where history goes to die

I've got to say that the towns of Western Pennsylvania have a kind of run-down, rustic, delapidated, abandoned charm to them, greatly accentuated by the gray, cold, snowy weather. As a history nut, I love looking at ruins; however, these towns, although old, are still too young to be in the condition they're in. In cities like Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA history is alive. The buildings are maintained, people live and work in them, and actually strive to make their cities more beautiful. It seems that this is the exception in our country and the general rule is that cities and towns are treated as disposable. The reason there aren't more places like Charleston in America is because we live in a disposable, Wal-Mart/ McDonalds society which judges everything based on newness and discards anything old. As a society, we value youth over experience and wisdom, we are quick to discard anything that is "soooo last year" like cellphones that don't have cameras and internet access.
This is not a new phenomenon in our country. America began as a break from history-- a break from the tyrannies and old social orders of Europe. From the very beginning, Americans were moving to new frontiers where they could start anew. After we reached the Pacific Coast and could no longer flee westward, we began leaving our cities to build suburbs in the twentieth century. When those suburbs became old ("old" defined as homes and stores more than 20 years old) it was time to knock down more forests and build entirely new suburbs, leaving the old ones to rot. Shopping malls sit empty and houses sit boarded up after only a few decades of use. The cycle seems to keep repeating itself, with the exception of during recessions. Who ever thought that the shopping mall would be threatened by a gigantic store named Wal-Mart? It goes to show that everything has its turn on the chopping block. We are the victims of our own progress.
In Europe, they maintain and use buildings for hundreds of years for two reasons: 1) Because land is very expensive and 2) they actually value their history. Historic preservation in America is catching on, slowly. Hopefully, the trend will catch on so that entire towns aren't neglected and/or abandoned simply for the novelty of newness.

Worse than the Crash of 1929

My dad and I are always having conversations about history and the economy. He worked on Wall Street for about two decades, up until the crash of '87, and he also happens to be a history buff. I wasn't interested so much in the economy until I started doing research for my first book, which took place in the 1920's. I noticed an uncanny number of similarities between the 1920's and the past decade, which led me to predict two years ago that we were heading for a depression. When I said it back then, some "smart" people used to snort at me and tell me I was crazy and brainwashed by "left-wing media propaganda." Those same individuals told me that the economy was going to be on the upswing by the fall of 2008.

Not to be the pessimist, but our economic indicators are actually worse than they were in 1929. Percentagewise, the market has plunged just as much as during that year and the major stocks, especially bank stocks, have plumetted far more than during the end of that year. First consider this basic fact: In the 1920's and 1930's, the US made a large portion of the world's goods and provided a significant portion of steel, coal, iron, food, etc. to a global market. The US had the biggest port in the world (New York) and exported more goods than all of western Europe combined. World War II created a demand for manufactured goods from the Allies on a scale never seen before. Also, when that war was over, all of our global economic rivals were smoldering piles of rubble, literally, without functioning infrastructures. We had a monopoly on most manufactured goods because England, Germany, and Japan were too busy trying to rebuild their cities, bridges, roads, powerlines, sewage, running water, etc. We will never have that kind of monopoly on world markets again, unless, in theory, all of Asia and India were destroyed. WE DON'T MAKE ANYTHING ANYMORE. Take a walk through Wal-Mart and try to find goods, besides T-Shirts and socks, made in the USA. Good luck. It was our manufacturing capacity that saved us last time. What will save us this time?
That question stumps both me and my dad. There will definitely have to be some kind of unforseen change to pull us out of this mess.

The Steelers are going to the Superbowl!

I just recently moved to the Pittsburgh area from Charleston, SC. I usually don't care about football, but I must say that the Steelers are like a religion in western Pennsylvania. Since history is not paying the bills for me, I'm delivering pizza for Dominos full time. On my many travels up and down the snowy, dark, icy, winding, hilly roads of Connellsville and the surrounding area, I have noticed that the locals only root for one team. Being from New York, this is a strange concept, because we had two football teams and two baseball teams while I was growing up there.
In Charleston, people rooted for different teams. Although most Southerners really don't care about NFL stuff because they're into college football, there were quite a few Steelers fans down there too. Amazingly, there were even Steelers' bars in South Carolina. Can you imagine that? Southerners rooting for a Yankee team?
What I've learned about Pittsburgh is that it's a big city that thinks and acts like a small town. People in this area root for the Steelers with the same enthusiasm and die-hard devotion that people normally only show for their old college or high school. (As a Citadel grad, I would know this, although the Bulldogs keep getting creamed.)

