flowering of Modernism 145
1926 Beau Geste Cat and the Canary
Irene King of Kings
Ben Hur The Last Command
What Price Glory The Jazz Singer (Sound)
Hotel Imperial ^ The Street Angel
y
Moana T
,*, ~ , . r Lilac lime
The Scarlet Letter ,. ~> f
Sadie Thompson
1Q7 - 7 T Abies Irish Rose
Jt yf I f rr\ j ft *
TJ^ 1 he Lircus
-n- ox i * -n - Four Sons
the Student Prince
Underworld 1929 Rio Rita
Seventh Heaven Disraeli
Way of All Flesh Hallelujah
THE RADIO
Another new influence on youth after World War I was the
radio. It, too, had begun its career at the turn of the century.
In 1901, Marconi signalled three dots across the Atlantic. Not
a few of the boys who were to be part of the postwar youth
generation were building "wireless telegraph" sets before the
war. A radiotelephone had been demonstrated in 1902. By
1915, voices could be broadcast across the ocean.
In 1921, President Harding s talk was broadcast simultaneously
to listeners in New York and San Francisco. From then on the
curve of production shot into its steep phase. By 1925, the radio
Industry was producing 2,000,000 sets a year and the phonograph
Industry was said to be doomed. In 1926, the first big network
was organized by the National Broadcasting Company, and the
bigbM>ia Broadcasting System began operations the following
J ear. < By "then 1927 it was too late for broadcasting to play
any major rdfe in affecting the viewpoint of postwar youth. The
radio devotees were the children of the 193(Fs, not those of the
war years or the ts^eiitlesw
URBANIZATION
A slow change which played an eTeu greater part in the new
tempo of the twenties was the movement of population from the
rural areas to big cities and their subttrfos. The year 192Q marks
the fifty-fifty division point in time between a population the
majority of whom (60 per ceat in 1900) lived in the country or
146 Youth After Conflict
in small villages, and a population most of whom (57 per cent in
1930) lived in larger cities. Table VII shows the growth in
population living within the principal "metropolitan zones."
TABLE 7. PER CENT OF U. S. POPULATION IN METROPOLITAN ZONES
Year Per Cent
1900 37
1910 41
1920 44
1930 48
During the decade following the First World War the urban
population rose by 15,000,000, while the rural farm population
actually decreased in size.
IMMIGRATION
Immigration to this country had reached its peak in the period
between the turn of the century and the First World War. In
the year 1904 the steerage passage from Europe to America cost
only $10. In each of the years 1905, 1906, 1907, 1910, 1913, and
1914, over 1,000,000 Europeans entered our gates. They gave
New York and other large eastern cities a cosmopolitan charac
ter. Many of them came as families with young children who
grew up in a new land. These children were part of the youth
problem of the 1920*3. The authority of parents with their
old-country ideas was greatly weakened. The centers with large
foreign-born or first-generation American born population con
tributed more than their share to some of the problems of the
twenties. Prohibition was anathema to the wine-making cultures
of Southern Europe. Many of the immigrants lived perforce in
slum neighborhoods where their children were quickly inducted
into street gangs and associated delinquencies. A number
familiar with political theories of Central and Eastern Europe
became targets of Attorney General Palmer s raids against aliens
with dangerous thoughts. The postwar era in America took
some of its characteristics from the prewar immigration.
One of the rectirring characteristics of postwar youth, as
snorted earlier, is its demand for education. It is equally true
IP say tbat AiBerican society had been for more than a generation
oiMwtiog the special concern for education that iowered after
Wor!4 War I, A basic doctrine of American society has been
The First Flowering oj Modernism 147
that one might improve himself and rise in the world by means
of education. When higher productivity of the economy relieved
adolescents of the need to go to work, they quite naturally
turned to longer schooling.
The figures on high school attendance show a striking rise in
the twenties. In 1900, there were only about 500,000 students in
American secondary schools. Ten years later there were
1,000,000. In 1920 there were approximately 2,000,000 and in
1930 there were 4,000,000. Thus the number doubled in each
decade. High school attendance is like some of the other social
facts presented in this chapter in that the gain during the single
decade of the 192Q*s equalled all that had been achieved before
1920. Junior colleges were just beginning after World War I
their great day will come after World War II.
The figures on school expenditures are the most extraordinary
of all. The increasing prosperity of the 1920*8 was accompanied
by an enormous increase in support for public education. The
data are given in Table 8.
TABLE 8. EXPENDITURES FOR PUBLIC ELEMENTARY AND
SECONDARY SCHOOLS"
Year Expenditures in constant (1926) dollars
1900 $383,000,000
1910 605,000,000
1920 671,000,000"
1930 2,685,000,000
As the number of students going to high school increased, the
range of offerings necessarily became broader. The average
high school in 1900 offered eighteen subjects for study. Ten
years later this had increased to twenty-three. But by 1928, the
quantity had doubled and the students were working at forty-
seresi different approved courses- of subject matter. There was
more science, more art, more of the social studies, and a great
deal more of commercial training. In 1900, more than half the
students in American high schools took Latin. In 1922, only
about one student in four was studying Latin.
Public interest ia education rose along with attendance and
expenditures. A study of articles in popular magazines showed
for a prewar period (1905-9), in each thousand articles indexed,
17 Recent Social Trends, op. <r&., p. 373. By |>ermisskni from McGraw-Hill
Book Co., Inc.
M The price ioiiatioo of 1920 made a large increase in dollar appropriations
really amount to mtich less. Note that if one begins with the 1900 figure and
doubles each decade as high school attendance doubled the 1930 figure
is not far oat of line.
148 Youth Ajter Conflict
thirty that discussed education. A decade later, during the war
years 1915-18, this figure had risen to thirty-nine. But in the
mid-twenties (1925-28) despite all the manifold interests of the
time, there were fifty-five of each thousand devoted to education.
Whatever may have been wrong with the youth of that postwar
period could not be blamed on a neglect to use the resources of
education. More went to school, more schools and subjects
were provided, teachers were better paid, and the public was
more alert.
One reason or the growing discussion of education was the
emergence of "progressive education" another manifestation
of the general modernist aspiration of the decade.
Progressive education was not a product of the World War or
of reaction against the war. Like so much else that flowered in
the twenties, progressive education had been conceived a quarter-
century earlier. Dewey wrote his School and Society in 1899;
his laboratory school had been founded in 1896. It became part
of the School of Education at Chicago in 1902. The Francis W.
Parker School was inaugurated by Flora J. Cooke in 1901. The
visit of Mrne. Montessori to this country in 1913 stimulated
concern for self-activity by children.
Before the war broke out in 1914, psychological research had
undermined the doctrine of formal discipline on which the tradi
tional curriculum had rested. Dewey s, Interest and Effort in
Education (1913), Schools of Tomorrow (1915), and his com
prehensive Democracy and Education (1916), laid the intellectual
foundation for the new approach. Kilpatrick s statement on the
project method appeared in 1919 and thousands of students
thronged to his classes each year to be taught by the new
discussion technique.
In 1917, the Lincoln School of Teachers College began its
career of innovation and controversy is education. Other pro
gressive schools followed soon after: Chevy Chase Country Day
School in 1919; Beaver Country Day School is 1922; Manumit,
a progressive school under labor auspices, in 1924. Nationwide
stimulus came from the Progressive Education Association,
in 1919. A Bulletin was published for several years,
then, in 1924, came the first issues of the magazine,
Education. Teachers flocked to regional and national
of tbe P.E.A. IB 1926, Kilpatrick issued his little
af fectees entitled, Education for a Changing CwtiKzotion.
OTOTeii fed grown so fast and so far that it was ripe
**-*** overview tbat Harold O. Rogg aird Arm
The First Flowering of Modernism 149
Shtimaker (then editor of Progressive Education) published in
1928 under the title, The Child-centered School.
The twenties were very exciting years in education. Psycho
logical research, philosophical pragmatism, and direct educational
experiments had put the traditional academic program on the
defensive. Youth had the support of its better-trained teachers
in demanding a drastic revolution in the time-honored curricula
and methods of the high schools. A "new psychology** was also
being discovered in these years and to that influence we shall
turn shortly. First, however, let us note some parallel
educational trends outside the schools.
Parents became interested in child study. This movement had
its origins before the First World War in the work of G. Stanley
Hall. The Child Study Association began its work of confer
ences, study classes, and magazine publication in the early
twenties. There was a sharp increase, during the twenties, in
the number of books and articles designed to help parents
understand their children.
Parent education was given additional impetus by the nursery-
school, another very creative enterprise which began in the
fruitful 1920*3. Much credit for the high quality of work in the
field of child development and the nursery school must go to
Lawrence K. Frank who at the Commonwealth Fund did almost
a one-man job of promoting their intelligent growth. Between
1921 and 1926, Child Development Institutes were organized at
Teachers College of Columbia University, at the University of
Iowa, the University of Minnesota, and the University of
California. Professor Gesell s laboratoiy at Yale proved one of
the most productive. The facts about babies were established
&m& todiers were trained so that when the Works Progress
A^teini0tfation schools of the 1930*s and the wartime nursery
schools <- tfee 1940*8 came into being, the expansion could rest
oe a solid educational foundation,
Religions education also boomed after World War I. It, too,
had been de^efoffog for about two decades. , In 1904, George
Albert Coe liad fdbfefaei Edmctstum m ReKgmn md Morals, but
his Social Theory of Jfdip^w Edw@$i&n In 1917 opened up a
wliole new approach to the prcttem. Richardson s Religious
Education of Adolescents (I91S) and George Herbert Berts
If em Program oj ReRgiom Education (1921) were indications
that the movement was becoming widespread and conscious of
a new contribution it might make. The Religious Education
Association began as a conference of a few leaders back in 1903 ;
150 Youth After Conflict
its magazine appeared in 1906; but its great day came in the
twenties. Thousands attended the annual conventions. City
churches appointed directors of religious education. Theological
seminaries introduced special courses of trading and church
boards provided scholarships to attract promising young people
to this new and expanding field. The story of the decline of the
movement belongs to the 1930*3 and beyond.
Within religious education, as in public education, there was
a conflict between traditionalists and progressives. The tradi
tionalists used uniform lessons; the progressive-conservatives
used graded lessons ; the thoroughgoing progressives built their
programs around the purposes and problems of their pupils.
Progressive movements in both public and religious education
were paralleled and reinforced by the development in the
twenties of a strong new emphasis on group thinking, a factor
so important in the lives of youth that it must be given a
separate heading.
GROUP THINKING
Reference was made in an earlier chapter to the revolution
which took place between the Des Moines Convention of the
Student Volunteer Movement in 1920 and the Indianapolis
Convention in 1924. This was one manifestation of a new
development which affected group work outside schools more
than it influenced formal education.
Like progressive education, the group-thinking movement
rooted in the philosophy of John Dewey. It combined Dewey s
faith in intelligence and his faith in democracy. It emphasized
the importance of helping people to think for themselves rather
than trying to impose upon them the conclusions of others. The
technique of thought was taken over from Dewey s How We
Tkmk (1910), but enriched* by the manifold contributions of
group discussion.
One outstanding pioneer in group thinking was a woman,
Maij P. Faltett, who published in 1918, The New State; Group
Qrgctmtfi&n the Solution of Papular Government. She saw in
the new idea an answer to the growing difficulties of big
government.
It faa& often been true that camps, boys clubs, girls clubs,
settfesieat houses^ Y.M.CA/s and Y.W.C.A/s have been in
of tlie pubic schools in their educational thinking and
Parity l>eeatise they are free from the state-prescribed
The First Flowering of Modernism 151
curricula, supervision, examinations, and other requirements,
they can adapt more readily. This was true in the development
of discussion as a technique of group work.
During World War I, the Student Christian Associations
began large-scale use of group discussion. It grew out of the
old Bible classes. In 1914, Harrison Elliott and Ethel Cutler
prepared a study guide called Student Standards of Action. R. H.
Edwards and Ethel Cutler the next year offered Life at Its Best.
At men s dormitories in Iowa State, Fred Hansen organized
1,000 college students meeting each week in discussion groups.
Ewing had a similar project at the University of Nebraska.
Henry Wright at Yale used seniors to lead discussion groups of
freshmen. Harrison S. Elliott and Jay Urice were responsible
for training leaders for this movement during the war. They
visited camps and colleges and led demonstration discussion
groups in the barracks and dormitories. Elliott s book on How
Jesus Met Life Questions (1920) grew out of experience with
such discussions.
The need for manuals was felt, and, in 1922, A. D. Sheffield
published his Joining in Public Discussion. Elliott s Why and
How of Group Discussion came out the following year.
Kilpatrick, as mentioned before, had worked out a method of
teaching teachers which required them to work together in small
discussion groups. A similar method was used, in 1925, under
the leadership of Abel J. Gregg, for the national assembly of
Y.M.C.A. boys work leaders. Materials designed to foster
discussion at young people s meetings were prepared for the
Epworth League when Elaine Kirkpatrick was its general sec
retary. A conference of the American Country Life Association
under the leadership of Henry Israel in the early 1920*5 used
ifae new discussion approach. It was even applied internationally,
as mentioned in an earlier chapter, at the Helsingfors Conference
of the International YJ4,C.A~
Democratic procedures in running the famous Taylor Statton
Camp Atimek for boys were descrit>ed by Ditnock and Hendry. *
The most ambitions application of the group-thinking ap
proach was found in *tfae Inquiry, * under the direction of E. C.
Carter. In the field of race relations, Bruno Lasker collected
i9 Bifn0ck and Hendry, op. ciL
36 Inquiry, Wkai Makes up My Mmd on International Questions (New
York: Association Press, 1926), 92 p.
152 Youth After Conflict
the material for his useful book on how children get their
race prejudices. 21
Implicit in the whole group-thinking approach was the assump
tion that no adult leader, no preacher, teacher or expert, could
hand down the "right" answers to youth. Youth was encouraged
not at all against its will to move out along the lines of
creative thought and to find better answers then the world
had known before. There was a circular reaction between the
demand of youth for independence and the ideal of the
leaders in the group-thinking movement. Each reinforced and
encouraged the other.
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
Up to about the time of the First World War, psychology
had been a technical academic discipline, confined pretty much
to specialists or to teachers in training.
One of the earlier and more successful popularizations was
"behaviorism."" John B. Watson had published in 1913 an
article on "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." * Thanks
partly to the name, which suggested some connection with con
duct and misbehavior; thanks even more to Watson s vigorous
repudiation of soul and spirit with ghosts, consciousness, and
mind, the new school became quickly a subject of popular
controversy. People who had no quarrel with the objective
laboratory approach which Watson was advocating were aroused
by his more sweeping metaphysical generalizations. Behavior
ism was defended by radicals as the materialist s psychology;
for that same implication of materialism it was damned by
religions leaders.
In 1927, a translation of Pavlov s work on conditioned reflexes
reached the United States. Beliaviorism had used the concept
of conditioning as its explanation for practically all behavior.
Experimental psychologists were attracted by the objectivity of
ifce approach, and a large proportion of the time of American
p^ebefegists of the f>ericx! went into conditioning ?rad decon-
jBMts aild recon <fitk>ning rats. The genera! public was
Cm$ren (New York; Halt, Hendry & Go,
Sftmdp0mt of & Befoamenst
The First Flowering of Modernism 1 53
attracted more, perhaps, by the sense of something new, and
by the comparative simplicity of the doctrine. It seemed almost
too easy this behaviorism. Just follow the example of Pavlov,
who made a dog salivate at the sound of a bell, if you would
raise children, sell goods, or propagandize a nation.
Far deeper and more profound was the revolution brought
about by Freud. Psychoanalysis is another movement which
fits the pattern so prevalent in this chapter a beginning about
1900, a slow growth before the war, a rapid expansion in the
1920*5, Freud s Interpretation of Dreams appeared in German
in 1900; his Psycho pathology of Everyday Life, in 1904. By
1906, a few articles in English had found their way into Amer
ican medical journals. President G. Stanley Hall, always
sensitive to new currents, brought Freud over to lecture at
Clark University in 1909. The reception was rather chilly.
After the war, however, the atmosphere had changed and the
younger generation were eager to hear about repressed impulses
and unconscious desires. The students read interpretations of
Freud, like E. B. Holt s Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics
(1916), Wilfred Lay s The Child s Unconscious Mind (1919), or
Andre Tridon s Psychoanalysis (1919), the first of six books of this
kind by Tridon. They read J. C. Fltigel s Psychoanalysis Study of
the Family (1921), and Ernest Jones Essays in Applied Psycho
analysis (1921). Barbara Low s Psychoanalysis (1920) and W. H.
