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- Hello. - Hello.

There you are.

- Do you please direct me to the American history section?

Yes, it's to the right, around this post.

- Thank you. - You're welcome.

- Need any help, son?

- Oh, we've got a theme to write for school

on any period of recent American history.

Gee, I don't know what to pick.

- Well, you have plenty to choose from here.

Up to 1914, but I guess that's pretty old stuff for us now.

1914 to 1918 and the war, the first one, you know,

but that's not much fun.

1918 to 1930, now those were the days.

Things were really fine.

1930 to '39, now that's the depression.

You don't want that.

Oh, here.

The second world war.

- Oh, that's not history.

I could remember that myself.

- Oh.

Well, look here, son.

By and large, this is your best bet.

Chances are you'll never live through

any days like those again.

No one seems to remember them except people my age,

but they were our happy times.

Take a look at this.

Something will give you an idea how things were in the '20s.

- Gee thanks.

- Thanks a lot. - You're welcome.

- I'm Frederick Lewis Allen.

I'll cover the manners and customs of the 1920's.

- Robert o. Lewis, Broadway, movies, theater, night clubs,

that's for me in any period.

- Allen Prescott, the lighter moments interest me.

- This is red barber, not-so-oi' redhead.

We had sports in the '20s, too.

- I'm Elmer Davis.

I'll tell you about the political climate of the '20s.

It was quite a party

when we heard that the first world war of our time was over.

The news of the armistice was a bit premature,

but that didn't prevent a full-scale celebration

in Times Square.

If the kaiser had been there, he'd have had a rough time.

We blamed it all on him.

But now he was licked, and most of us figured

that there wouldn't be any more wars.

We were ready for peace,

and when the steamship George Washington

moved down the north river, taking president Wilson

to Europe and to peace conference, we thought the world

was about to be made safe for democracy.

Yes, that's what we thought,

but meanwhile, we wanted to be amused.

To thrill the crowds or maybe promote a cure for bunions,

we had the daring human flies,

second story men making their way up in the world.

The baseball scoreboard was easier to understand

and a lot more exciting than anything happening in Europe,

which after all was a long way off.

But Europe was right with us

in the latest French fashions,

especially the nightgowns, which were very daring.

There was a little number in mischievous satin

designed for an intoxicating bride.

Its lines, both modern and parisian.

Women's legs cam into the open for the first time,

but their heads stayed under cover.

Something new came into our lives,

the traffic jam.

When the road was clear,

you could legally do 20 miles an hour.

Arguing with the cop got you nothing but a ticket.

All this added up to a new age beginning,

and people were ready for it.

They were ready to play too.

Crowds jammed the resorts,

where they were amazed by the death defining stunts

of wing walkers, who never knew which end was up.

It looked as if the new airplane

was going to be more than an attraction for weekend crowds.

The Navy's no-4 had flown all the way from the United States

to Great Britain in only 54 flying hours.

And there were the lighter than air craft,

like the British r-34,

which flew across the ocean with incredible ease.

You couldn't be sure whether the future lay

with the dirigible or the airplane,

but anyhow, wasn't it a great future?

There weren't any commercial airlines in america.

But toward the end of the war, the post office department

had started its airmail service, and when you saw

one of the little airmail planes in action,

and realized that aviation had plenty of

brilliant wartime pilots to draw upon,

men like Eddie rickenbacker and Bert acosta,

you knew that the air age must really be coming.

At this point,

the people voted for something hopefully called prohibition,

and when the saloons and bars closed up early in 1920,

it caused a great deal of downright grief.

The trouble had started a good many years earlier,

when a firm old lady named Carrie nation

had raided the saloons with a hatchet.

She won, and when the prohibition amendment

became the law of the land, enough good, hard liquor

went down the drain to make you feel like crying.

It looked like the end,

the absolute end of liquor in the United States.

By that time, the soldiers had come back

to joyful welcomes, even though most of us

were trying to forget the war.

War heroes like sergeant Alvin York got a big hand

from the crowds, and the top brass,

general black Jack pershing and admiral William sims

were showered with honorary degrees.

