UNIT+THREE+Boom+to+Bust

UNIT THREE From Boom to Bust: America in the 1920s

Below are three links to the documentary you need to view by November 10. It is //The Century: Peter Jennings// and these three links make up the three parts of the episode dealing with the 1920s. It is filled with interesting film and quality commentary and really covers the decade visually. This should be help you better visualize the readings.

Part I: []

Part 2: []

Part 3: []

Study Guide:

Unit Agenda:

Advertising in the 1920s:

After the war, general circulation magazines dropped the theme of reform and picked up on the culture of consumerism. //Ladies' Home Journal// and //The Saturday Evening Post//, featuring Norman Rockwell's paintings on its cover, became fixtures in middle-class homes around the country. Hoping to attract serious newsreaders, Henry Luce began publishing //Time// in 1923. New tabloid newspapers launched after the war, like the //New York Daily News//, $.25 for the large tube ||
 * [[image:http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/images/snpmech4b.jpg width="188" height="129" align="left"]] ||
 * Colgate Toothpaste Ad - 1924

achieved large circulation by covering crime, sports and scandals. Advertisers, now reaching millions of consumers on a daily or weekly basis, hired movie stars and sports figures to persuade Americans to buy all types of products, from coffee to tobacco products. Business had become America's secular religion, thanks to advertising. Bruce Barton's 1925 book comparing religion and business, //The Man Nobody Knows//, declared Jesus Christ's parables as "the most powerful advertisements of all time.... He would be a national advertiser today." Coca-Cola serves as a good example of how product advertising changed over this forty-year period. When first introduced in the 1880s, the product was marketed as a medicine, with claims that it cured headaches, and that it "revived and sustained" a person. Seeking to build repeat business and brand loyalty, by the 1920s the company emphasized it as a refreshment and a "fun food". Consumers demanding the cola at soda fountains could pressure storeowners to stock it, or risk losing their business. Today Coca-Cola is one of the largest and most visible companies in the world thanks to its successful advertisement campaigns.

The Internet is teeming with ads from the 1920s that demonstrate the "national culture" and consumerism of the 1920s. The example above illustrates the ways advertisers appealed to consumers. **For this assignment - you must find an ad from the 1920s and post it in the space below. Along with the image, you must offer an analysis of how that ad represented the shift toward consumerism in the 1920s.**
 * For example: in the ad above, the young man represents a healthy, good-looking American who has lesiure time to spend playing lawn games with friends. If he wants to keep those friends, and that lifestyle, he'll want clean, white teeth. This demonstrates that ads in the 1920s were geared towards selling a lifestyle, not just a product. Everyone wants to live like this young man, therefore everyone wants clean, white teeth as well, and they need Colgate to make that possible.**