R. Rivers Conflict and Dream (1923) were popular, while BrilPs
Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis (1921) was regarded
an authoritative. The wiser students read Freud himself:
Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious 1916
Delusion md Dream 1917
Psychology of Everyday Life 1917
Taboo 1918
Jnfar&dmction to Psychoanalysis 1920
Cmfa*im$i&ms to the Theory of Sex 1920
ofogf md $k& Analysis of the Ego 1922
m&^^Pnmciple - 1922
Interpretation of Jfae&ms 1923
Future of on Illusion 1925$
Within a half dozen years, eight of Freud s books were trans
lated for the English reader. These were supplemented by
innumerable secondary interpreters of psychoanalysis, among
whom Wittels and Alexander have high rank. The supporters
154 Youth After Conflict
of deviant schools Adler, Jung, Stekel and Rank all added
to the fray.
There was no possibility that discoveries like Freud s could
be kept within the safe circle of medical or psychological tech
nicians Psychoanalytic interpretations were used by novelists,
biographers and playwrights. By 1927, the term "Freudian"
had become so well-recognized that it was included in Webster s
dictionary. Everyone could, and did, talk about complexes and
libido and neuroses. Articles in popular magazines discussing
psychoanalysis and mental hygiene more than doubled in relative
frequency during the decade from 1916 to 1926 Jackson and
Salisbury s Outwitting Our Nerves was a best-seller in 1922.
G, A, Dorsey s Why We Behavd Like Human Beings, published
in 1925, became a best-seller in 1926, and Schrnalhausen found
a substantial market for Why We MisbeJiave,
An important development related to psychoanalysis was the
mental hygiene movement. The National Committee for Mental
Hygiene had been organized by psychiatrists in 1917 Clifford
Beers, who had recovered from a period of insanity, had been
working at this effort to prevent mental disease since publication
in 1908 of his book, A Mind That Fomd Itself. New professions
emerged in the twenties : the clinical psychologist, the psychiatric
social worker, the visiting teacher, and a new agency the child
guidance clinic became established The Commonwealth
Fund began in 1922 its program to train psychiatrists, psy
chologists, and social workers to work as a team in these clinics.
The American Orthopsychiatric Association, bringing all these
experts together, was organized in 1923.
There were other "new psychologies" in the twenties. The
serious student thinks of Gestalt psychology, first introduced in
English by Kofflka s Growth of the Mind in 1924. The man in
the street was much more aware of Coue, whose "Every day in
every way Fm getting better and better" had quite a rage in 1923.
It was psychoanalysis, however, which really upset the estab
lished ways of looking at human nature and conduct. The
resolution introduced by Freud can well be compared with those
Introduced by Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein, Copernicus
upset faith in our earth as the center of the universe, and intro-
dbced a cosmic relativity, further transformed by Einstein,
Darwin made men re-think their relationship to the rest of
nature. Fretnl placed the proud, smttg, little conscious self IB
Its 4^ffldeat relationship to nracli larger and deeper forces. It
The First Flowering o] Modernism 155
was true as Jastrow said,* 4 "The ideas of no other living- man
are responsible for so many printed pages." A whole submerged
continent of the personality was opened tip for exploration.
Let us ask about the impact of all this new psychology on the
young man in the street who read neither Freud nor his
voluminous interpreters.
A number of far-reaching ideas came out of the new psychology
and gradually were imbedded in common sense; they became
what "every one knows, of course."
Most important was the idea of the importance of sex in life.
In the pre-Freudian era, sex had been belittled, degraded, min
imized and, where possible, ignored, as a role in life. Freud
helped to establish, far beyond the circle of his readers, a recog
nition that the sex hunger is normal, wholesome, powerful,
and pervasive.
Another basic concept was that there might be causes in
behavior lying deeper than our conscious intellectual awareness.
It began to be taken for granted that people sometimes acted
against their own best judgment and intention. There were
reasons behind their irrational acts.
Closely related was the understanding that the emotional
experiences of very early childhood might have important and
far-reaching consequences, for good or ill.
A fourth insight was the unity of the whole person. The
mental hygiene clinics and all the cases they reported made it
clear that when a child disobeyed, that act must be considered
in relation to his health, his sense of emotional security, his early
training, his friends, and his life ambitions.
Generalizations of this kind now seem so obvious that it may
be difficult to understand how much resistance they met with
when iarst proposed. Part of the barrier in understanding
between youth and age after World War I was due to the fact ,
that youth could more easily accept the post-Freudian view of
human nature.
THE AMERICAN LITEEA&Y RENAISSANCE
The flowering of the modem American outlook during the
1920 $ was most apparent in a new literary movement. A
remarkable group of writers emerged, constituting what Malcolm
21 Joseph Jastrow, The House That Freud Built (New York: Greenberg,
i y j / .
156 Youth After Conflict
Cowley has called the first real literary generation in American
history, 25 "Everyone now seemed to belong to the Younger
Generation," wrote another critic, "and the Younger Generation
seemed to be everywhere The younger writers had erupted so
suddenly into victory that they were to fancy for at least a
decade that modern writing had begun with them in 1920." M
It is not easy to catch in a phrase the essence of the postwar
novels. Many terms have been applied by critics: "Realism/
"Dissipation," "Negation," "Violence," "Cosmopolitanism,"
"Individualism/ 3 "Pessimism," "Iconoclasm," "Experimental-
ism," "Rebellion," even "Pornography" the categories sound
a little reminiscent of all the varied charges against youth.
There were, in fact, many varieties of literary expression given
to the new spirit of the 1920 s. One of the most typical and most
talented writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, may serve as a central
symbol of the period. He was born in 1896 so was just twenty-
two when the war ended. His publications included :
Flappers! and Philosophers 1920
Tales of the Jazz Age 1922
The Beautiful and Damned 1922
This Side of Paradise 1923
The Great Gatsby 1925
All the Sad Young Men 1926
Even the reader who has the misfortune not to have read any
of these beautifully written tales can catch in the titles the spirit
of what Gertrude Stein dubbed "The Lost Generation." All
faiths had been abandoned except in the temporary pleasures of
youth and love. The new un-faith was at the same time exciting
and morbidly melancholy.
Other writers of fiction in what may be dubbed the "flaming
youth" school were:
Ina Claire- The Gold Diggers 1919
Floyd Dell Moon-calf 1920
E. M. Hull The Sheik 1921
Warner Fabian Flaming Youth 1923
Unforbidden Fruit 1928
23 Cowley, op. cit.
28 Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (New York: Reynal S. Hitchcock
1942), p. 193.
The First Flowering of Modernism 157
Cyril Hume Wife of the Centaur 1923
Golden Dancer 1926
Cruel Fellowship 1926
Percy Marks The Plastic Age 1924
Which Way Parnassus? 1926
Michael Arlen The Green Hat 1924
These Charming People 1924
Young Men in Love 1927
Ace of Cads 1927
Anita Loos Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1926
Katharine Brush Glitter 1926
Little Sins 1927
Rosamond Lehmann Dusty Answer 1928
It is regrettable that within the space limits of one chapter it
is not possible to do more than list the titles of these books so
symbolic of the outlook of a youth generation. The names will
surely recall to some readers the sophisticated characters, the
witty repartee, the audacious defiance of custom, the gay parties,
casual affairs, and general "sexcitement" of this spate of story
telling. The best-selling item in the list was one of the poorest
from a literary standpoint: The Sheik sold over a million copies.
The popularity of a moving picture and the song, "The Sheik of
Araby," had much to do with the sale of the book.
The new sex attitudes were even more in evidence in another
group of novels which were equally characteristic of the twenties.
Again titles will have to serve to awaken a memory for the
content which aroused so much comment at the time :
W. Somerset Maugham The Moon and Sixpence 1919
James Branch Cabell Jurgen 1919
Robert Keable Simon Called Peier 1921
Ben Hecht Eric Dorn 1921
Gargoyles 1922
D. H. Lawrence Women in Love 1922
Victor Margueritte The Bachelor Girl 1923
Maxwell Bodenheim The Blackguard 1923
Against This Age 1923
Replenishing Jessica 1925
Georgie May 1928
Radclyffe Hall The Well of Loneliness 1928
Ellen Glasgow They Stooped to Folly 1929
158 Youth After Conflict
Readers were shocked but intrigued by the frank treatment of
sex relationships, including sometimes perversions. The franker
treatment of sex, like all the other literary themes of the 1920 s,
had its beginning much earlier. Somerset Maughan had written
Of Human Bondage before 1915. D. H. Lawrence gave us Sons
and Lovers in 1913 ; Rainbow, Love Poems and Amores before 1916.
Another movement which began much earlier but which
flowered in the literature of the 1920 s delighted in ridicule of
the bourgeoisie. An earnest pioneer was Upton Sinclair who
had begun with a revelation of the meat packing industry in
The Jungle (1906). His attack on the press The Brass
Check was published in 1919; his interpretation of Jesus as
a social radical, They Call Me Carpenter, came out in 1922; his
two critiques of education, The Goose-Step and The Goslings,
followed in 1923-4. More widely read in the United States, if
not in the outside world, was Sinclair Lewis. His Main Street
in 1920 and Babbitt in 1922 may not have equalled Arrowsmith
(1925) in excellence, but they became bywords in popular con
versation. They provided the perfect stereotype for small-town
life and Rotary Club business men as seen by the intellectuals
of the time.
Another literary giant, in this age of giants, was Sherwood
Anderson. His Winesburg, Ohio in 1919, while n ot his first
book, was the first important example of the new American
realism. John Dos Passos, whose Manhattan Transfer appeared
in 1925, belongs in a similar tradition.
The high priest of the boob-baiters, however, was H. L. Mencken.
In 1923, he and George Jean Nathan moved from the Smart Set to
the American Mercury. Their American Credo ; A Contribution to
the Interpretation of the National Mind first appeared in 1921 and
set the tone for the decade. No less than five volumes compiling the
superstitions and naivetes of middle-class America appeared under the
general title, Prejudices, between 1920 and 1927. It was said by one
observer that no student dared appear on a university campus with
out a copy of the green-covered American Mercury under his arm
to prove his emancipation. Mencken coined the phrase "The Bible
Belt" which has become commonplace, and also the less commonly
quoted "land of corn, hogs, and the seven-day sock/ A bishop de- -
nounced youth for turning from Christianity to "Mercurianity."
The 192Q s could hardly have been the same without Mencken.
Two other great literary figures who helped to form the literary
atmosphere of the 1920 s were Theodore Dreiser and Ernest
The First Flowering of Modernism 159
Hemingway. Dreiser s work was well along before the war, with
Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Financier
(1912), The Titan (1914), and The Genius (1915). TheHandofthe
Potter came out in 1918, as the war was ending. His American
Tragedy, in 1925, marked the climax of his career. He had helped
establish the new pattern in which many of the younger generation
were writing. Ernest Hemingway was distinctively of the postwar
group. In The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Men Without Women
he expressed the cynicism and disillusionment of the intellectual, but
combined, in his case, with a rugged assertion of masculinity. He
set a distinctive prose style which was persistently imitated by
other writers.
No style was more distinctive, however, than that set by Gertrude
Stein. It was already apparent in her Three Lives, published in
1909, but its influence mounted during the twenties.
Probably the most capable and influential writer among many with
great talent during these years was James Joyce. In the short stories
of Dubliners (1914) and in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(1916), Joyce first attracted attention. All through the war he
labored on Ulysses, which was finally published in Paris in 1922.
Copies were smuggled into the United States by returning sophis
ticates and the legal decision that finally removed the ban is one of
the classics of literary law. Ulysses, explored the stream of cons
ciousness with a thoroughness and frankness unprecedented ; but its
greater contribution was in a fresh use of words and phrases to
carry multiple communications. Some regard Finnegan s Wake as
the greatest work of modern literature. Few would rank ahead of
Joyce in influence upon aspiring younger writers.
A number of writers in this generation after the First World War,
were interested in special regional subcultures. Ellen Glasgow, for
instance, had begun with Virginia (1913) and carried on in the
southern setting she knew intimately, with Romance of a Plain Man
(1922), Voice of the People (1922), Barren Ground (1925), Battle
ground (1929), and Deliverance (1929), Julia Peterkin wrote of
a distinctive Negro plantation culture in Green Thursday (1924),
Black April (1927), and her best seller, Scarlet Sister Mary (1929).
Roark Bradford s OF Man Adam an His Chillun was made by
Marc Connelly into the stage success Green Pastures. Another
miner in this rich vein was Du Bose Heyward wfto gave us Porgy
(1925), Angel (1926), and Mamb& s Daughters which made the
best-seller list in 1929. Near the end of the twenties, came William
Faulkner whose The Sound and the Fury (1929), Sartoris (1929),
Youth After Conflict
and As I Lay Dying (1930), exploited a subculture of degeneracy,
prostitution, suicide, insanity, and gross brutality. Best of all was
Thomas Wolfe whose Look Homeward Angel closed the decade.
There was an interest in biography but, colored by the outlook of
the times, many biographies written in the twenties were aimed to
take heroes off their pedestals. William E. Woodward s Bunk,
published in 1923, is said to have introduced the term "debunking"
into the American language. His George Washington (1923) was
certainly an outstanding example of the art. Lytton Strachey s
Queen Victoria (1922) was another. In a different mood Andre
Maurois wrote Ariel, reporting with accurate and unconcerned
candor Shelley s numerous indiscretions. John Erskine s books
hardly belong in the same paragraph. There was an element of
debunking, perhaps, in The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1925),
Galahad: Enough of His Life to Explain His Reputation (1926),
and Adam and Eve: Even Though He Knew Better (1927). But
they were intended primarily for light entertainment and succeeded
admirably in being sophisticated, amusing, and playful about sex.
They were quite in the spirit of the more "cultured" sectors of
readers in the twenties.
George Bernard Shaw amounts to a school by himself. He was
another, most of whose works were published before the war, but
whose spirit was clearly that of the iconoclastic^ twenties. He was
as apt as any at ridiculing the bourgeoisie or shocking? the maiden
aunt from Dubuque. His Back to Methuselah (1921), Saint Joan
(1924), and The Intelligent Woman s Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism (1928), belong in chronology as well as in spirit in the
postwar world.
Another writer as prolific as a literary school was H. G. Wells.
He had published a number of characteristic books before the war :
Mankind in the Making (1904), Marriage (1912), Discovery of the
Future (1913), but many of his greatest contributions fall within
the postwar decade. There were Joan and Peter in 1918, War of the
Worlds in 1922, Men Like Gods in 1923, and The World of William
Clissold in 1926. Wells had few imitators his contributions rested
on an erudition too extensive and an imagination too- powerful to
encourage competition. He did, however, express and foster the
hopeful tone of the decade, concerning all that science and the future
might bring.
Shaw and Wells and G. K. Chesterton (whose publications during
the twenties included Eugenics and Other Evils, Father Brown
stories, and biographies of St. Francis and Robert Louis Stevenson)
The First Flowering of Modernism 161
carry us away from the field of fiction and suggest the importance of
giving at least brief mention to the extraordinary group of thinkers
and writers of nonfiction during the American renaissance.
At the very end of the war 1918-19 came The Education of
Henry Adams, an autobiography of- 1 the highest quality, and much
more in tune with the outlook of the twenties than was the nineteenth
century optimism about the service motive of business which lay
back of the self-satisfaction in The Americanization of Edward Bok
(1920).
The writing of history in America has never reached another peak
to compare with that of the twenties. The Beards were completing
their monumental Rise of American Civilization which came out in
1927. Frederick Jackson Turner s great interpretation of the influ
ence of the frontier in American history was published in 1920 and
reached best-seller eminence in 1921. James Harvey Robinson
stimulated fresh thinking on cultural developments in his Mind in
the Making (1921) and Humanizing of Knowledge (1923). Claude
Bowers had two books that became best sellers: Jefferson and
Hamilton (1921) and The Tragic Era (1929). An epochal event in
literary history was Vernon L. Parrington s Main Currents in
American Thought which was published in 1927.
This review of outstanding contributions should not mislead the
reader into supposing that public taste kept up with the creative
artists. As a correction it may be well to insert at this point the
best-sellers in fiction and nonfiction for each year of the period
under discussion:
Best Sellers
Year Fiction Nonfiction
1918 Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Frederick Palmer, America in
Ambersons France
1919 Irving Bacheller, A Man for the Ages Maurice Maeterlinck, Mountain
Paths
1920 Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence Edgar Lee Masters, Domesday
Book
1921 Sinclair Lewis, Main Street H. G. Wells, Outline of History
1922 A.S.M. Hutchinson, // Winter Comes Emily Post, Etiquette
1923 Gertrude Atherton, Black Oxen Lulu Peters, Diet and Health
1924 Edna Ferber, So Big G. A. Dorsey, Why We Behave
1925 A. Hamilton Gibbs, Soundings Like Human Beings
1926 John Erskine, Private Life of Helen Will Durant, Story^ of Philosophy
of Troy Andre Maurois, Disraeli
1927 Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry
1928 Thornton Wilder, The. Bridge of Ernest ^Dimtnet, The Art of
San Luis Rey Thinking
1929 Erich M. Remarque, All Quiet on the
Western Front
162 Youth After Conflict
It is interesting to note that as soon as the war was over, war
books dropped off and did not reappear for a decade. Dos Passes
Three Soldiers (1921) stood alone for most of the decade. In 1929
came Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front.