Some Things Do Not Change

While it is interesting to note how much has changed technologically and culturally since the 1920’s, it is more important to note the things that have not changed. There are certain characteristics of our political system that have changed very little in the past century. Finger-pointing, mudslinging, and partisanship were as strong in the 1920’s as they are today. The men of the Coast Guard and Customs were always caught in the crossfire. When the national Prohibition law took effect, both the Coast Guard and Customs were under-equipped, under-manned, poorly funded, yet expected to stop a tidal-wave of liquor from flooding the U.S.
The Prohibition law was extremely unpopular. It is interesting to note that the National Prohibition Act received two thirds of the vote in Congress and was ratified by 36 state legislatures. Although it soon became apparent that the law was extremely unpopular, even among police officers and politicians, Congress did not repeal the law until 13 years after it went into effect. Not only did Congress take a long time to repeal the law, it continually escalated the war on alcohol, spending hundreds of millions of dollars (billions in today’s dollars) to enforce a policy that most Americans were against. Prohibition provides a classic example of a great gap between popular opinion and the workings of our political machinery. As far as Congress was concerned, the issue was not how many people supported Prohibition, but who supported it.

Old Issues In a New World

One of the key things to know about the1920’s is that it was still a very Victorian decade. Most popular histories depict the 1920’s as a time when everyone abandoned Victorian values almost overnight. Popular documentaries simplify the entire decade by showing footage of men and women doing nothing but drinking and dancing, interspersed with footage of gangsters shooting Tommy guns. While it is true that a large number of America’s youth adopted the new social freedoms that came with the “Jazz Age,” a great portion of Americans did not. Bear in mind that the Victorian Age lasted up until World War I. People who reached adulthood before the 1920’s had a tendency to hold onto Victorian values long after that era was over. One only has to briefly look through a newspaper from the 20’s to realize that many Americans still viewed the world in 19th century terms. Many of the “hot” issues of the 1920’s were actually carried over from the previous century. Prohibition, women’s suffrage, racism, communism, immigration, workers’ rights, anti-war sentiments, and isolationism were all old issues. They all just happened to converge and reach a boiling point around 1920.
In 1920, the Coast Guard and Customs were still equipped for the age of steam and sail. Men who grew old during the Victorian era led both of those organizations during the Prohibition years. A century later, we have come to take for granted the size, training, and equipment of both agencies. The sudden, overwhelming burden brought on by Prohibition enforcement caused growing pains in federal law enforcement. It was the job of both the Coast Guard and Customs to simultaneously work through these growing pains and carry out the mission of stopping an endless flood of smuggled liquor.

Gadgets in the 1920's

Telephones were still a luxury in the early 1920’s. Although the telephone had existed for a few decades by that point, only 35 percent of households had one. To provide an example, when Calvin Coolidge was Vice President, his hometown in Massachusetts only had one telephone, located in the general store. When the store closed in the evenings and on Sunday, the town’s residents had no phone access.[i]
Radios were also a new item. The first commercial radio broadcast was in November of 1920. At the time, most radio receivers were homemade crystal sets that could be put together for about $2 and used with a $4 set of earphones. At the end of 1921, there were only ten radio stations in the U.S. A year later, there were 350 radio stations.
Films were also very popular in the early 1920’s, but they had no sound. Theaters presented movies with the music of a live piano player, organist, or sometimes a live orchestra. During the period discussed in this book, Charlie Chaplain was a new silent movie star. The first feature-length “talking picture,” The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, did not debut until 1927.[ii]
The automobile brought swift changes to America during this period. In 1920, only one household in three owned an automobile. However, America had an extensive, reliable system of railroads that crossed the country and reached most small towns. Most cities and towns were designed for pedestrians, so car ownership was not a necessity.
During those years, most American roads were dirt roads and no paved highway existed to connect the East and West Coast. In a practical sense, this meant that during times of heavy rain, the roads could turn into muddy quagmires. On the other hand, if there were a drought, vehicles and horses kicked up large amounts of dust (including dried manure). The switch from horses to automobiles did not happen overnight. In the city and in the country, many people were still using horses and mules, each of which made about 15-25 pounds of manure a day. One can only imagine the stench of a city like New York or Chicago in those days.
Henry Ford revolutionized the assembly line system and his workers cranked out an affordable and durable car “for the masses” called the Model T. To sell his cars, Ford introduced consumer credit on a massive scale, making it possible for Americans to live beyond their means. In the 1920’s, easy credit helped expand the American economy greatly, which worked out well until the credit bubble burst in 1929.
In order to accommodate the increased number of cars and trucks on the road, Congress approved a measure to subsidize highway construction. However, even by the 1929, only one fifth of America’s roads were paved.[iii]
[i] “Table Dg34-45- Telephone Industry- telephones, access lines, wire, employees, and plant: 1876-2000.” (Cambridge University Press, 2007.)
[ii] Kyvig, pp.75-76.
[iii] Ibid., p.49.

