SoylentNews

What the US Was Like in the 1920s

posted by hubie on Sunday July 05, @11:35PM   
from the blast-from-the-sesquicentennial-past dept.

canopic jug writes:

Derek Thompson has republished excerpts from an almost 100-year-old report on what the US was like in the 1920s. He includes some of the charts and summaries.

One hundred years ago, on September 26, 1929, President Herbert Hoover gathered a group of social scientists at the White House. He asked them to begin research on the most detailed report ever produced on the state of the nation. Four years later, running more than 1,500 pages long, Recent Social Trends was published, offering an unusually granular look at life in the mid-1920s.

The document is almost entirely forgotten. But today, for America's 250th birthday, I'm blowing the cobwebs off this sucker and taking readers inside its yellowed pages for a look back at what life was like in the U.S. exactly 100 years ago, when the U.S. was celebrating its sesquicentennial anniversary.

Derek observes some interesting parallels between US society around both the sesquicentennial and the recent semiquincentennial.

A scanned version of Recent Social Trends in the United States: Report of the President's Research Committee on Social Trends is available online having been scanned at the University of California back when scanning old material was still allowed, though there are paper copies there and elsewhere. For now.

---

Original Submission

• ToCToC (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06, @03:52AM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06, @03:52AM (#1447315)

  U Michigan has an overview including an OCR'd Table of Contents, https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11974&context=mlr [umich.edu]

  ''RECENT SOCIAL TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES"
  REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT'S RESEARCH COMMITTEE
                    I
  SUMMARY AND COMMENT
  By Robert Cooley Angell
  I.
  NEVER before has a particular civilization taken so complete an
  inventory of its own activities as that presented in the two-volume
  Report of the President's Research Committee on Social
  Trends. Its more than 1600 pages are literally crammed with significant
  data regarding almost every conceivable aspect of American life,
  data gathered with great care and thoroughness by research men of
  unquestioned ability and scholarly standing. The easiest way to obtain
  an idea of the vastness of the undertaking is to scan the headings of the
  29 chapters written by some 40 authors:

  The Population of the Nation
  Childhood and Youth
  Utilization of Natural Wealth
  abor Groups in the Social Structure
  The Influence of Invention and Discovery
  The People as Consumers
  The Agencies of Communication
  Recreation and Leisure Time Activities
  Trends in Economic Organization
  The Arts in Social Life
  Shifting Occupational Patterns
  Changes in Religious Organizations
  Education
  Health and Medical Practice
  Changing Social Attitudes and Interests
  Crime and Punishment
  The Rise of Metropolitan Communities
  Privately Supported Social Work
  Rural Life
  Public Welfare Activities
  The Status of Racial and Ethnic Groups
  The Growth of Governmental Functions
  The Vitality of the American People
  Taxation and Public Finance
  The Family and its Functions
  Public Administration
  The Activities of Women Outside the Home
  Law and Legal Institutions
  Government and Society

  [...]

  It is obviously impossible in the space available to give even a brief
  resume of each chapter. Fortunately the Committee has prefaced the
  Report with a 65-page review of its findings, which we briefly summarize.
  The Committee, impressed by the fact that our problems mainly
  arise from the dynamic character of American life, planned the study to
  be one of social trends, chiefly since r 900. Their hypothesis was that
  most of our troubles arise from the unequal rates of change in various
  aspects of our lives, that they are due in other words to cultural lag.
  Though not explicitly adopting an economic interpretation of history,
  the Committee seems to regard the economic changes as basic and to
  feel that the government, or the family, or any other institution that
  is not in harmony with economic forces is maladjusted. The expressed
  aim is "to look at recent trends in the United States as interrelated, to
  scrutinize the functioning of the social organization as a joint activity
  ... to unite such problems as those of economics, government, religion,
  education, in a comprehensive study of social movements and tendencies,
  to direct attention to the importance of balance among the factors
  of change."

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		+3
  Interesting=1, Informative=2, Total=3
  Extra 'Informative' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		3

• Fulltext of Vol 1 at UC(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Monday July 06, @04:24AM

  by canopic jug (3949) on Monday July 06, @04:24AM (#1447318) Journal

  And the full text of Volume 1 is available via the University of California. See the first link in the last paragraph of the summary for a link to the first part. It seems that digital access to the second volume is no where to be found and false copyright warnings pop up when volume 2 links are clicked on.

  --
  Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.

  Parent