MODERN POETRY
The importance of poetry for this discussion is that it reflects
with special sensitivity and intuition the spirit of the times.
Most youth does not read much poetry, although late adolescence
is probably the period of life when poetry makes most appeal.
All youth, however, is influenced in one way or another by social
and spiritual currents which one can most readily discover by
examining the poetry of a period.
Modernism in poetry flourished before World War I. In 1912
Harriet Monroe founded the magazine, Poetry, which brought
out early contributions from Yeats, Masters, Frost, Pound, and
Vachel Lindsey. That same year appeared Edna St. Vincent
Millay s Renaissance. Modernism could be traced back to
Housman s Shropshire Lad in 1906 or earlier to Edwin Markham,
or Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson. But during the First
World War came the fresh impetus of Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology, Carl Sandburg s Chicago Poems, T. S.
Eliot s Prujrock, and Edwin Arlington Robinson s Man Against
the Sky.
In the twenties we find some of the best work of Archibald
MacLeish, Alfred Kreymborg, Elinor Wylie, Hart Crane, and
E. E. Cummings. None of these reverence tradition or the
society of their time. Each is in revolt. They experiment with
new forms, and do so in a blithe spirit. They are playful in
their iconoclasm. Many of the poets of this generation were left
in their political sympathies. Kreymborg was a Communist.
Wylie and Cummings escaped in another direction toward
individualism and a contempt for the masses.
The participation of young Negro poets in the new spirit was
another landmark of the times. Countee Cullen gave us Color
in 1925, and Langston Hughes the next year contributed his
rhythmic Weary Blues.
The poet who was best known to college youth in this period
was probably Dorothy Parker. Many of her clever quips and
amusing jibes larded the smart conversation of the era. Her
"Resume" is so classic an expression of a cynicism which takes
The First Flowering of Modernism 163
nothing, not even its own dark view, very seriously, that it is
worth quoting.
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Typical of a new spirit in teaching writing was the work of
Hughes Mearns CT with high school and younger pupils. He had
great faith in the spontaneity and originality of youth. "Take
off the lid," he urged. Teachers all through the progressive
schools and often in fairly conservative places were invited to
find from within themselves new forms of expression more
appropriate than traditional poetry to the spirit of their own day.
MODERN DRAMA
Far more were influenced by the rapidly developing art of the
movies than by the theatre of the 1920 J s. A recent review of the
"Art of the Motion Picture," arranged by the Museum of Modern
Art, included the following noteworthy examples from the
decade:
1. Stage into Screen
1921. Way Down East with Lillian Gish and Richard
Barthelmess
2. War in Retrospect
1921. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with Rudolph
Valentino and Alice Terry
1926. The Big Parade with John Gilbert
3. Documentary
1922. Nanook of the North
4. Western
1923. The Covered Wagon
27 H. Mearns, Creative Youth : How a School Environment Set Free the
Creative Spirit (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1925), 234 p.
164 Youth After Conflict
5. Comedy
1925. The Freshman with Harold Lloyd
1928. Two Tars with Laurel and Hardy
6. Adventure
1926. Beau Geste with Ronald Coleman and Noah Beery
7. Gangsters
1927. Underworld with George Bancroft
8. Russian
1928. Ten Days that Shook the World directed by
Eisenstein
9. End of the Silent Era
1926. Hotel Imperial with Pola Negri
1928. The Wind with Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson
10. First Talkies
1927. The lazz Singer with Al Jolson
11. Stage into Screen
1930. Anna Christie with Greta Garbo
1930. Juno and the Paycock, Abbey Theatre Players
12. Animation
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Felix: the Cat, and innumerable
Disney cartoons
The modern spirit in the drama must be dated from well before
World War I. Shaw s Mrs. Warren s Profession was pro
duced in 1907; The Silver Box, the first of Gallsworthy s score
of plays came on in that same year. From 1915-1919 the
Provincetown Players carried on their creative work.
In 1919 the Theatre Guild put on its first production and since
then it has contributed a remarkable array of productions.
Among those of its first decade were Capek s R.U.R. A study
of plays they were putting on gave top rank to Shaw (108),
Milne (103), George Kelly (87), and Shakespeare (80).
The 1920 s were famous for the experimental approach to the
theatre. Eugene O Neill, greatest of the dramatists of the postwar
decade, tried out new devices with great effectiveness in Emperor
Jones, Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape, The Great God Brown, Desire
under the Elms, and Strange Interlude. Eva La Gallienne and her
Repertory Theatre provided another first-rate laboratory for the art
The First Flowering of Modernism 165
of the stage. Lee Simonson, Norman Bel Geddes, and Robert
Edmond Jones experimented in new stage settings which expressed
the spirit of modern art and modern architecture. Out across the
country the "Little Theatre" movement reached its high point during
the 1920 s when more than a thousand communities had such
amateur and semi-professional acting groups.
MODERN ART
Painting, like poetry, entered directly into the experience of
only a small fraction of American youth, but the spirit which
produced the Armory Show of Cezannes, Picassos, Matisses,
Gaugins, and Van Goghs in 1913, was akin to the spirit which
breathed a new atmosphere in the 1920 s. The artists who
inhabited the Left Bank in Paris before the First World War,
and called themselves "Les Fauves" (The Wild Beasts), were
anticipating a cultural revolution which hit youth in the big
cities of America during the 1920 s and began to spread through
out the nation as a whole in the late 1930 s. In 1921, the staid
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York put on its first show
of French post-impressionists. Sheldon Cheney s Primer of
Modern Art was published in 1924 and helped to spread the new
gospel. The number of art museums in the United States
doubled from 1900 to 1930. By the end of the twenties, Amer
icans had become so art-conscious that they were spending more
than a billion dollars a year on works of art.
In architecture the new "international modern" made more
rapid progress in Europe than it did in America. Frank Lloyd
Wright is the best-known of the American innovators. During
the twenties only a small number of sophisticates fell in love with
his strange functional houses, but the demand for modern lines
in furniture and homes has grown steadily during the ensuing
decades.
PUBLICATIONS
The curve of output from the printing presses rose as rapidly
as any of the curves of production after the war. The prewar
decade saw 4,000 new books a year; during the twenties this
more than doubled, with something like 10,000 new titles coming
off the presses. The organization of book clubs which began
with the Book of the Month Club and the Literary Guild in
about 1926 contributed a great deal to the volume of book
purchases. Numerous other clubs followed.
166 Youth After Conflict
Magazines became larger and more numerous as national
advertising, especially automobile advertising, made expansion
profitable. Between 1909 and 1929, periodical advertising rose
from $54,000,000 to $320,000,000, multiplying sixfold in two
decades. Magazine circulation rose from 6,000,000 in 1900 to
23,000,000 in 1920 and 33,000,000 in 1930. Writers were paid as
much for single articles in large-circulation magazines as they
had previously earned in royalties on a book.
Two especially noteworthy beginnings in the 1920 s were Time,
with its distinctive style of news reporting (1923), and the
New Yorker (1925), which became the magazine privileged to
reject the largest number of stories and poems by bright young
writers. The launching of the first tabloid the New York
Daily News in 1919 started a powerful line of mass influence.
Humorous magazines thrived in the atmosphere of the
twenties. In 1922, Norman Anthony became editor of Judge.
He packed it full of humorous cartoons and multiplied its circu
lation threefold within a year. Then he did the same for Life
(that was a humorous magazine in the twenties) and for
Ballyhoo, which at one point reached a circulation of 2,000,000.
Those were the days when College Humor was a best-seller on
the newsstands. At a still lower level of taste came Captain
Billy s Whiz-Bang and a number of vulgar imitations.
Another type of magazine which made its debut in the twenties
was True Story Magazine (1919) and its imitators: True Con
fessions (1922), True Romances (1923), True Detective
Mysteries (1924), True Love and Romance (1924), True Ex
periences (1925), etc., etc. These ground out stories to
well-defined patterns ; virtue always triumphed and vice brought
remorse to the sinner however much breathless excitement it
might bring to the reader. The expansion of these and the pulR
Westerns, Detectives, and Fictions signalized the appearance
of a new group of magazine readers. These new cheap maga
zines were read by thousands who had never before read
periodicals. The expanding school enrollment had added to the
scmiliterate public.
THE INFLUENCE OF WRITERS
There remains the question of the effect of this literary
ferment on youth. What did if do to young men of America to
grow from youth into manhood during the years when Sigmund
The First Flowering of Modernism 167
Freud, John Dewey, John Galsworthy, Upton Sinclair, Bernard
Shaw, H. G. Wells, Charles Beard, James Harvey Robinson,
Thorstein Veblen, V. L. Parrington, Van Wyck Brooks, Sinclair
Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, D. H.
Lawrence, James Branch Cabell, John Erskine, Sherwood
Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Lee Masters, Edna St.
Vincent Millay, T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, Countee Cullen,
Dorothy Parker, Henry L. Mencken, Michael Arlen, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, and Eugene O Neill were forming the intellectual
climate of opinion? That was a decade of great power in
thought and in expression!
Most boys and girls had little, if any, direct contact with these
major authors. Were the youngsters then uninfluenced? The
ideas and moods of the major writers acted through many
indirect channels. High school teachers read the important new
books, and never taught in quite the same way afterward.
Preachers read the new books and their preaching changed.
Women s clubs reviewed them, and mothers adjusted to new
scales of value. Young people read stories in popular magazines
which were patterned after the masters of current fiction. A few
novels of importance were made into movies, but movie script
writers had often read widely and were influenced by the modern
writers even when working on Grade B film stories.
More important than these influences that can be traced was
the fact that young and old, educated and uneducated, were
responding to the intangible atmosphere of their time. It wasn t
that youth read Warner Fabian s novel and then flamed both
the novel and the original impulsive response of youth grew out
of the same culture. The writers are important in this study of
youth as symptoms, even more than as influences. The same
forces that brought forth and guided the talents of a Thomas
Wolfe were influencing hundreds of less intelligent, less
sensitive, less reflective boys and girls.
We turn now to music and other arts, to see whether they too
underwent a special development after World War I.
MODERN MUSIC
The modern music which flourished not only in America but
all over the Western World after the First World War was even
more sharply different from the traditional masterpieces than
168 Youth After Conflict
were the modern novels, modern dramas, or even the
modern poems.
A major factor was the incorporation into serious music of
the rhythmic and tonal experiments of jazz. Jazz did not com
mence with the 1920 s. The Negro composer, W. C. Handy,
had written the Memphis Blues, in 1913 and the St. Louis
Blues in 1914. From about that time on there had been a steady
flow of musical experimentation leading to the "hot" jazz bands
of the 1920 s. Wilder Hobson 28 makes the important distinction
between "commercial" jazz, written for dances and popular
songs, and that "natural musical language which American
musicians, Negroes and whites, have been speaking now for
more than a quarter-century." It was this spontaneous im
provisation in the quest for new and more satisfying musical
experience of a "pure" rather than an "applied" character, which
led to the creation in the late twenties of those remarkable
compositions known only to little bands of initiates. Miff Mole s
Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble is an excellent example. The jazz
sophisticate is more interested in the unconventional "jam
sessions" of Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson,
or Earl Hines, than in the cultivated swing music of
Benny Goodman.
So far as the general public is concerned, the big year of the
new American music was 1924. It was then that Paul Whiteman
arranged to give a concert in symphonic jazz at Aeolian Hall in
New York. That program introduced George Gershwin s
Rhapsody in Blue.
. . . George Gershwin s Rhapsody in Blue was the first success
ful attempt by an American composer to use jazz in a large
symphonic form, thereby suggesting the artistic possibilities
of the popular idiom. A year later jazz came to a serious
symphonic program when the New York Symphony under
Damrosch featured the premiere of Gershwin s jazz Concerto
in F } with the composer as soloist: Thereafter jazz ceased to
be an ugly stepchild of music. Serious composers borrowed
the vitality and voluptuousness of its idiom for the expression
of American rhythm : Aaron Copland, Werner Janssen, Robert
Russell Bennett, John Alden Carpenter in America;
Stravinsky, Ravel, Krenek, Kurt Weill in Europe Jazz not
only came to the symphony hall but to the opera house as well.
28 Wilder Hobson, American Jazz Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1939), 230 p.
The First Flowering of Modernism 169
Not only jazz worked into the larger forms but good jazz itself
acquired respect; for the first time, interest was aroused in
the rhythmic ingenuity, melodic freshness, and the dynamic
drive of the best popular works. Jazz was adopted by many
lovers of serious music as a musical expression worthy of
respect and cultivation. M
Jazz, boogie-woogie, and related musical experiments are
probably the most authentic American art form. They, better
than any other art, speak the many-sidedness of American life:
its rapid tempo, its excitement, its experimental freedom, its
garish lights, its changing colors, its exuberance, and its
lonesome pain.
The first of the great modern composers to belong exclusively
with the postwar generation is Dmitri Shostakovich whose
remarkable series of symphonies began coming out in the Soviet
Union in 1926. From Latin America comes Carlos Chavez, com
posing New Fire in 1921, and Energia in 1925. The leading
American participant would be Aaron Copeland, whose First
Symphony appeared in 1925, to be followed the next year by
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.
The musical activities of the twenties were not confined to
experimentation with jazz and other modern musical forms.
One of the indications of an authentic new spirit in that decade
was revived interest in folk songs and ballads. J. A. Lomax had
been collecting old cowboy music and in 1922 published Cowboy
Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. Two years earlier Wyman had
collected Twenty Kentucky Mountain Songs. The Harvard project
led to collections of Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberyards by
R. P. Gray (1924), Folk Songs of the South by J. H. Cox (1925),
and Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy by F. L. Rickaby (1926).
At about the same time Korson published Songs and Ballads of the
Anthracite, Monroe, Bayou Ballads, and Finger, Frontier Ballads.
There is an obvious parallel between the interest of certain
novelists in regional specialization and this concern to conserve
some of the music of such subcultures.
The folk music movement merged with the new international
ism to bring an interest in the folk songs of other lands. An
excellent collection, Folk Songs of Many Peoples, was com
piled in two volumes by F. H. Botsford and published by the
28 "David Ewen, Music Comes to America (Allen, Towne and Heath, Inc.)
pp. 276-81"
170 Youth After Conflict
Woman s Press in 1921. During the twenties there appeared
other collections of African, Bohemian, Canadian, Chinese,
Dutch, English, Flemish, French, French-Canadian, German,
Hawaiian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Japanese, Jewish (also
Yiddish), Latin- American, Mexican, Norwegian, Philippine,
Russian, Scottish, Spanish, and Ukrainian folk songs.
The interest in folk music combined with the relaxed censor
ship of that decade to give us several collections of more or less
bawdy ballads. Carl Sandburg s American Song-Bag (1927)
was pretty well expurgated. Shay s My Pious Friends and
Drunken Companions (1927) had the special merit of illustra
tions by John Held. An almost equally good title was chosen
by J. J. Niles for his collection, Songs My Mother Never Taught
Me (1929).
Before we leave the field of music which gives such a clear
reflection of the flowering of modernism, we should record that
the teaching of music was undergoing a revolution. "Piano
lessons" had been a source of considerable strain between par
ents and children of the early 1900*3. The teaching was formal,
the practice dull, and most children gave it up before they got far.
The movement for school bands and orchestras that gained
momentum in the 1920 s opened up many new opportunities for
performance. The methods of teaching changed to a more
progressive approach. Exercises and drill were reserved for the
training of specialists. Just as physical education discovered
that free play would do all that calisthenics did for the body and
do it better, so teachers of music discovered projects which were
fun to carry out and which carried in themselves the benefits of
practice and drill. Especially noteworthy was Mrs. Coleman s *
work in teaching young children to perform a very simple
symphony of their own composition. Each class developed the
use of some simple instrument: triangle, xylophone, flageolet,
etc., and then these were combined into an integrated perform
ance developing several musical themes. Both Hughes Mearns
extraordinary success in getting children to write, and Mrs.
Coleman s remarkable demonstration of what children could do
with music, were worked out at the Lincoln School of Teachers
College, early in the 1920 s.
e 8 S * ^ leman Creativ * Music for Children (New York: G. P. Putnam s
Sons, 1922).