The veterans had organized the American legion,

which held its 1921 convention in Kansas City.

As usual, the legionnaires took the town by storm.

With them was a good display of generals and admirals,

foreign and domestic.

Men whose names everyone knew, like Jacques of Belgium,

beatty of england, and of course, pershing.

Even while the victory celebrations

were going on, here and there, the old belligerent spirit

began to seek less worthy outlets.

In a few cities,

There were riots, race riots,

with mobs trying to get their hands on prisoners.

Nearly always, the police and national guardsmen

managed to keep the crowds under control.

Others were not so easily controlled.

A secret organization,

The ku klux klan spread its poisonous influence

throughout a large part of the country.

And a man called Mr. Zero,

in order to dramatize the helplessness of the jobless,

held auction sales of human labor,

before crowds of fascinated bostonians.

The struggle between capital and labor Rose to its peak

in a series of prolonged and savage strikes.

Prices were high.

Men demanded increased wages,

which many employers refused to give them.

There were many war horses of labor agitation,

national figures, like old mother Jones,

who believed in a fight to the finish.

But there were also a lot of hard-headed

practical negotiators among the leaders of organized labor,

men like William green and Phil Murray

of the united mine workers and his chief, John I. Lewis.

The wave of post-war strikes came to a crisis in Boston,

when most of the police walked out,

leaving the city unguarded.

A volunteer police force was formed,

and the militia was called out to patrol the streets.

Once peaceful Boston seemed like a city under arms.

Then onto the scene stepped Calvin coolidge,

governor of Massachusetts.

He said, "there is no right to strike

"against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time."

That statement made coolidge famous overnight.

Not long after this, the wave of strikes died out.

Public weariness aided by a break in prices ended it,

and after a conference, labor boss Samuel gompers

and industrialist Charles schwab

managed a feeble smile together.

There was a good deal of violence

during the years directly after the war.

The worst damaged was caused when a bomb went off

in wall street just outside of jp. Morgan's office.

Experts examined the bomb fragments,

but no one ever found out who set off the bomb,

though the public believed

that revolutionists were to blame.

It was noted that the statue of George Washington,

just across the street, escaped the blast unscathed,

so did jp. Morgan who was vacationing

in Scotland at the time.

Even before the wall street explosion,

there had been nationwide raids on communist headquarters,

a result of the general belief

that bolsheviks were plotting to overthrow the government.

There was not much difference in the public mind

between socialists and communists,

and the public seemed glad to have

any type of radical brought to trial.

In many cases, the juries found the prisoners guilty,

and then if they were aliens, they were ordered deported.

It was during this red scare than two men of Italian birth

were arrested and convicted for the murder of a paymaster

in south braintree, Massachusetts.

At first, the question of their guilt or innocence

attracted little attention,

but before they were executed years later,

the case of sacco and vanzetti

was to arouse fierce controversy throughout the world.

In due course, hysteria died down,

but not until hundreds of alien radicals

had been started on their way home.

The hysteria ended, but the melody lingered on.

J“ if you don't like the stars in old glory j“

j“ if you don't like the red, white, and blue j“

j“ then don't act like the cur in the story j“

j“ don't bite the hand that's feeding you j“

Well that tune came straight out of vaudeville,

and vaudeville was in its golden era,

still a main attraction, even where films were played.

A lot of the small-time, four-a-day acts

were routine but good.

On a big-time, you saw the great stars like Harry Houdini,

never equaled in his line.

The vaudeville circuit was the best training

a lot of famous actors and actresses ever had.

When they reached the top in vaudeville, they were in.

One act, Gallagher and shean,

was so popular that crowds mobbed them after every show.

There was also the question of

how to spend your spare time outdoors.

The seashore was not a bad place to go,

if you didn't mind getting slapped in the face by the ocean.

Even if you did, there were compensations.

Thoughtful beaches provided jazz music by bathing beauties.

And there was always Atlantic city

where the policeman lead the bathing beauty parade.

After the cops, the girls looked good.

