Therefore this book have given me a lot of insight of how USA comes to be what it is now. And moreover, it can be read as a FORWARD-LOOKING book: the Globe is closer to the blink of Great Depression than ever. We can spot a lot of parallel between US then and US now: speculation of real estate, stock; the style of the media (aren't they all interested in soapie-like story?). As well, we can spot all the syndromes in our current econ situation that were present in US in 20's. If the world leaders cannot learn from History and steer the course correctly, we will soon dive into the merciless age of depression again, and soon someone else will follow the author and wrote us a book of World in 90's, "Yesterday Once More"(?!)
The trends and issues of the post-World War I decade resound with amazing familiarity today, at the dawn of the 21st Century. Through reading Allen's account the reader is reminded that McCarthyism that oft referred to "ism," was hardly the invention of McCarthy, nor was it unique to the late 1940's and 1950's. A red scare based on hysteria and fear proceeded "McCarthyism" by a good thirty years. The red scare that was brought about by the Bolshevik Revolution was ferocious in its intensity. Fanned by the winds of a handful of true radicals, the red scare that came immediately after the war was characterized by labor unrest, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the trampling of any ideas or books that had a hint of "Bolshevism," mass deportations of Communists (or suspected Communists), and the waiving of due process under law with mass arrests.
Allen says the big red scare faded quickly, as it became all too evident that there really wasn't much Communist or Bolshevik subversion to begin with. Also, the country was ready for The Next Big Thing. "Only Yesterday" details a series of manias that swept the country in the twenties. One of these manias was a revolution in morals. Here too, the reader of the year 2000 is reminded that the sixties and early seventies were not the only time period of a sexual revolution in twentieth-century America. The post-war decade of the twenties was a dramatic precursor to what came later, and an important breaking off point, for many at least, from Victorian mores.
Tired of Wilsonian idealism and weary from the First World War, American's were starved for a return to "normalcy." From Marion, Ohio, Warren Harding seemed like just the man to succeed Wilson. Harding was swept into the White House in what would be the beginning of twelve years of Republican rule from Pennsylvania Avenue. No great intellectual, Harding was a genial man and the country took to him. Meanwhile, as it would be revealed after his timely death, Harding ran one of the most corrupt administrations in the nation's history. The scandals came to light after Harding died and the moralistic (although not necessarily idealistic) Calvin Coolidge was just the man for the times. The "Coolidge Prosperity" is aptly named in that most of the 1920's were good times economically for all but a few sectors of the economy. Coolidge ran the country with a maxim of what was good for business was good for the country. If he had any ideology that was probably it.
The most capable of the three Republicans, or at least certainly the brightest, was Herbert Hoover, elected at the height of the Coolidge prosperity. Hoover was in office just over six months when the bubble burst The stock market-fueled by speculation-crashed, followed soon by a general economic collapse.
With the Scopes Trial, sports mania, and the introduction and popularity of radio, the nation went from one craze to the next. Whether it was anti-Bolshevism, or stock market mania, these were all national manias with the help of new forms of communication as well as new ways of mass manipulation by editors and announcers. Allen's "Only Yesterday" gives the reader a good feel for the events and trends of the 1920's, as seen by a man who had just lived through that decade.
The object of this French term is the United States government. By 1918 it was a fast ship, roaring to the aid of the beleaguered peoples of Europe, tipping the balance in the "war to end wars" in favor of the right side. In this spirit also, prohibition was passed. The moment the war came to an end, the American people fled from the banners of decency just as fast as their legs could carry them. The government became a derelict hulk captained by token presidents.
Wilson drove himself to death trying in vain to bring about a "just and lasting peace." Harding, the great American "good guy", enmeshed himself in the "Teapot Dome Scandals" perpetrated by his friends, the Texas oil millionaires. The author speculates that his rather unexpected death was a concealed suicide. The oil intended for U.S. naval reserves went elsewhere at a large profit, much to Japan.
The south rose again in the form of the resurrected Klu Klux Klan (the book does not mention its previous disbanding by the actual confederate veterans). They ruled at the state and local levels (hence "states rights"). Justice was an open joke, but who cared about it? The American people were busy pursuing a sexual revolution and illicit booze. The satirist, H. L. Mencken, had a field day. Al Capone ruled Chicago. Hundreds of rackets sprang up everywhere and small businessmen paid taxes to the mob.
Why did the government not act? Mammon was God and was being preached not only by the clergy from the pulpit but by its new apostles, the salesmen. "Hands off", they said, and that will be the best. The little people attempted to defend themselves and their jobs through unions and were assaulted by reactionary forces acting at state and local levels. Anarchy and disorder were on the increase. The IWW reached maximum extent, especially in the west. Reactionaries countered with "the red scare." Sacco and Vanzetti were executed for a crime the judge and prosecutor knew they did not commit, because they were "anarchists" (they were not).
Reaching the end of the decade, the author gives us the handwriting on the wall: the crash of late 1929. Laissez faire, he hints, was not going to work in the 20th century. He could not then know of the rise of FDR, the suppression of the Klan, the legalization of unions, and the strengthening of the government into a social regulatory force and quasi-empire. Nor could he know that the divisiveness would continue, and the protagonists would be roughly the same. What a pity.