The First Flowering of Modernism 171
THE MODERN DANCE
The decade after the First World War was the great day of
the modern dance. By the mid-thirties a renaissance of ballet
was apparent, but it took over some of the contributions from
the experimentation with the dance during the twenties.
Two figures stand out as the beginning of the new dance. They
were contemporaries but not co-operators.
Isadora Duncan, barefooted and in Greek costume, brought a
new style of dancing to the concert stage in 1908. As important
as her performance was her vision. She was the new dance in
America as :
...the living leap of the child springing toward the heights,
towards its future accomplishments, toward a great new vision
of life that would express America. n
In 1906, Ruth St. Denis, moved by a religious mysticism, chose
the dance as her medium of expression. In 1914, Ted Shawn
became keenly interested in this new dance, and in Ruth St.
Denis. They were married, and, in 1915, opened the Denishawn
school in Los Angeles which was to be the training school for
the new movement.
To Denishawn came Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey,
Charles Weidman, and many others. The other main training-
center was Mary Wigman s school in Dresden, begun in 1920.
In 1924, the head teacher at Wigman school was the talented
Hanya Holm. John Martin describes the development as follows :
In the spring of 1926 Martha Graham made her New York
debut as an independent artist ; the same year the dance was
introduced into a university for the first time in history as a
major subject leading to a degree at the University of
Wisconsin under the direction of Margaret H Doubler;
Tamaris made her debut in 1927, and the same year for the
first time in history three New York newspapers established
independent departments of dance criticism; the following
spring Daris Humphrey and Charles Weidman left the ranks
of Denishawn and appeared with their own concert company.
On such bases and others like them has been built the
contemporary dance movement which has got itself labeled
as "modern." "
31 Jolm Martin, America Dancing (New York: Dodge Publishing Co., 1936),
320 p.
** Martin, ibid.
172 Youth After Conflict
There were others. In 1924 the writer climbed several flights
to an old loft over a garage on West 66th Street to see Dorsha
and Paul Hayes perform in their little improvised dance studio.
Agnes de Mille, while not in exactly the same category as the
other dancers in this review, had her concert debut in
the twenties.
The modern dance probably influenced only a very small group
of youth, but it expressed beautifully some of the new aspirations
of the decade.
The jazz dances of the twenties called down, as we have
reported, a storm of condemnation, but these, too, had their
antecedents. The "cakewalk" was introduced by Negro orches
tras about 1900. The 1910 period included ragtime, the "turkey
trot" ("Everybody s doin it!"), the "hesitation," the "tango,"
the "grizzly bear" and the "bunny hug." In 1914 the General
Federation of Women s Clubs had already felt it necessary to
condemn in resolutions the modern extremes in dancing. Here
apparently was a development that was well along before the
war. The strength of the liberalizing attitude is well shown by
the fact that in 1924, despite the fact that dances had grown
wilder than ever before, the Methodist General Conference lifted
its ban on dancing and left matters to each individual s
conscience.
THE MODERN WOMAN
Another social change which gained momentum slowly but
advanced rapidly after the First World War was the emergence
of the Modern Woman. She was able to take a job, whether
married or not ; she regarded herself as the full equal of men ;
she claimed the freedom to talk, play, dance, dress, and love as
she pleased; she accepted birth control and, when necessary,
divorce. She voted and held political office.
The increased participation in jobs was substantially greater
for married women than for single women. In 1900, only about
6 per cent of married women worked outside the home ; a genera
tion later this proportion had doubled. Functions were trans
ferred out of the home to other social agencies, giving wives
more time. Furniture making, spinning, weaving, making men s
clothes, bread making, canning, laundering, education, care of
the sick, recreation one after another they ceased to center in
the home. Increasing urbanization and the passenger elevator
made possible the big apartment house, and family living space
The First Flowering of Modernism 173
decreased. The organization of a National Federation of Busi
ness and Professional Women s Clubs in 1919 showed recognition
of a new and important concern for women. The Lucy Stone
League (1921) represented a further protest against subordina
tion to men. In 1922 the Episcopal Church found it advisable
to remove the wife s promise to obey from the traditional
marriage ceremony.
Politically, the woman suffrage movement expressed the new
spirit. Back of the Nineteenth Amendment, passed in 1920, lay
two decades of active pressure.
In 1916 the first woman, Jeannette Rankin, was chosen to the
House of Representatives. In 1920, Florence Allen was made
a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Cleveland and two
years later she was advanced to a judge of the Supreme Court
of Ohio. The first woman governor was Ma Ferguson of Texas
(1924). The National League of Women Voters was organized
in 1920 to push the political education of women who had just
won the ballot.
Women s style of dress had brought increasing comment from
the "bloomer girl" of the 1850 s, down to the latest flapper
short skirt. There was the "peek-a-boo blouse" to worry about;
the sheath gown (1908) ; and the hobble skirt (1909). Some
doctors shocked the conventional-minded by criticizing corsets.
But the big break came after World War I. Then the one-piece
bathing suit became accepted in summer, and dresses with short
skirts all the year around. Girls parked their corsets at home
and rolled their stockings below their knees. The body was
finding a new freedom from confinement.
SEX EDUCATION, BIVORCE, BIRTH CONTROL
Interest in a franker approach to sex education had been
developing before the war. The Y.M.C.A. had included sex
education for many years. The American Social Hygiene
Association was organized in 1914. Shortly after the war there
appeared the first books with the new attitude which recognized
the joys of intercourse and which admitted that masturbation
might not have bad physical effects. Mary Ware Dennett s
Sex Side of Life was banned in 1923 and only released after many
appeals from churchmen and other educators. Long s Sane Sex
Life and Sane Sex Living was limited to medical practitioners,
as were also the books of Mary Stopes and Van de Velde.
Nevertheless copies circulated among young people.
174 Youth After Conflict
Judge Ben B. Lindsey created something of a sensation with
his Revolt of Modern Youth (1926) but much more with Cont-
panionate Marriage (1927). Havelock Ellis and V. F. Calverton
were writing in the new spirit. Dora Russell s Right to be Happy
attracted many readers because she and her husband appeared
to be successfully practicing what they preached.
Divorce became more common. The number of divorces per
100 marriages was nine in 1900, and it doubled, reaching eighteen,
in 1929. The big jump in the curve occurred between 1918
(twelve per 100) and 1921 (seventeen per 100). An indication
that even the slow rise before 1900 had made some impression is
found in a story gleaned by Mark Sullivan from the Philadelphia
Record of 1902:
This edition of the Bible is the very latest.
But surely you can t improve on the Bible?
I refer especially to the Family Register. Besides a page each
for births, deaths, and marriages, we give three pages
for divorces.
Lynd reported that a divorce rate of 18.5 per 100 marriage
licenses in the Middletown of 1900 had risen to 32.7 per 100 by
1920. A Broadway play in 1922 (Why Not?) kidded the New
York State law which forced high-minded people to commit
adultery in order to revise their marital status.
The most important single development affecting the life of
women was probably the increased knowledge and use of contra
ceptives. In 1915 Mrs. Sanger had been indicted for sending
through the mails not birth control information but a plea for
birth control. In 1916 she organized her first Birth Control
Clinic, to serve married women in Brooklyn, and was promptly
arrested. Some indication of the need at that time is found in
Dr. William J. Robinson s estimate that illegal abortions were
as high as two or three million each year in the United States.
The growth of the movement can be indicated by the number
of articles listed under "Birth Control" in the New York
Times Index.
TABLE 9. ARTICLES ON BIRTH CONTROL IN New York Times Index
Year No. of Articles
1914
1919 2
1924 13
1929 48
The First Flowering of Modernism 175
The American Birth Control League was organized in 1921.
A meeting four days later was broken up and Mrs. Sanger was
again arrested for disorderly conduct. Eventually the right of
physicians to give birth control information to clients was
admitted. Before this was recognized however, city youngsters
had learned from one another that contraceptives could be
bought at almost any drugstore. They were sold in barbershops
and filling stations and tobacco stores and by agents in schools.
For the first time a generation of youth could feel themselves
fairly well-protected against venereal infection or unwanted
pregnancies. For the first time a generation of parents were
able to space and plan for their children in an intelligent fashion.
It is interesting to find in several sociological studies that the
decrease in size of family during the period of advancing
knowldge of birth control was as apparent among Catholics,
whose church opposed most such measures, as among any other
religious groups.
It must not be thought that the modern women lost interest in
marriage, homemaking and children. Studies of graduates of
women s colleges showed an increasing tendency in the 1920 s
for these women to marry and have children. The fact that
many married women held jobs outside the home did not neces
sarily mean that they neglected husband or children. The
increasing participation in parent education and child study
groups has already been reported. These modern mothers were,
perhaps, more independent but they were also more intelligent
about caring for the physical and the emotional needs of
their youngsters.
MODERNISM IN RELIGION
One of the landmarks along the line of religious progress was
the sermon preached by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in March,
1922, at the First Presbyterian Church of New York on the topic,
"Shall the Fundamentalists Win." The term "fundamentalist"
appears to go back to two tracts published about 1910 and
entitled, The Fundamentals, but the doctrines had gone almost
unaltered for centuries. Billy Sunday had given them their last
powerful support in his tabernacle evangelistic campaigns which
reached their climax just before the First World War. The
modern spirit was a product, in large measure, of that research
into the origins and meaning of Biblical writings which in the
late nineteenth century was called "The Higher Criticism."
176 Youth After Conflict
Dr. Fosdick declared in his sermon that belief in such a
doctrine as that of the Virgin Birth was not an essential of
Christianity. About fifteen years before (1906), the Reverend
Algernon S. Crapsey had been deposed from the Episcopal
Church for stating such a position. Dr. Fosdick was supported
by the New York Presbytery but attacked by the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. In 1924 he resigned
rather than commit himself to doctrines not in full accord with
his modern outlook, and in 1925 he went to the Park Avenue
Baptist Church, later Riverside Church.
At about the same time another famous case dramatized the
theological conflict. Tennessee passed a law forbidding the
teaching of the doctrine of evolution in the schools. A test case
was made by a young instructor named Scopes. Clarence
Darrow defended him William Jennings Bryan joined in the
prosecution and Scopes was found guilty,
A very instructive comparison was made by George Herbert
Betts in 1928. Among ministers in service (in and around
Chicago) 71 per cent held the doctrine that Jesus had been born
of a virgin, with no human father. Among the younger genera
tion of theological students in the same region, only 25 per cent
supported this view. That was the watershed era separating
the traditional from the modern viewpoint toward the Bible.
Contributing factors, in addition to Biblical research, were
studies in the psychology of religion begun by William James
and continued by Coe, Leuba, Starbuck, and others. Philosophy
too, had its influence. Bertrand Russell, to take one example,
in the twenties brought out A Free Man s. Worship (1923),
What I Believe (1925), and Education and the Good Life (1926),
all of which had wide attention.
Another aspect of the modern spirit in religion was the interest
in religious education which has already been discussed. A
fresh approach to the method of helping children and young
people discover religious values in daily living accompanied the
changes in church organization and the new theology. If one
were to pick two books as giving the basis of the new outlook
they might well be Fosdick s Modern Use of the Bible (1924)
and Coe s Social Theory of Religious Education (1917). Young
people might still drink of the ancient water of Life, but they
would do so from new vessels.
The First Flowering of Modernism 177
INTERNATIONAL ATTITUDES
Young people at the close of World War I were plunged Into
a disillusioning atmosphere of reaction. In international rela
tions, the return to a shortsighted and selfish nationalism led to
the failure of Wilson s dream of a League of Nations and paved
the way for conflict with Japan. The spiritual regression of
America in the twenties can be better appreciated against the
background of our developing international policy during the
preceding two decades.
The youth of the twenties were born in the brief heyday of
American imperialism. In 1900, the United States had taken
the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Tutuila, and were
negotiating for the Danish West Indies.
We had sent troops under General Leonard H. Wood into
Cuba, set up territorial government in Hawaii, sent troops to put
down the Boxers in China, and were negotiating for an Isthmian
canal. Mark Sullivan comments: "The entire history of Amer
ican overseas expansion is compressed practically within the
year 1900 and the two years preceding." 88 In 1903, Theodore
Roosevelt s rebellion came off in Panama and we acquired the
Canal Zone. Thereafter until the World War (except for occa
sional intervention in Latin America, such as -the seizure of Vera
Cruz in 1914, the expedition after Villa in 1916, and Marine
Corps expeditions to Haiti and Santo Domingo) we tended to
our own knitting.
The youth of the twenties grew up in an atmosphere of rising
hope for permanent peace. The Hague Peace Conference in
1901-2 set up the International Arbitration Court, leading Albert
Shaw to predict that, "the twentieth century in future ages will
be famous for the expanded and altered nature of international
relations/ **
One of the most active figures in American international
contacts was Nicholas Murray Butler, who, in 1907, helped to
organize the American Association for International Concilia
tion. In 1910, Andrew Carnegie gave $10,000,000 to found the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
A notable innovation in international relations occurred in
1908, with America s proposal to remit the Boxer Indemnity to
China for use in providing scholarships for Chinese students.
5 Sullivan, the Turn of the Century, op. cit. f p. 55.
* Literary Digest, January 12, 1901.
178 Youth After Conflict
The Peace Palace at the Hague was completed in 1913, to
stand as a memorial to the contrast between the hopes of men
and their policies which had then brought Europe to the verge
of war. A World Alliance for International Friendship Through
the Churches began, in 1914, its vain effort to secure peace
through good will. Ex-President Taft, after his defeat in 1912,
stumped the country on behalf of American participation in
international arbitration. The outbreak of the war shocked
America even more than it had shocked Europe, but it did not
dampen the ardor of peace movements. The Women s Inter
national League for Peace and Freedom arose in 1915. That was
the year, too, of the famous Peace Ship supported by Henry
Ford. - An unfortunate remark about "getting the boys out of the
trenches by Christmas" made the party a laughing-stock, but
there were actually many reasons to believe, when the project
was conceived, that both sides in Europe would before long be
willing to consider the conciliatory offices of the distinguished
citizens of the still neutral United States. David Starr Jordan,
then President of the American Peace Society, and Jane Addams
of Hull House fame, were behind the idea of "continuous
mediation." They started out with no illusion about the difficulty
of the assignment, but proposed to stay on the job until some
chance for mediation might develop. The project collapsed
quickly under the ridicule of the press.
With the World War came the barrage of atrocity stories from
both sides. A traveler reported having himself seen a soldier
with a bagful of human ears. The handless babies of Belgium
were described in many a pulpit. The writer, at fifteen years of
age, heard one of the nation s most distinguished clergymen
explain to a horrified audience of youth how the systematic
Huns cut off one breast of each woman they violated, as a
precaution against the spread of venereal disease.
Despite the mounting resentment aroused by these awful
reports, and despite the sinking (in 1915) of the Lusitania,
peace sentiment predominated. Shaw s protest against mili
tarism, Major Barbara, had a successful New York run in 1916.
In that year Wilson was re-elected on the slogan, "He kept us
out of war." Even after war was declared, in 1917, and the draft
instituted, more than 10 per cent of the men drafted attempted
to evade or desert. The song "I didn t raise my boy to be a
soldier" was still lively in the memory of those asked to sing
"Over There."
The First Flowering of Modernism 179
The magnificent vision of Woodrow Wilson gripped the
imagination of the country during the war years. His "Fourteen
Points" (1918) were received with enthusiasm almost every
where, and played an important part in breaking war morale in
Germany. Wilson could be followed by idealistic youth his
words transformed the shocking war into a crusade for the peace
and democracy which American youth had been brought up to
believe in. There were many evidences that the American
public at the end of the war was wholeheartedly behind the
proposed world organization. The essential idea of the League
of Nations had been ratified in 1919 by resolutions in some
nineteen state legislatures, innumerable luncheon clubs,
chambers of commerce, women s clubs, and churches.
Then came reaction. Beginning with the "little group of willful
men" who blocked Senate ratification, it spread to the enormous
wave that in 1920 chose Warren G. Harding for president, and
sought to go "back to normalcy/ The myth of a war to make
the world safe for democracy was speedily replaced by the myth
that wars were generated by intriguing European nations and
that hence America s only safe course was to follow George
Washington in "no foreign entanglements." Another myth
that of the munition makers was to come later in the twenties.
In 1927, "Big Bill" Thompson made up one of his own he
warned the King of England to "keep his snoot out of America."
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this
collapse in public idealism in its effects upon the young people
of America. Brought up to believe in world peace, they came
reluctantly to accept the First World War as necessary to make
the world safe for their kind of democratic thinking. When the
war purposes were "exposed" as a vast and tragic hoax, every
kind of i4ealistic pretense became suspect.
In the early twenties began the historical reinterpretation of
the war. Harry Elmer Barnes published, in 1924, w his startling
thesis that the guilt for the war did not rest wholly with
Germany. John Dos Passes, in Three Soldiers (1919) and
Laurence Stallings, in What Price Glory (produced in 1924) gave
a grim picture of war as tragic, destructive, and bitterly futile.
