These two decades were like opposite sides of a coin. The 20’s were a time of celebration, laze faire economics, prohibition, and hands-off government. The 30’s were a time of tension, regulation, anti-prohibition, and government programs. But as history shows, there are connections between events, and these two decades brought a lot of changes together for American society.

In the 1920’s you this thing called prohibition, where there were a bunch of rules against the production and distribution of alcohol due to the 18th Amendment. The issue was the basic economics of supply and demand, where they took away the supply of booze without taking away a deeply ingrained public demand. This led to underground operations and speakeasies, and in these hidden clubs you had jazz become the powerhouse that eventually took the nation by storm with names such as Louis Armstrong. Such music only got a wider audience with the mass commercialization of this device called a radio which picked up broadcasts from distant locations that you could tune to or switch to someone else.

Wall Street became a household name for two reasons: one was that a lot of people were putting money in the market and making it rich during the decade, and the then when it crashed in 1929 and became ground zero for the worst financial catastrophe the global economy has ever seen.

Which leads us into the 1930’s and kicking off with the Great Depression. Government neglect and a quarter of the nation unemployed had left a great deal of issue to contend with, and suddenly the idea of banning liquor seemed ridiculous, for if everyone was secretly drinking it anyways and giving money to criminals, why not just legalize it, regulate and tax it to gain the government much needed revenue and reduce the crime problem at the same time. But it would be more than prohibition the government would tackle, for the FDR administration in its first 100 days passed sweeping reforms that set up department after department in the executive branch, and instituted massive works projects to give unemployed Americans some economic stability. Social Security, the FBI, FEMA are agencies that still exist to this day, providing a service to the national government and/or the citizens who need them.

It’s not as if all fun ended when the Depression hit, for in Florida a ragtag group of car enthusiasts who spent the twenties outrunning liquor patrols had set up a car race at Daytona Beach, what would one day become NASCAR. In California, two different animation companies were seeing much popular acclaim for their work in cartoons, providing those who could watch some relief from the woes of the day, be it through a little cartoon mouse and his shenanigans, or a wisecracking rabbit and his shenanigans. They were Walt Disney and the Warner Brothers respectively.