Life In The Early 1920's

To get a real sense of the Prohibition days, one should consider what life was like for the average American. Hollywood films from then and now have given a very glamorous image to those times. Films and documentaries (sadly) depict the ′20’s as a relatively carefree time of economic prosperity when men and women wore flashy clothing and spent their free time drinking, doing dances like “the Charleston,” and listening to jazz. According to this same Hollywood image, the average person lived in a beautifully-furnished, spacious home with heat and electricity, a phone, radio, record player, and a refrigerator. The image also includes at least one big, shiny car for every household and even a household servant.
Unfortunately, that was not the case for most Americans. In the early 1920’s, the nation went through a very bad recession. Millions of war veterans returned home to find that many factories and shipyards that produced military goods had shut down. Unemployment was widespread and workers went on strike in massive numbers to protest harsh working conditions and poor pay. There were no social safety nets such as unemployment checks, worker’s compensation, Social Security, Medicaid, or food stamps. These economic conditions tempted the average worker to take part in bootlegging or rum-running. Smuggling liquor paid several times the salary of the average job for fewer hours of work, and, in many cases, the working conditions were better. Smuggling liquor by boat was usually far more bearable than working at a steel mill, coal mine, textile mill, or assembly line.
In addition to a bad economy, the government began Communist witch hunts in reaction to the Communist revolution in Russia. Politicians put striking workers and Communists in the same category, often drawing no distinction. On January 2, 1920, government agents in 33 cities rounded up thousands of suspected Communists and detained them without charges for long periods. In the face of widespread protest against the “Palmer Raids,” Attorney General Palmer argued that his program was the only practical means to prevent a Bolshevik conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Government.
In addition to a recession and political turmoil, daily life for the average American was harsh by today’s standards. In 1920, only 47 percent of city homes and 1.6 percent of farm homes had electricity. Americans prioritized installing electrical outlets over other modern conveniences, such as running water. Much of the American population in the early ′20’s did not have central heating, bathtubs, running water, or indoor toilets.
Rural people, especially women, knew what they were missing when they read magazine advertisements and mail-order catalogs. For example, without an electric pump, women had to haul water into the house from a nearby well or stream and then heat it for cleaning, bathing, or laundry. For those Americans fortunate enough to have electricity, there were new electrical gadgets on the market. Electric irons, fans, and vacuum cleaners were new and popular items. Those who did not have electricity had to heat an iron on the stove to have wrinkle-free clothes. Electric mixers, blenders, coffee makers, and washing machines were also new on the market and were, in 1920, only affordable to the wealthy. Washing machines at that time were very simple devices with a motor that agitated water, detergent, and soiled items. After the cycle was complete, a person would have to remove the drenched clothing from the machine, insert each piece through a motorized wringer, and then hang the clothing up to dry. Washing machines would not be equipped with a spin cycle until the late 1930’s. In 1920, electric refrigerators were also very rare, even among the wealthy. Most families continued to rely on underground storage or iceboxes.[i]
[i] David E. Kyvig, Daily Life In The United States, 1920-1940. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002.) pp.66-67