The great war productions of 1929 Farewell to Arms, All
Quiet on the Western Front, and Journey $ t End represented
the artist s finished conception of the tragedy.
36 H. E. Barnes, Genesis of the World War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1924).
180 Youth After Conflict
After World War I, pacifism made important gains. The
reaction against the futility of that war was an influential con
tributing factor. Eugene Debs had expressed the view of many
socialists during the war and had gone to jail for his opinions;
Norman Thomas, in 1923, published The Conscientious Objector.
Kirby Page and Nevin Sayre became pacifists during the war.
Page s publications included War: Its Causes, Consequences
and Cure (1923), American Peace Policy (1925), and Dollars
and World Peace (1927). Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page
collaborated on Christianity and) World Problems, published
in 1923.
A landmark of the movement was Harry Emerson Fosdick s
sermon to the League of Nations Assembly in 1925, on "The
Christian Conscience about War." The Fellowship of Recon
ciliation a few years later collected the names of more than a
thousand ministers who followed Fosdick in concluding that
the could never again use their pulpits to support a war. The
F.O.R. magazine, The Word Tomorrow, began its sixteen-year
career in 1918.
The reaction against war culminated, in 1928, in the Kellogg-
Briand pact, forever outlawing war as an instrument of national
policy. Professor Shotwell urged this upon Briand and then
upon Kellogg; after France and the United States the U.S.S.R.
was the first nation to ratify the pact. In those days, Litvinov
was pleading with the League to sponsor a complete disarma
ment program. Eventually some sixty-four nations (including
Germany and Japan) signed the pledge which "condemned
recourse to war". .. "renounced it as an instrument of national
policy/ and agreed that "settlement of all disputes or conflicts
of whatever nature must never be sought except by pacific
means/
The tongue-in-cheek attitude of many of the signing powers is
indicated by the fact that none of them proceeded to any drastic
reduction of their armament. The same year (1929) that the
Pact was ratified by the United States, the Supreme Court
refused citizenship to Rosika Schwimmer, a grandmother, aged
fifty, whose only reservation was that while she would serve her
country in a war with works of mercy, she would not bear arms.
irtie tenor of public opinion on international questions, then,
wa> dominated by reaction against the war. The majority (or
it least the Senate) reacted by becoming more truculently
nationalistic and by trying to shake off ties with the rest of the
The First Flowering of Modernism 181
world. A minority reacted by condemning war as an instrument
of national policy, and pledging themselves never to support
another. Neither position dealt realistically with the conflicts
of national interest which were already beginning to line up the
Second World War.
The youth of the postwar period apparently followed general
public opinion in the swing back from wartime idealism to
postwar isolationism. A poll of Columbia College students in
1919 gave the following results:
Favoring the League of Nations 944
Reservations on Article X and American Interests 785
Opposed entirely 155
Many studies have shown that international sentiment was
stronger in the East than in the Midwest or South ; was stronger
m urban than in rural areas ; and that it increased with education.
Hence if Columbia College students at their high level of school
ing, in the East, and in a city like New York, were evenly divided
pro and con, the general youth sentiment was undoubtedly
against the Le^g^ff^^^p were some youth organizations
the National Student Federation, for example which strongly
supported the World Court. The majority of young people
however followed the prevailing pattern of disillusionment and
isolationism, with some tendency toward pacifism. The breast-
beating by Archibald MacLeish w and others of his generation
at the time of the Second World War is evidence that these
youth felt, in retrospect, that they had not been given any honest
understanding of their world.
ECONOMIC ATTITUDES
The years immediately following World War I brought the
most violent reaction against "radicalism" that this country has
yet experienced. This wave of hysterical Red-baiting represented
a reversal of attitudes- that had brought two decades of very
substantial social progress. It illustrates the dialectic, action-
reaction nature of social change.
Substantial labor organization (the A.F.L. dates from 1881)
and government regulation *(the Interstate Commerce Com
mission dates from 1887) had grown up during the last years
of the nineteenth century.
88 A. MacLeish, "The Irresponsibles," The Nation (1940), 150:618-23.
182 Youth After Conflict
The Women s Trade Union League was formed in 1903. The
National Child Labor Committee arose in 1904. A National
Recreation Association, advocating public support for recrea
tional facilities, was set up in 1906. In 1907 Tom Johnson won
one of the first big battles for municipal ownership, taking over
the street railways in Cleveland. The "Insurgents," led by
George W. Norris, defeated the entrenched autocracy of Speaker
Cannon in the House of Representatives in 1910. The fight led
by Theodore Roosevelt against the "trusts" brought Supreme
Court decisions ordering dissolution of both the Standard Oil
Trust and the American Tobacco Trust, in 1911.
During the years preceding World War I, when the youth of
the twenties were still small children, socialism was making
considerable headway. Marx had written in the middle of the
nineteenth century ; the Fabian Society had gotten under way in
England in 1884; the Second (Socialist) International had been
organized in 1889. Edward Bellamy stirred the imagination of
millions of Americans with Looking Backward (1898) and
Equality (1906). The Socialist Partvwasformed in the United
States in 1901 by the merger of theflRNttR^pt and the Social
Democratic groups. In 1905, the League for Industrial Democ
racy began its educational program. The Socialist paper,
The Call, began publication in 1908. The Masses began its stormy
career in 1911 and continued until it was suppressed in 1917.
The Triangle Shirt Waist fire in New York in 1911 stimulated
sympathy for labor. In 1912 Eugene Debs as Socialist candidate
for President of the United States received nearly a million votes.
While Modern Art was being born in Paris, the new economic
outlook was making rapid progress. The British Labor Party
was formed in 1912.
Out in the Midwest, La Follette s insurgent Republicans were
introducing pioneer social legislation in Wisconsin. John R.
Commons, at the University of Wisconsin, was making an intel
ligent interpretation of the rise of labor. The Non-partisan
League was organized in North Dakota in 1915, and in 1918 had
elected a governor and a majority of the legislature. The state
set up co-operative grain elevators, flour mills, and state
insurance funds.
Organized labor in 1910 had enrolled about 2,000,000 members.
By 1920 unions had grown to over 5,000,000 strong. Then came
the reaction and by the end of the twenties union membership
was down almost to 3,000,000. The number of articles on labor
The First Flowering of Modernism 183
relations shows the acute conflict that arose immediately after
the war.
TABLE 10. MAGAZINE ARTICLES ON LABOR RELATIONS 87
Years Number of Articles Per Thousand Indexed
1905-1909 11
1915-1918 16
1919-1921 26
1925-1928 16
The conflicts grew more severe as the power of labor increased
and the power of the owners was consolidated. The social
changes since 1900 had awakened more and more concern.
For a generation the owners had been steadily increasing their
power and tightening their organization. Mark Sullivan cites
as one evidence of the crowding out of small business by bigger
business the fact that in 1850 there were 1,300 concerns making
farm implements and their average capital was only $2,700. By
1910, although the market had expanded tremendously, there
were only half that many (640) concerns in the business, and
their average capital invested was $400,000 almost 150 times
as much as in the earlier period. It was in 1901 that J. P.
Morgan organized United States Steel. In the years 1899-1900,
there were twenty-eight books and over 150 magazine articles
published on the subject of the "trusts." When asked what they
regarded as the greatest menace of the new century, both
William Jennings Bryan and President Schurman of Cornell
stated it to be the growing concentration of wealth. That con
centration continued during the first three decades of the
twentieth century.
President Hoover s Committee on Recent Social Trends
reported 1,200 mergers in manufacturing and mining between
1919 and 1928 with the net disappearance of some 6,000
enterprises. They concluded, "It is no misnomer to characterize
the postwar decade as the era of consolidations." Chain stores
replaced individual merchants. Newspapers bought out and
eliminated their competitors.
Thus the fundamental facts behind the outbreak of reaction in
the 1920 s were two: the rapid advance of democratic social
change and the consolidation of the power of those opposed to
such change. There were three other immediate contributing
37 Recent Social Trends, op. cit., p. 433. By permission from McGraw-Hill
Book Co., Inc.
184 Youth After Conflict
factors: a depression, a war-nurtured pattern of violence, and
the birth of the Soviet Union.
The depression of 1920-21 followed an inflationary rise in
prices. In 1920 prices were double their prewar level. Workers
struck to try to get enough in wages to feed their families. A
kind of buyer s strike also resulted from the extreme prices.
Unemployment rose to a level in August, 1921, near 6,000 ; 000.
This was referred to by a government official at the time as "one
of the greatest industrial depressions we had ever known." It
seemed like an opportune moment to crush the unions which
had increased in strength during the war.
Atrocity stories and other propaganda aroused, during the
war, emotions of mass hatred. There were numerous incidents
of mob attacks on loyal Americans of German descent. In
Wisconsin a crowd tried to lynch a farmer who had bought some,
but not enough, they said, Liberty Bonds. Senator La Follette
was burned in effigy. Fritz Kreisler was barred from playing.
Some Czechs in Iowa tried to organize in support of the war,
but their meeting was violently broken up because they were
foreigners. The government closed Socialist papers and raided
labor and I.W.W. headquarters. Seventeen I.W.W. members
were tarred and feathered in 1917 by the "Knights of Liberty"
near Tulsa, Oklahoma.
In 1917 came the Russian Revolution, and the birth of the
world s first and greatest anticapitalist power. At Archangel,
in 1918, American troops assisted the White Russians in an
attempt to crush the new government set up by Lenin. While
orthodox circles predicted the speedy collapse of the unworkable
communist society, they felt nevertheless profoundly uneasy.
Suppose American workers should follow the Russian example?
Thus the stage was set for the outbreak of the worst anti-
radical drive in American history. Attorney General A. Mitchell
Palmer led in "a reign of mass law of mass inquiries, mass
searches, mass seizures, mass raids, mass incarcerations
violating in principle the spirit of law and violating inhumanly
in practice the specific purposes of the Bill of Rights of the
Constitution." M A typical raid was one on a group of thirty-nine
men interested in ^organizing a co-operative bakery at Lynn,
Massachusetts. All thirty-nine were kept in jail overnight The
Hard, "Is Palmer Guilty of High Crimes ?" New Republic
(1920); 22:346.
The First Flowering of Modernism 185
next day thirty-eight were released for lack of evidence and one
held for investigation. The Secretary of State of Massachusetts
at the time said, "If I had my way I would take them (American
Bolshevists) out in the yard every morning and shoot them, and
the next day we would have a trial to see whether they were
guilty." 38 The New York Times on January 4, 1920, carried
the scarehead "Reds Plotted Country-Wide Strike; Arrests
Exceed 5000." Judge Anderson of the Federal Court in Boston,
releasing a group of the alleged "Reds" who had been arrested
on the flimsiest pretexts, said, "I refrain from any extended com
ment on the lawlessness of these proceedings by our supposedly
law-enforcing officials. ... It may, however, be fitly observed that
a mob is a mob, whether made up of government officials acting
under instructions of the Department of Justice, or of criminals,
loafers, and the vicious classes." *
The witch-hunt began as soon as the Armistice had been
signed. New York State s Lusk Committee went to work in
March of 1919, and in two years prepared a four-volume survey
of all the subversive movements : socialism, pacifism, labor, and
internationalism. A typical citation was that of Professor
W. I. Hull whose dangerous activity seems to have been limited
to one address in which he urged an "international (the give
away word) committee" to try to prevent atrocities during war.
Another, which foreshadows the methods of the Dies Committee
at the time of World War II, was that of Professor Arthur O.
Lovejoy of whom it was alleged only that the Conference for
Democracy sent him a form letter. The dangerous characters
listed included Frederick Keppel, head of the Carnegie Endow
ment, and even Newton D. Baker, Wilson s Secretary of War.
Tbe most frequently mentioned subversive was Jane Addams,
bead of the Hull House in Chicago.
Tfae forces supporting the radicals were few. There were, of
course, the Socialist and Communist parties, with their small
membership and their indignant periodicals. The Masses, became
the Liberator in 1918, and in 1924 the Daily Worker was born.
The drawings of Art Young and William Gropper in the New
Masses were among the best of American satirical cartoons.
There were a few social investigators. The work of Lincoln
Steffens antedates the twenties, but Ida Tarbell wrote her Life
of Elbert H. Gary and her History vf the Standard OH Company
9 New Republic (1920) , 21:232.
9 New Republic (1921), 25 : 217.
186 Youth After Conflict
in 1925. In 1921, a brilliant young journalist named Robert S.
Lynd went out to Elk Basin and asked for a job in that oil field.
His articles "Done in Oil" * and "Crude Oil Religion" 42 stirred
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. into action on the seven-day week, the
twelve-hour day, and the miserable living conditions. In the
mid-twenties Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd made their
study of "Middletown" which has become a classic of social
investigation.
A kind of social investigation that struck home with many
young people was that popularized by Chase and Schlink in
Your Money s Worth (1927) and by Kallet and Schlink in
100,000,000 Guinea Pigs (1929). The excesses of advertising had
already aroused the jibes of the sophisticates from Mencken on
down, but the consumer testing movement appealed to the
scientific spirit. Here were the laboratory results of hokum and
ballyhoo. Consumer s Research and its successor, Consumer s
Union, thrived.
Another challenge -to the status quo came from the social
implications of religion. The "Social Gospel" reached its most
flourishing stage during the twenties. Social pronouncements
had been made by Methodists and Episcopalians as early as
1908, and the "Social Creed of the Churches" was announced in
1914. Rhoda McCulloch was urging the Y.W.C.A. into work
with industrial girls in the years before World War I. Harry F.
Ward and R. H. Edwards prepared Christianizing Community
Life as a student discussion book in 1917. About that time
Walter Rauschenbusch contributed his moving Prayers of the
Social Awakening. In 1918, another book by Harry Ward,
The Gospel for a Working World, helped further the cause.
In 1924 there was held in England a "Conference on Politics,
Economics, and Citizenship" (COPEC) which encouraged similar
efforts,, in America. The historian, Tawney, said of this period,
It is possible that the historian of the future will regard the
steps taken in the last few years by the Christian churches to
formulate afresh the Christian attitude towards matters of
political and social morality, as one of the most significant of
the movements which have emerged from the war. *
L R. S. Lynd, "Done in Oil," Survey (1922), 49:136-46.
R. S. Lynd, "Crude Oil Religion," Harper s (1922), 145:425-34.
f R. H. Tawney, New Republic, May 21, 1924.
The First Flowering of Modernism 187
A few youth who were economic rebels were ahead of their
generation. Most of that did not appear until the great depres
sion of the thirties. Big Business had the leftwing in retreat
during the ten years after the First World War. It was Big
Business given a free hand that produced the collapse of 1929
and did more to shake faith in capitalism than did all the "Reds"
that A. Mitchell Palmer could round up. There were a few
rebellious youths on each campus in the twenties, but they were
the "wild-haired" boys and girls. One of them wrote in the
Atlantic Monthly: 41
In the first place, I would like to observe that the older gener
ation had certainly pretty well ruined this world before passing
it on to us. They give us this thing, knocked to pieces, leaky,
red-hot, threatening to blow up ; and then they are surprised
that we don t accept it with the same attitude of pretty, decor
ous enthusiasm with which they received it way back in the
eigh teen-nine ties, nicely painted, smoothly running, practically
foolproof.
RACE ATTITUDES
Another area of social reaction after World War I was that of
race relations. The pattern was similar to those already explored
in international relations and in economic outlook. From 1900
on up through the World War, great progress was made.
Immediately after the war a sharp regression occurred.
The Committee on Interracial Co-operation began its construc
tive work in Atlanta in 1919. Negro soldiers, although limited
in the services they were allowed to render, made a significant
contribution during the war and were cheered as they marched
up Fifth Avenue in the Victory Parade.
Already the opposition had begun to grow. A good beginning
date is furnished by the film,. The Birth of a Nation, which, in
1915, glorified the old Ku Klux Klan. "Colonel" William J.
Simmons, then teaching history at Lanier University in Atlanta,
had a vision of a new Elian. The ertswhile dentist, Hiram Evans,
contributed his organizing abilities, and after the war the atmos
phere was right for rapid growth. At the Atlanta Klonvocation
in 1922, Simmons was made "Emperor" and Evans took over
actual operations. By the summer of 1919 there were riots of
Negroes versus whites in Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, and
44 Carter, op. cit.
188 Youth After Conflict
many smaller communities. In 1920-21 Konklaves were being
held throughout the South and Midwest. Persons hostile to the
Klan were beaten, or tarred and feathered. In Louisiana two
died from alleged tortures. Mass initiations in Arkansas,
Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana added thousands of
white-robed members in each ceremony before a blazing cross.
Membership in 1924 may have reached 3,000,000. The Klan
became politically very powerful. It controlled southern
primaries and northern elections. It continued to thrive, electing
its avowed candidates as governors in Indiana, Kansas, Maine,
and Colorado. It defeated senatorial candidates Walton
(Oklahoma), Stanley (Kentucky), and Walsh (Massachusetts).
In 1924, the Democratic National Convention was evenly divided
on whether to censure the Klan by name or not, and in 1928
Klan-fostered prejudices helped to defeat Alfred E. Smith.
The decline of the Klan dates from the conviction in 1925 of
the Grand Dragon of Indiana, D. C. Stephenson, for murder of
a girl friend. There followed an inquiry into corruption,
involving the Mayor of Indianapolis, two state governors, and
other state officials, all close to the Klan. In August of that year,
however, more than 50,000 Klansmen put on a huge demonstra
tion parade in Washington. By 1927 the Klan was torn with
internal dissension. One faction in Pennsylvania charged misuse
of $15,000,000. Floggings in Alabama were "protected" by law
enforcement officials, leading to resignation of the Attorney
General. The decline was then rapid.
One good index to the state of race relations is the record en
lynchings. From over a hundred a year at the beginning of the
century, the numbers declined to a low point of thirty-eight in
1917. The lynchings in the four postwar years 1918-21 were
sixty-four, eighty-three, sixty-one and sixty-four. By 1925, the
lynchings had declined to seventeen and by 1929 to only ten.
The twenties added an imposing array of talented Negro
artists. Paul Robeson gave his stirring performance of Emperor
Jones in 1923, and his first New York concert in 1925. Roland
Hayes, Marion Anderson, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes,
and James Weldon Johnson became as well-known as their
white contemporaries. The "Uncle Tom" and "Uncle Remus"
stereotypes were clearly outmoded except in the joke books.
CRIME AND CORRUPTION
/This era, when youth was being censured for its dancing and
government agents were arresting any critic of the status
The First Flowering of Modernism 189
quo as a "Red/* was one in which crime was rampant and cor
ruption reached the highest levels of government.
Table 11 gives the homici de rate for the cities of Baltimore,
Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, and St. Louis, with the year 1900
taken as an index figure of 100. Those cities are chosen because
data are fairly comparable over the entire period.
TABLE 11. INDEX OF HOMICIDE RATE IN FIVE CITIES " (BALTIMORE,
BUFFALO, CHICAGO, CLEVELAND, ST. LOUIS)
Year Index
1900 100
1910 150
1920 500
1930 650
The record for all major offenses in these cities showed a slow
decrease from 1900 to 1913, then a steady rise over the whole
period of the war and the postwar decade. From 1918 to 1928
the increase amounted to about 30 per cent. On November 25,
1919, the press reported that there had been 300 murders that
year in Chicago, and in the past week, 250 hold-ups. The
Literary Digest in 1922 presented a montage of newspaper head
lines on bank robberies and bandits. Among the "big stories"
of the period were alleged bribing of the White Sox to throw the
World Series (1919), the millions swindled by Ponzi from the
savings of immigrants (1920), the murder of the Reverend
Edward Hall and his choir leader Mrs. James Mills in their
parked car (1922), the indictment of Fatty Arbuckle for the
killing through rape of a young actress at a Hollywood party
(1922), the conviction of Dr. Cook for using the mails to defraud,
and, of course, Loeb and Leopold s murder of Bobby
Franks (1924).
Still bigger stories were made by public officials. In 1917
Governor James Ferguson of Texas was removed from office but
"Ma" Ferguson took his place. Senator Newberry of Michigan
was found guilty in 1920 on charges of corruption, fraud, and
conspiracy, but not until 1922 did he "resign" from the Senate.
In 1920, in a smoke-filled room, Harding was nominated. He
was elected with only 53 per cent of the eligible voters bother
ing to vote, representing a marked decline in participation from
the 80 per cent who voted in 1900, carrying his cronies Harry
Daugherty, Jess Smith, and others into the nation s capital.
45 Adapted from Recent Social Trends, op. cit., p. 1,127. By permission from
McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.
190 Youth After Conflict
Daugherty never bothered to press most of the indictments for
fraud perpetrated on the government by war contractors. In
1921 the scandalous revelations of postwar deals began to
emerge. American Metal Company paid John T. King, an
"inside fixer/ $441,000 to get release of property from Harding s
Alien Property Custodian Thomas W. Miller who was proven
to have received $50,000 of the bribe. Another $50,000 went to
Jess Smith, Daugherty s pal. The rest of the money was not
traced. Governor MacCray of Indiana was found guilty of
fraudulent use of the mails in 1924 and his successor, Ed Jackson,
was indicted for bribery but saved by a technicality. Stephenson,
the Klansman behind the political regime in Indiana, was con
victed on a murder charge in 1925. The Mayor of Indianapolis
was found guilty of corruption in 1927. In 1925 Jimmy Walker
became Mayor of New York and his gay and corrupt regime
ended in 1932 when Walker resigned under fire from the Seabury
investigation. Samuel Hopkins Adam s book Revelry (1926),
later made into a movie, gave the public a vivid picture of the
state of public morals under Harding probably the lowest in
our national history.
PROHIBITION
A large amount of the lawlessness, corruption, and crime of
the postwar years was associated with prohibition. This was a
development which would not have been easy to foresee during
the war years. The tide of protest against the liquor industry
had risen in a steady and apparently quite natural growth since
the founding of the Woman s Christian Temperance Union in
1874, and the Anti-Saloon League in 1895. Carrie Nation s
hatchet raids on saloons in 1901 found a great deal of public
opinion behind them. Jack London s John Barleycorn (1913)
was one of the better-written but only one of innumerable tem
perance tracts. The laws of most states prescribed that the evils
of alcohol must be taught in the schools. Local option had closed
the saloons in thousands of communities. State-wide prohibi
tion had been in force in Kansas since 1882, in Georgia since
1908, in Tennessee since 1910, and by 1914 was operative in ten
states. There was some criticism in 1914 when Secretary of the
Navy Josephus Daniels forbade the use of alcoholic liquor in the
navy, but general approval of William Jennings Bryan s "dry"
State Department. It was a Congress which had been elected
before any of the boys went overseas which approved wartime
The First Flowering of Modernism 191
prohibition in 1917. The Volstead Act in 1919 was vetoed by
President Wilson but passed over his veto by the required two-
thirds vote. One might easily, at that time, have agreed with
William Jennings Bryan in his assertion that "The liquor issue
is as dead as slavery." A poll of Columbia College students in
1919, "probably the largest and most successful straw vote ever
held at Columbia," showed 1,151 in favor of national prohibition
and only 221 opposed, while 512 voted for a modified prohibition
permitting light wines and beer. The "dry s" were a clear
majority even among these college youth in New York. The
final act appeared to be the ratification of the Eighteenth
Amendment in 1920.
Suddenly the current of public opinion began to flow the other
way. Bootleggers, home-brew, rumrunners, speak-easies, and
pocket flasks flourished. A British observer wrote in 1921 :
I have seen more young boys intoxicated in the past year than
in all the previous years of my life The boy who might and
did in other times drink to satisfy his curiosity as to the taste
and effect of beer, or who sneaked a drink from the decanter
at home, now satisfies his adventurous spirit by meeting a
boot-legger in an alley and buying a quart of spirits If it s
"smart" for the father to circumvent the law, it s smart for
the boy. *"
The sentiment for repeal grew as the efforts at enforcement
proved futile. The illegal liquor business was taken over by
gangs and left in its wake hijacking, bribery, corruption, and
murders. In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover supported
the "experiment, noble in purpose/ while Smith opposed it.
The handicap of being a lower East-side ,New Yorker and a
Catholic was too much for Smith and prohibition lasted four
years longer than it might otherwise have done.
The reaction against prohibition is parallel to reactions we
have previously encountered, against internationalism, against
socialization of the economy, against race equality, and against
good government. In all of these instances a vigorous idealistic
movement built up before the war ran into postwar conditions
which brought a letdown or a temporary reversal. The reaction
against prohibition was probably the most intense and prolonged
of all the postwar reversals.
4(5 Meredith Nicholson, "The Oldest Case on the Calendar," Harper s (1921),
114:27-34.
192 Youth After Conflict
CIGARETTE S
Evidence that it was not simply reaction against a legal pro
hibition which stimulated drinking in the 1920 J s can be found in
the parallel increase in smoking.
The anti-nicotine forces had also built up some strength before
the World War. On January 1, 1900, three important railroads
issued an edict against cigarette smoking by their employees.
Smoking by women was recognized as a European vice, but
there was some protest when, in 1910, President Taft held a
match to light a cigarette for the wife of the Russian ambassador.
There was even more objection to Alice Roosevelt Longworth s
smoking. In 1915, two of the most famous names in America,
those of Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison, were associated
with the mass distribution of a pamphlet entitled, The Cigarette
Must Go; the Case Against the Little White Slaver. Many youths
of the twenties had gone to high schools which conducted annual
essay contests on the -evils of tobacco. It was a typical custom
for a father to offer his son a gold" watch if the boy would refrain
from smoking until the age of twenty-one. It was generally
believed that smoking would "stunt your growth" and "cut your
wind." Athletes were forbidden to smoke. Physiology books
portrayed "tobacco heart." The writer at his first county fair
saw a side-show exhibit of a human wreck, supposed to be hope
lessly enslaved and ruined by the vicious cigarette habit.
Against this background came a wartime reversal. Cigarettes
were almost universally in demand by the soldiers. After their
return, as described in an earlier chapter, an advertising cam
paign promoted cigarettes. Eventually women smokers were
included and one by one the barriers were demolished.
The boom in cigarettes followed closely the boom in cocktails
and gin. In both cases a long-standing taboo broke down. It is
instructive to compare these trends because of the common
insistence that it was the prohibition law which stimulated
defiance. Cigarettes faced no such curb, but the spirit of the
times led to an equal relaxation of prewar standards.
RECREATION
The expansion in recreational activities after the First World
Xar was an acceleration of a growth which had gone forward
all .through the twentieth century. Typical data are those for
having playgrounds, as hown in Table 12.
The First Flowering of Modernism 193
TABLE 12. CITIES WITH PUBLIC PLAYGROUNDS
Year No. of Cities No. of Playgrounds
1910 180 1300
1920 428 4139
1930 695 7240
Each decade added about 3,000 new playgrounds.
All sports were popular baseball held its own; football and
basketball forged ahead. Attendance at college football games
increased each year from 1920 to 1930 inclusive. In 1924 the
United States captured first place in the Olympic Games for the
eighth consecutive time.
The biggest expansion in recreation during the twenties took
place in travel. Travel accounted for about two-thirds of all
money spent on recreation. We have already referred to the
tremendous growth of automobile travel, with its connected
autocamps, tourist homes, highways, and roadside stands. Yet
other travel was also on the increase. The average American
in 1900 traveled 213 miles on the railroad ; in 1920 he covered
445 miles easily doubling the earlier amount.
Young people especially were on the go. They took an old
car and went out, during vacations, to get a first-hand look at
their own country. Increasing numbers were traveling abroad
enough to bring into being a new class of ocean travel : "tourists,"
somewhere between "second class" and "third class." Most of
the passengers in this class were students.
Another important growth was in the summer camp, or, for
young people, the summer conference or institute. This move
ment began just before the war and expanded to reach several
million children and youth each summer during the late twenties.
COHCLtJSIOST
We have explored many aspects of the modernism which
flowered in the 192Q*s, and which exerted so powerful an influence
upon youth. Two different patterns have been observed.
One may be called the rising curve pattern. These changes
began two or three decades earlier and developed slowly up to
about the time of the war. Thereafter the curve mounted swiftly.
The excitement of the twenties was due in large measure to these
changes which were then at the steepest point in their curve 6f
ascent. Among these rising-curve patterns were: (1) industrial
production; (2) the automobile; (3) the moving picture;
194 Youth After Conflict
(4) general secondary education; (5) adult education; (6) re
ligious education ; (7) group discussion ; (8) the new psychology ;
(9) the Younger Generation in literature; (10) popular mag
azines; (11) modern music, both jazz and concert; (12) the
modern dance; (13) the appreciation of modern art; (14) the
modern woman; (15) the new sex freedom; and (16) modernism
in religion. There is good reason to believe that each of these
lines of growth would have culminated in the swift advance wit
nessed in the 1920 J s, whether there had been a World War or not.
The elan of the postwar period was less a product of the war
than of a conjunction of these steeply rising growth curves.
The second pattern observed shows postwar reaction. Curves
which have been advancing suffer a set-back. Among these
regressive patterns we noted: (1) reaction from a growing inter
nationalism to temporary isolationism; (2) reaction from
growing socialistic ideals to temporary Red-persecution;
(3) reaction from growing interracial co-operation to temporary
Ku Kluxism; (4) reaction from falling crime rates to a tem
porary increase in gangsterism and political corruption; and
(5) reaction from growing temperance sentiment to increased
alcoholism and cigarette usage.
An observer, at the end of World War I, could rather easily
have forecast the changes represented by the rising-curve pattern.
He could have selected the beginnings twenty years earlier
which were most likely to flower during the following decade.
In so doing, he could have prophesied most of -the factors that
would have effected the lives of youth in the aftermath of
that war.
He would have been most likely to go astray in the five factors
which showed a postwar reversal. How was he to know that
these particular lines of development were not going to soar like
the first sixteen, but were slipping into a tailspin? There seems
to be a separate reason in each case, with no one explanation
fitting all.
The opportunity for successful prediction is challenging. Can
we now, as we stand at the beginning of another postwar era,
forecast the world of the 1950 s and its probable impact
upon youth ?
CHAPTER VI
YOUTH S WORLD IN THE 1950 s
PREDICTIONS
Our study of the 1920 s revealed that most of itsy major
characteristics had their beginnings before World War I.*) A wise
observer in 1918 might well have been able to foresee many of the
significant developments of the coming decade. Youth leaders might
to that extent have been forewarned of the "jazz generation/ That
fact encourages us to undertake an analysis of factors which have
been developing over the last decade or two and which are likely to
flower during the 1950 s. If we can get a picture off some of the,
main characteristics of American culture during the postwar decade,y
we shall be able to outline with greater accuracy the traits and
problems of youth.
The main data for this chapter come from a collection of
predictions. The writer sent to 100 selected "sages" social
scientists, educators, writers, philosophers, and other leaders in
planning for the future of youth the following letter:
"I am turning to you for help in connection with a project on
youth (younger than veterans) in the postwar world.
"A discerning observer in 1918, trying to foresee factors likely to
produce the flaming youth of the 1920 s, might well have thought
about: automatic machines; automobiles; movies; radios;
prohibition; psychoanalysis; the Soviet Union; woman suffrage;
progressive education ; group work ; religious liberalism ; modern
forms in music, art, and literature; widespread secondary
education ; etc., as well as reaction from the war. Many such
factors had germinated before the war, but came into full bloom
in the ferment of the early 20 s.
"From where you stand, vAM factors do you now see on the
horizon clouds perhaps as yet no bigger than a man s hand
which are likely to have a powerful impact on youth in the 1950 s?
"One of my friends replied to a recent query, You do ask the
damndest questions ! Even if you, toa, feel that way, I hope you
may be willing to pass on a few observations or hunches which
occur to you about possible seeds of the future."
195
196 Youth After Conflict
A second source is a study made by Hadley Cantril of Princeton
University shortly before Pearl Harbor. He asked 72 persons with
"some reputation in public and professional life" to try to predict
"what the general course of events might conceivably be in the next
ten years and what sort of political, social, and economic changes we
might expect ten years from now." Twenty-six typical replies were
published in the clinical supplement to the Journal of Abnormal
Psychology, in April, 1943, under the title, "The World in 1952 :
Some Predictions." The passages in the following pages that quote
Mr. A., Mr. B., etc., are from that study. Some of these "prophets"
showed remarkable accuracy in anticipating the course of events.
One further source of data was found in group discussions which
the writer conducted with several high school classes and panels.
The boys and girls were asked how they thought their world of the
1950 s would differ from the prewar world.
The predictions of this chapter are not a mere tabulation of the
replies, but represent a synthesis with a large admixture of this
writer s own judgment. Statements will be quoted from the experts
(without identifying them, since permission to use their names was
not solicited), endeavoring to preserve the flavor of the original
prediction, but these excerpts will be woven into a design which
emerges from all the replies and from all that the events since
V-J Day can add to our perspective -on what is coming.
The predictions will be numbered in sequence, but grouped under
such basic headings as "Research," "Technology," "Economic
Order," "Leisure," etc.
I. RESEARCH
1. The advance of science will continue at an unprecedented rate.
This acceleration of research may safely be predicted because the
recent war has dramatized for this whole public what the scientists
themselves have long known. There is no investment which,
promises greater returns than investment in research. It may take
billions to develop radar or atomic energy, but the whole of mankind
can thereafter receive incalculable benefits. Huge Federal
appropriations for research represent one of the major developments
of the postwar era. More young men and women will go in for
There will "Ee*^an exciting stream of new
discoveries, each opening new challenges to research. Scientific
investigation illustrates perfectly Dewey s concept of the good as
"activity leading to further activity."
Youth s World in the 1950 s 197
One psychologist predicted, even before the atomic age was
introduced :
I believe that production in the sciences will significantly outstrip
production in the arts. . . .There will be an upsurge in the
recognition of the technician in every field.
2. The social sciences will wm increasing recognition and
application.
The lag of social adjustment behind technical progress has
become familiar to all thoughtful persons. The scientific study of
human beings and of our social institutions didn t get well started
until a century later than the physical sciences. But by the 1950 s
gains will be appreciable. From World War I emerged the
intelligence tests and other psychometric devices. The innovation of
World War II was a general demand for social psychologists and
anthropologists to study morale, foreign cultures, public opinion,
propaganda, and related topics. A few quotations from the
forecasts will show recognition of this new development.
Science is pushing forward in such field_s_as psychology and
education in ways whose practical effects are still only slightly
appreciated. Sociology has lagged behind your own field in the
the use of scientific methods, but I think I see evidence that
revolutionary applications are underway in our field, too.
Particularly I foresee a rapid advance in the scientific study of
values, the development of semiscientific tests of marital
compatability being one illustration. (A sociologist.)
, Advance in science about the nature of man. (An economist..)
The most constructive note in this country is the presence, among
social scientists, of a new spirit of willingness to leave the ivory
tower, to accept the responsibility of social leadership, and to apply
their knowledge to deliberate social reconstruction. (Mr. X.)
Other comments refer specifically to the importance of public
opinion measurement which can be used to guide policy makers as
radar is used to guide planes. We have spoken often of the
politician with "his ear to the ground/ Modern techniques should
make it possible, in the 1950*5, for statesmen and executives to catch
the reverberations before, during, and after their acts much more
quickly and accurately. Mergers of psychologists, anthropologists,
sociologists, etc., at Yale, Harvard, Michigan, and Chicago testify to
198 Youth Afte- Conflict
awareness of the value of co-operation among social scientists
themselves.
Semantics (or the larger field of "semiotics") is mentioned by
several as a new area of scientific advance which should lead to
improved communication, and to better adjustment to the real
world.
II. TECHNOLOGY
3. Technology will continue its rapid advance, assimilating and
developing discoveries ivorked out during the war.
Behind the curtain of wartime secrecy, urgent war needs fostered
many new inventions and much timesaving in the processes of
manufacture. We saw earlier that the few years following World
War I brought an increase in industrial production per man-hour
which was twice as great as the normal rate of rise. There is good
reason to believe that a host of new products will be produced in
the 1950 s and with less human effort than ever before in history.
The effects of airplanes, television, new housing, mechanized
agriculture, and new sources of energy will be discussed as separate
propositions, but under this first heading we must emphasize the
zestful tone given to life by the prospect that each month will release
new wonders. Take just one of many minor examples in the
chemical field the new silicones. Sprayed on many kinds of
material, silicones may make them waterproof. Engineers envision :
Dishes which will need only rinsing, no wiping, because water
will not stick to them.
Water-shedding suits and dresses whose creases will not be
affected by rain.
Paper raincoats.
Waterproof shoes.
Lacquers and paints, impervious to sun, heat, and acids, which
will last indefinitely.
Windshields from which water and snow will roll like water oil
a duck s back.
A coating which will make metals rust proof.
Waterproof brick and mortar.
Stainproof upholstery.
Light, durable electrical insulation, which will cut the weight of
electric motors by two-thirds, give them a potential life of 400
years.
Oil and grease which will not thicken in any weather.
(Time, December 11, 1944, p. 91)
Youth s World in the 1950 s 199
Many kinds of electronic instruments promise to work faster and
more accurately than can the human eye and hand. An expert in
physical sciences sees important social consequences from such new
machines.
The electric eye, the automatic pilot, and the host of electronic
devices which can control the operation of enormous machines or
entire factories will be a powerful influence in reducing the
work hours per week (rather than the number of jobs). This
in itself will have enormous economic effects, but the main effect
for youth will be a decrease in the moral and idealistic value of
work as such and a growing preoccupation with the use of time
for non-labor purposes, first recreational, and second creative.
Another contributor, an educator, anticipates, "A kaleidoscopic,
not to say riotous, display of modernity, from plastic buttons through
plastic houses to plastic personalities." Almost all expect great
technological advance, but some questioned whether the effect would
be as revolutionary as it had been in the twenties. They thought it
might mean to us only more of the same kinds of gadgets? we have
already come to accept. Thus a sociologist, employed by one of
the nation s most farsighted and influential magazines of business
writes :
My crystal ball tells me that technological progress will produce
effects that will be in the same direction as that between the two
wars and that helicopters, television, new features in housing, and
the like, being just more of the same sort of thing, will have no
startling, new, direct impact. There may be some one or more
new inventions that will work profound social change, but I don t
see what they are at present.
4. By 1950 the air age will be in full sway.
The first technical change to come to the mind of most contributors
was that of air transportation. This also headed the list in the minds
of several groups of 1 high school youngsters who were interviewed.
After one has made a swift, smooth overnight trip from California
to New York, or from North America to Europe, trains and busses
seem as slow and outdated as the horse and buggy was in the
twenties.
Here are two, selected from many similar predictions by social
scientists :
200 Youth After Conflict
Air-mindedness will possibly have as great an effect as automoblle-
mindedness did after the last war. It will be "smart" to fly, to
be employed in air transportation, to cover ground both
nationally and internationally.
I should expect that the part played by automobiles a generation
ago would be played by aviation in the years ahead. I have often
been impressed with the way my dentist lost interest in his
automobile when he got a little flivver plane and took an afternoon
or two a week flying all over the metropolitan area. The war put
a stop to this but I think his plane is one of the reasons why he
wants to see a durable peace. The possibilities in this area stagger
the imagination.
A full page ad of AiResearch of the Garret Corporation (Time,
October 16, 1944) quotes President W. A. Patterson of United Air
Lines as saying "You ll live within a few hours of any city in the
U.S." He predicts coast to coast service in six hours, and a five
fold increase in domestic air passenger transport within four years
after war s end. An even more striking slogan was used earlier
by another air line: "No place on earth is more than sixty hours
from your home airport."
President George Stoddard of the University of Illinois sees us
thinking in larger political units :
The great master of time and space is the airplane. Just as the
automobile made obsolete thousands of counties and tens of
thousands of one-room schools, so the airplane makes some states
appear too small to afford a good landing field. *
The international exchange will affect our households, our
business, our schools, and our leisure. The New Yorker s "Talk
of the Town" recently brought out the global at-homeness of the
airman ; 2
Support for world government may soon appear from a new
quarter we mean our Air Forces men, who are generally believed
to be aloof from politics. It is just this breezy unconcern of
theirs that may make them strong supporters of a cosmopolis.
For several years now our fliers, particularly those in ferry or
transport work, have been rattling around the world without much
regard f o-r political boundaries or foreign trade regulations. They
have bought thef best each land "has had to offer and have flown
off/ without bothering with import or export controls. In a real
sense they have been citizens of the world, stalking their native
* George D. Stoddard, "Frontiers for Youth," School and Society,
September 19, (1942), 225-30.
2 "Permission, The New Yorker. Copyright, 1945, The F. R. Publishing
Corporation*"
Youth s World in the 1950 s 201
sky. Their accumulations provide a quick view of the dishes,
customs, and institutions of tomorrow s world state. At the
Casablanca airport last week, one flier writes us, he and some
other fliers sat down to an informal spread that included cheese
from Denmark and the Azores on Turkish breadsticks, cocoa from
the Gold Coast, bananas from the Canaries, avocados from French
Guiana, pastries from Groppi s in Cairo, port wine from the Tagus
Valley, Palestinian cherry brandy, a magnum of Piper Heidsieck
of a good year, Santos coffee, Assam tea, vodka, Munchner beer,
and Scotch straight from the highlands as the thirsty crow flies.
The lads participating in this gorge were shod in Natal or Karachi
boots or in Arab babouches, and they synchronized theif appetites
with Swiss and Portuguese wrist watches. One pilot s Contax
camera, purchased in Mexico, was loaded with captured German
military film cut down to snapshot size in Tel Aviv. Another s
Somaliland ebony swagger stick had been tipped with Indian silver
by a craftsman in Rio de Oro. Furthermore, the families of these
and countless other airmen, over the last couple of years have been
subjected to parcel post barrages Persian rugs, Chinese screens,
Indian brocade handbags, Hawaiian grass skirts, Italian cameos,
alligator bags from the Amazon, Bahrein Islands pearls, West
African voodoo charms, Gurkha knives, camel skin hassocks, and
inlaid boxes made variously from Burmese teak, Moroccan cedar
and Nigerian mahogany.
When these fliers were asked by a sober bystander at Casablanca,
how many countries they had visited, most of them didn t? know.
From an elevation of ten thousand feet, a national boundary is a
sometime thing, all jungles look green, all bigwigs are srnallwigs,
no matter who collects the taxes. It is just possible that these
airmen, who are the men of the future in an age we are just
beginning to glimpse, look on the world with different eyes from
tbe> eyes of the foreign ministers, whose traditional props are
cnmbKng fast Pilots distinguish between geographical stops
more ifi terms of cross winds, runway lengths, food, women, and
liqtior, than in terms of mandate, colony, protectorate, republic,
principality, and empire. The invasion dollar and pidgin English
have been accepted generally wherever these men have gone. It
seems unlikely that airmen^ in the age of flight, will have much
patience with a postwar world of self-important states, called big,
called little, each with* its bordef police, its custom! declarations, its
visa fees and duties and exchange regulations and other petty
nuisances of nationalist society. High in the cirrus, above the
council table where national integrity is at stake, roam the younger
men who know that, given a tail wind, the whole issue can be
completely left behind in an hour and forty-five minutes.
202 Youth After Conflict
A physical scientist referred to the tempo which life will soon
become to most citizens:
The speed of motion of all sorts, including radio communication,
and also including motion of the human body in planes, is perhaps
the distinctive, factor in this war. I think that those who stay at
home have little conception of the psychological impact of these
fantastic speeds which have become commonplace to the
men overseas.
An educator wonders whether this mobility may not weaken the
influence of what sociologists call "the primary group," i. e. the
family, neighborhood, and face-to-face gatherings rooted in a
local community:
Possible further weakening of family and local community life as
we move into the age of airplanes, speedy travel, easy mobility,
further urbanization, and the age of gadgets arising from the use
of new materials.
Another enterprising educator asks us to imagine the safety
problem which will face us. With automobiles we killed more
Americans per year than were slain during any year of either the
first or the Second World War. What will we do with private
planes ?
1 5. The radio will develop in the direction of FM broadcasting,
television, radar, and facsimile printing.
The radio industry will, by 1950, be fairly well converted to its
new forms. Frequency Modulation will give a fidelity of music
which the best sets of the prewar type could not offer. FM has also
brought into broadcasting a great many schools, communities, labor
unions and other agencies which can operate locally on a small scale.
They will have to compete, however, with the networks, which will
link up FM stations as the chains in the past practically monopolized
the AM broadcasting.
There is much indication that televion is the great new development
in the offing that will capture imagination and around which
adventure will tend to organize itself so fa* as the entertainment
field is concerned.
A score of other forecasters concur. Ed Wynn told 1,000 guests
at a Television Broadcaster Association Conference in December,
Youth s World in the 1950 s 203
1944, that the greatness of the future of the new art made him "get
serious for the first time in my forty-three years on the stage and
radio/ He went on to "advocate a government-supported television
theater to which the great body of Americans actors and actresses
might look forward as the climax of their careers/ There was no
evidence that the business controllers there assembled had any
enthusiasm for his suggestion of a government project in this field.
A question of considerable social significance is whether television
entertainment will be consumed primarily in the home or in local
theaters. Dr. Gerald Wendt, science editor for Time magazine, is
betting on the theaters, taverns, clubs and community centers. They
will be able to afford much better equipment, giving larger and
more lifelike reproduction. A social psychologist would be inclined
to agree with Dr. Wendt, basing his prediction not on the technical
factors but on the social impulses of young people who prefer a
large gathering of their own age group, to the same entertainment
if offered at home. Witness all the parents who have purchased a
billiard table at home, only to have theii; adolescent boys continue
to prefer the one downtown. The stay-at-homes, however, will
undoubtedly have television entertainment on a small screen and
studded with advertising. Mr. O. B. Hanson, chief engineer of the
National Broadcasting Company, told the Television Broadcasters
Association in 1944 that, while television ads would cost three or
four times as much as radio ads, they would have an impact "ten
times as great as sound radio/ That is certainly an alarming
prospect. Clever cartoonists are already having fun anticipating
the visual accompaniments of the new ads for breakfast foods,
cathartics and vitamins.
There is considerable likelihood that the newsboy will be
obsolescent by the 1950 s. Facsimile recorders, attached to FM sets,
will receive and print on a continuous roll of paper, at the rate of
500 words a minute, or perhaps fasten Time magazine, reporting
progress, suggested, "Many a skeptical publisher, with one eye on
his costly presses and linotypes, noted that during the eight night
hours, a facsimile recorder could be rolling out a 128-page morning
newspaper, with news hours ahead of the standard press/ 3
Pictures and ads, as well as news stories and fiction, can be
faithfully reproduced.
3 Time, April 29, 1946.
204 Youth After Conflict
6. America, in the early 1950 s, will be building nezv houses at
an unprecedented rate.
The stagnation of the building industry during the depression, its
paralysis during the war, and its handicap of shortages during the
first years of peace combine to make the demand for new homes
the greatest single factor on the economic horizon. Estimates
indicate a backlog so great that it is likely to require more than one
and one half million new home units each year for a decade in order
to catch up. The biggest building year in the past was 1925, when
937,000 home units were constructed.
Only by mass-production .techniques, long overdue in this
industry, is the demand likely to be met. The articles and
advertisements about new homes created such an expectation, during
the war, of postwar marvels, that the building industry took fright.
They began in 1945 what may be one of the first advertising
campaigns in American history designed to reconcile consumers to
the old-fashioned house instead o-f all the new gadgets. Heretofore
the "old oaken bucket" pattern in advertising has been limited to
social ideas and institutions. New mechanical contrivances were
always rated as American and desirable new economic or political
arrangements as un-American and dangerous. The halt called in
advertising of new household conveniences represents a striking
contamination of technological advance by the reactionary social
outlook which has long characterized American advertising.
It is unlikely that the real-estate interests, the fabricators of
traditional construction materials, and the reactionary building
trade-unions will be able to stop the current innovation in housing.
Prefabricated houses are being built in reconverted airplane
factories. The new houses are usually well-insulated and may be
air-conditioned. Cupboards, kitchen fixtures, bathroom fixtures, and
other conveniences are built in. The metal or plastic surfaces keep
out vermin and are easy to keep clean. Noise and echo are
minimized. Color is freely employed.
Quick-freezing units and refrigerated storage are made possible
in the home. The 1950 s will see a large amount "of creative,
experimental energy going into new houses, functionally designed as
machines to facilitate better living.
X Cities will be, greatly decentralized.
Most respondents felt that this trend was so well-recognized that
tbey heed not amplify beyond some phrase like "increasing
decentralization/ One writer gave a more detailed -analysis.
Youth s World in the 1950 s 205
The experts say that our large cities are rotting at the core and
that the slums must be demolished if all large cities are not to
go broke : if cities should be rebuilt sensibly, they would be more
compact, not straggling all over the landscape, and the
surrounding "green belt" would be within reasonable distance.
The traffic problem is already insoluble and intolerable, and only
a relocation of factories and offices and an end of skyscrapers
forever, will get us out of the mess. If our cities should be made
less infernally ugly and less preposterously inconvenient, it would
make life happier for us all, but what specific effect it might have
on youth, I can t imagine.
Another, a sociologist, recognized that the changed living
conditions would modify and probably improve, family life.
The rapid growth of cities will be a matter of history, and there
will be more of the relatively stable suburban, families and fewer
of the most disorganized slum dwellers. In fact there is some
reason to consider that the family pattern of the future will be
much like that of the present-day suburban style.
Movements for decentralization, facilitated by quick transpor
tation, were well along before the atomic bomb made crowded
cities a great defense hazard. One social scientist proposed
recently that a logical defense against the bomb would be to
spread our population out over our whole territory.
The tendency to move from the center of cities out to surrounding
suburban "green cities" will certainly be accelerated. If, as seems
likely, plane or helicopter commutation becomes feasible, the living
space around cities will expand as the square of the extended radius.
A 100-mile commuting range may take no more travel time in 1955
than a 40^rnile range required in 1935, and the area available for
horned would thus be multiplied almost five times. Fresh air,
sunshine, gardens, and plenty of play space, could thus become the
heritage of all city children.
One educator points out! that the advantages of suburban living
are offset, at least in party by new complications. "linmediately
upon entering the more peaceful surroundings, plans are made to
have Junior or the young daughter attend dancing classes in town,
art classes on Saturday mornings, concerts on Saturday afternoons,
visits to the dentist every so often, and as a result there is a constant
rushing back and forth which brings about a negative rather than
a positive value." 4 Perhaps a solution will be found in the
*John A. Seidel, "A Postwar Bill of Rights for American Youth,"
Industrial Arts and Vocational Education (1943), 32:265-8
206 Youth After Conflict
development of better recreational and health facilities in each
local center.
8. Agriculture will be largely mechanized.
The assembly line, which revolutionized factory production after
World War I, is moving out into agriculture. A leading rural
sociologist predicts, "We probably will mechanize agriculture more
rapidly than we will create opportunities for rural youth in urban
industrial or service occupations." The proportion of our population
working on farms has been decreasing for a century. Within the
last few years a crop like cotton, traditionally raised by slave or
wage-slave labor, has been planted by machinery in fields prepared
by tractors and disk-harrows, has been cultivated by tractor
cultivators, weeded by flame throwers, picked and bagged and
ginned and baled, all by machines. A whole subculture built
around human labor in the cotton fields is about to be transformed.
A Pennsylvania farmer recently asked the United States Employ
ment Service for help; he didn t care about the man s farm
experience, what he needed was a good mechanic who could care
for, adjust, operate, and repair the machinery used in plowing,
cultivating, mowing, harvesting, silo-filling, milking, and other
farm operations. Fruitgrowing today demands familiarity with
many chemicals used as fertilizers, insect sprays, and in special
treatment of plant diseases. D.D.T. has received great publicity as
an insect killer and it will undoubtedly do much to cut down various
pests, but it is only one of many new chemicals which will be avail
able for use in scientific agriculture s fight against weeds, insects,
fungi, and other parasites.
Successful farming has always required considerable scientific
knowledge, mechanical skill, and versatility, but these factors are
increasing in importance. Floyd Reeve has estimated that, because
of the increasing productivity per man-hour, we have come out of the
war with two million more families on farms than are needed
there to maintain the highest production American agriculture has
ever known. The new jobs for millions of veterans and warworkers
cannot all be found on farms. Farming must be reckoned
among the highly skilled occupations of the 1950 s.
A much more drastic agricultural revolution can already be
foreseen, but it is unlikely to mature by 1950. Experimentation
with atomic energy makes possible "tagged" atoms, which can be
followed through their cycle of change in plant and animal life.
Youth s World in the 1950 s 207
Already synthetic fibers like nylon have challenged natural silk and
cotton. This is a development which will one day extend to many
other crops, further reducing the dependence on soil.
Slightly closer at hand, but also too undeveloped to affect life
much in the 1950 y s, is the agricultural use of the ocean. An
economist and a geographer recently published 5 their prediction
that the development of marine plants will be far more sensational
than anything that has happened in the 30,000 years since man
started to domesticate various wild roots, leaves, and seeds on land.
The application of all modern knowledge of plant breeding might
easily, at the cost of a few billion dollars* for research, develop
many new and more dependable sources of food.
9. Netv sources of. energy will be utilized.
The engines man has utilized in the past animal digestion, the
burning of wood, coal, and oil, harnessing of water power have
been grossly inefficient. As far back as 1919, Sir Oliver Lodge, at
the James Watt Centenary celebration, looked forward to the day
when it would be possible to use the atomic energy which, from one
ounce of matter, would be "sufficient to raise all the German ships
sunk at Scapa Flow and to pile them on top of the mountains of
Scotland." Other picturesque statistics have made the world
familiar with the fact that something far more important than
devastating bombs was contributed by the atomic research of World
War II. The only point of dispute among the scientists is the rate
at which the new sources of energy can be utilized to do the work
of the world. The 1950 J s will see us near the beginning* of the use
of these immense powers, but far enough along SQ that coal and oil
and falling water will already have been replaced in some
manufacturing processes. No technological transformation of
comparable magnitude can be found within recorded history.
III. ECONOMICS /
10. The pattern of economic events will &e: (a) a minor and
temporary primary depression immediately after the war; (b) a
recovery boom for some years, leading to (c) a serious secondary
depression.
This prevailing expectation, common among most of the experts
who offered an economic forecast, is pretty clearly a copy of what
5 H. F. Clark and G. T. Rentier, "We Should Annex 50,000,000 Square
Miles of Ocean," Saturday Evening Post, May 4, 1946, p. 16.
208 Youth After Conflict
happened after the Civil War and after World War I. It is not
very cheering to think that in the judgment of most of our observers,
the American people have not learned out of the depression of the
thirties anything which gives confidence that such wasteful tragedies
can be avoided. The fact is, of course, that our economy never did
go through any real cure or recovery. We dissipated the depression
by plunging into war production; so it is probably not surprising
that most people expect that war s end will throw us back eventually
to where we were.
First a few quotations from Cantril s prophets in 1941, all of them
fitting more or less into the above pattern. fl
The first exhaustion and depression, immediately following the
end of the war, will most probably be over. This period lasted
about three years in its acute form after the last war Ten
years from now, therefore, the new world might have reached
its first postwar prosperity. (Mr. U.)
We will have gone through the nightmare of a boom and credit
inflation and the chaos and headache of deflation while trying
to reconstruct and federate a war-ravaged Europe. (Mr. B.)
The world of 1952, although broken and impoverished on a scale
unknown since the Thirty Years War, will find itself on the eve of
an epoch of world- wide. . .plenty. (Mr. D.)
Since the close of the war there has been, to the surprise of most
people, a period of fairly high prosperity, for the governments of
the world, under the pressure of public opinion, have undertaken
large-scale development programs internally (housing, etc.) and
have collaborated on large-scale international development schemes
(industrialization of China, reconstruction of Europe, etc.).
There have been severe economic adjustment problems in many
areas, but no- great general depression of long duration like that
of the thirties. (Mr. F.)
, The greatest commercial boom of all time a boom fed upon the
resumption of international trade and the great amount of
building that will be going on. But the world will be living in
a fool s paradise, not precisely the same as that of the 1920 s, but
decidedly analogous to it (Mr. Q.)
Most commentators expected more difficulty in providing jobs
during the first year or two after victory, than actually developed.
*Badley Cantril, "The World in 1952: Some Predictions," Clinical Supple
ment to tHe Journal of Abnormal Psychology, April, 1943.
Youth s World in the 1950 s 209
It was expected that young people would be squeezed out of jobs
by transfer of older warworkers and priority for returning veterans.
Many leaders reflect this view.
Lack of employment for young workers is most probable.
Despite what might be done, it seems unrealistic not to take into
account the forecast of an oversupply of labor, the priority of
veterans, the seniority rights of trade-union members, the fact
that job planning so far is in terms of building trades.
It seems to me that the first big question is one of jobs. The
great danger is for the group coming out of school in the years
immediately following military demobilization. It is quite
possible, I think, that they may be shoved around, pretty roughly.
Widespread unemployment, which will encourage youth to stay
in school longer and may cause some friction between veterans
as well as family men, who will have job preference, and the
rising generation.
Prior to the boom there will be a minor depression which will
make it very difficult for young people to obtain employment.
Young people reaching the labor market on an average of two
to three years after Armistice will be seriously disprivileged.
The labor bloc will try to keep young people from entering the
labor market either by extending the maximum educational age
or by endorsing compulsory military training.
It was also expected that young people who had been making big
wages during the war must be prepared for a letdown another
attempt to make the history of World War I repeat itself. A Gallup
poll in late 1944 showed 71 per cent of respondents believing that
"tibe weekly income of workers after the war will be less that it
is today/* An educator wrote :
The change-over from wartime wealth for the family to postwar
financial stringency. Boys and girls in high school now have a
lot of money to spend The folks give it to them and they earn
much easily. High school principals say $5.00 bills stick out of
all their pockets. After the war money is likely to be less easy
to have and to get more of. High youth wages will go.
Following this initial period of stress our counselors expected a
boom lasting at least five years, while Americans spent their big
backlog of savings and War Bonds.
210 Youth After Conflict
Few reckoned with as steep a price advance as occurred in the two
years after the war s end. It is curious that wage-trends are discussed
so often on the assumption of more or less constant value for the
dollar. Actually the inflation following the end of price control wiped
out a large part of the "backlog."
Thereafter the instability of our economy might be expected to
reassert itself. "Technology/ said one writer, "increases the
productivity of labor, speeds up the whole economy, and creates a
tendency toward more instability."
One of the most vivid statements in our survey was made by a
writer unusually successful in depicting American life. He said :
Postwar life depends in many respects upon whether we can avoid
a gigantic postwar depression. I can see no promise whatever
o avoiding one, but only indications on every hand that we shall
rush into one like the Gadarene swine over the cliff.
It is difficult to discover among the social analysts any who
believe that the cause of major depressions will have been brought
under control before the 1950 s.
11. The economic system under which we shall be operating in the
1950 ^ will be a "mixed economy" neither purely capitalist nor
wholly socialist.
It was surprising to see that very few anticipated a return to
old-fashioned private capitalism and very few thought any kind of
thoroughgoing socialism would prevail. Almost all the predictions
suggested the emergence from the New Deal of a new kind of
economic order in which government would play a very influential
part.
In the United States a state capitalism will develop which will
be guided by what we might call realistic conservatives. There
will be a liquidation of the existing structure with enormous
extension of social security, medical insurance, valley authorities,
low income homes, and the like. (Mr. T.)
Leftward or communistic forces of Europe will, by 1952, swing
more to the right, and the capitalistic system of free enterprise
will swing more to the left, meeting in some middle compromise
area in a sort of super New Deal or state socialism. (Mr. B.)
Though the government in 1951 was far more socialistic and
paternalistic than in 1941, no really fundamental changes had
taken place in the basic structures of either the monetary system
or the capitalistic profit system. (Mr. I.).
Youth s World in the 1950 s 211
Most business in our country will still be run under private
ownership and control; private enterprise will be the great
motivating influence, although the extent of government control
and regulation will be at least as great as at present, and probably
greater. Advertising, however, will still be a tremendous force.
Government ownership will have great progress in the electric
utility field and will be about to move in on gas, oil, and coal.
(Mr. L.)
Economic planning will have made immense strides by 1952,
chiefly as a result of the war society. In political controls there
will be a mixture of socialism, capitalism, fascism and democracy.
The collectivist economic and state organizations in 1952 will be
an amalgam of the features of these various systems which will
be found to have worked in the intervening period. Roughly,
every nation in the world will be moving toward a combination
between state capitalism and state socialism. (Mr. N.)
A Canadian, trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
introduced a recent pamphlet for the Wartime Information Board
of Canada with his impression of what a historian might say as he
looked back from the year 2900. T
And now we must examine that great turning point in our
cultural history: the growth of the Community Planning
Movement, or C.P.M. . . .It began in the closing years of the War
against the fascist powers when the discomforts of an acute
housing shortage served to focus critical eyes on the said condition
of Canadian communities Origins of the C.P.M. can be traced
to local committees formed about 1945 to press for war memorials
in the shape of Community Centers instead of the traditional
monuments of a less socially-minded age These developed
into Citizens Planning Councils, from which the Neighbourhood
Planning Councils of our own day can trace descent From such
modest beginnings grew the mighty C.P.M with the enthusiastic
support of the returning veterans... a sudden explosion of
confidence in Canada s creative abilities, long pent-up and
frustrated.
Today we take its results so much for granted that we forget the
attendant benefits which so pleasantly surprise our grandparents
generation. . . .The long period of planned construction proved to
be the greatest single factor in the maintenance of full employ
ment, a burning issue in those postwar years. . . .The stimulus
given to architecture set in train a flowering of all the other arts. . . .
7 Hazen Sise, "A Place to Live," Canadian Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 7, April
15, 1945.
212 Youth After Conflict
Young men of talent were no longer tempted by superior
opportunities across the border. Their products were exported
instead. . . .Democracy was strengthened at its roots by widespread
participation in the local Community Planning Councils.
A writer and critic goes on to suggest that our language habits
will need some revision to correspond to the realities of the new
economic arrangements.
A tremendous amount, it seems to me, depends upon the degree
of success with which we adapt our political and monetary
symbolism to the nature of our economic plant. In brief, if we
get things named correctly, then we can act correctly, hence youth
and adult both will find adequate expression in the ways of
co-operation, and the "virtues" that go with these. Insofar as
our economic orientation is faulty, surely one can expect some
morbidity (either spiritual or spirited) among the new "lost."
It is interesting that not one of our respondents envisioned the
triumph of either capitalism or communism as these terms were
understood during the twenties and thirties. Not one felt that the
world faced an "either-or" of that kind. All who discussed the
economic system worked toward some new synthesis of values. Had
predictions been made in 1947, the dichotomy between "communism"
and the "American Way" might have been sharper.
12. Government s activities, services and economic participation
ivill continue to expand.
This is a corollary of the "mixed economy" which is so
unanimously expected. A social psychologist predicts :
Government will absorb the youth s social horizon. Interest in
charity will be replaced by interest in politics. More good people
will go into government work Jobs will become increasingly a
government concern.
"A vast expansion of governmental services in general," says an
educator.
"Centi^alization of government power," adds a sociologist.
Government is expected to be responsible for providing employ
ment when private enterprise fails to do so. This is a bench-mark
set "by the W.P.A. and P.W.A. of the depression decade. A survey
Youth s World in the 195Q*s 213
by the National Opinion Research Center in the summer of 1945
asked :
It has been suggested that Congress pass a law that would let
the government take money out of taxes to pay for a public works
program that would employ all those who can t get jobs after the
war. Would you like to see this done, or not?
The reply from a cross section of the American republic was 60
per cent Yes to 23 percent No nearly three to one among those with
a categorical opinion, for a government works program. If the
question had been as careful to specify "careful planning" and
"useful construction which communities really need" as it was to
specify taking money out of taxes, the favorable vote would have
been still larger.
At a more sophisticated economic level, the thinking of experts
offers the following analysis of what will be expected of government.
Our economy functions when all the income that is saved, i. e.,
withheld in any way from the purchase of consumer goods, is
promptly reinvested in new enterprises. The volume of savings
should be equaled by the volume of new investments. But, as the
private enterprise economy operates, this doesn t always occur.
The proportion of our national income which is not consumed and
which is saved for some kind of investment is very great. It may
run to fifteen or twenty billion dollars a year, when times are
prosperous. The channels of private investment are not great
enough to handle this volume. We are accustomed to an enterprise
order in which five billion dollars worth of new private investment
in one year rates as high. If investors become timid, suspicious, or
panicky, savings may continue to increase while new investment
sharply contracts. The role of government in this process is to take
tip tforottgfa taxes or bonds the savings that are not being used for
expansion and to put them to work in public investments. Dollar
for dollar, a pobEc investment in nursery schools or low cost
housing, recreational services, or airports, can have just as
stimulating an effect OH economic recovery as can money invested
in steel plants, cigarette, factories, or barber shops. One of the
reasons for believing that a secondary postwar depression of great
magnitude can be avoided is the growing realization that public
investment can be utilized to compensate for the periodic
insufficiency of new private investments.
One prediction is that government will be spending not only upon
community improvements at home but on reconstruction activities
214 Youth After Conflict
abroad. Thus Mr. L, writing in imagination from the late fifties,
reports that when depression threatened, "the government provided
a cushion of slum clearance, orders for reconstruction in Europe,
and orders for development in Latin America, and these together did
the job fairly well."
"The T.V.A. s and Mississippi Valley Authorities are going to
multiply," writes a sociologist, and several others make the same
point. This is one form of government participation which has won
so much approval that it is likely to increase in the postwar epoch.
In the two years since the predictions were made a Republican
Congress has attempted valiantly to swing the Economy Axe. A
reaction against government spending has been dominant. This was
not predicted by the social seers and may represent only a
temporary recession.
13. Collective provisions for social security will increase.
By the 1950 s, social security provisions through the Federal
government will undoubtedly be extended to cover more persons and
more contingencies and to provide more adequately. Elmo Roper,
summarizing ten years of experience with the Fortune poll of public
opinion, concludes: "They [the American people] are convinced
that never again will people who are willing and 