We were just getting used to the new one-piece suits.

This was the heyday of the dance hall,

and when some smart operator

linked jazz and marathon dancing,

he had something good for the box office,

although it was a bit rough on the contestants.

All this didn't prevent the girls

from going in for classical dancing,

in which they struck highly interesting poses.

Ruth St. denis was the leader in that field.

In ballet, fokine was considered the master.

Anna pavlova and feordor chaliapin,

who had taken a powder out of Russia about the time

the bolsheviki took over, only fed birds for fun.

For a living, Anna dance and feordor sang.

The long-haired musicians,

even when they had crew haircuts, like rachmaninoffs,

were sure to be popular.

Paderewski not only looked like a pianist oughta look,

but he was one of the few to be successful in politics too.

All the best in music came to america,

scotti, gatti-casazza, and enrico caruso, the tenor.

Things weren't so harmonious on the political scene.

President Wilson had brought back to Washington

a peace treaty with a plan for a league of nations,

both of which met opposition at home.

Wilson campaigned stubbornly for his ideas,

but he became ill, and the opposition, which was centered

in the powerful senate foreign relations committee,

managed to defeat it.

The leader of the opposition was

senator Henry cabot lodge, sr.

Another great political event had taken place.

Women had won the right to vote, and they became

a political force before which

this doubtest politician quelled.

They had tried to invade the barber shop,

but the customers thought they played too rough.

In the presidential campaign of 1920, women had their

first chance to vote for a president of the United States.

The republican candidate, Warren g. Harding,

was a very handsome man,

and he was careful to say nothing that might offend anyone.

Entertainers like ai jolson helped liven the campaign,

and Harding always posed like a regular fellow.

He had the August backing of Charles Evans Hughes

and the beauteous stage star of former times,

Lillian Russell plump for Harding in an appeal

to the newly enfranchised women voters.

His vice presidential running mate was Calvin coolidge,

made famous by the Boston police strike,

and it looked to them as though the election was in the bag.

They were right.

The Democratic party's candidate,

governor James m. Cox of Ohio, and his running mate,

one of the New York roosevelts, never had a chance.

The Republicans moved in on Washington with great hopes.

Harding stood for a return to normalcy,

a great contrast to Wilson's idealism,

as they drove off the the ceremony on capitol hill.

The voters now had an administration

that was willing to take things as they came.

Andrew mellon became the secretary of the treasury,

and under his regime, the government debt

was rapidly reduced, taxes were cut,

and the foundation for a new period of prosperity was laid.

In that atmosphere, a great and nationwide upswing

in productive work and in industrial techniques began.

Everyone liked Harding, who was a friendly man,

and when gompers called to ask for the release of

Eugene debs, an imprisoned socialist leader,

Harding agreed to the pardon, and debs, who had been jailed

for obstructing the conduct of the war, was free.

After all, the war was over,

and the problem was to get back to normal living.

National defense cost a lot of money,

and armaments were thought by some people

to be one of the causes of war, so Harding called for

a conference for the limitation of naval armaments.

In that era of good feeling, there seemed little likelihood

that there would ever be another war,

and the diplomats converged on Washington in high spirits.

Secretary of state Hughes presided over the conference,

at which the wartime allies agreed to reduce the number

and limit the size of their warships.

And at the time, when no threat of war existed,

the agreements made appeared to be sensible and logical,

even if they put the Japanese in effective control

of the western pacific.

Seemed like a good idea, at the time.

But battleship's decks could still be

cleared for action,

Preferably for one of the new dances, like the black bottom.

These were pretty fancy goings on,

but after all, people were letting their hair down.

The women were fascinated by Peggy Hopkins Joyce,

who had a habit of getting married and divorced

and married, again and again.

When the immigration authorities

kept a visiting English actress, the countess of cathcart,

on Ellis island, for alleged moral turpitude,

it sounded as though

the countess was up to something special,

although the charges were later dismissed.

The jazz age began to get interesting.

The girls stopped wearing corsets

and began to dance in a friendly way.

The younger generation discovered

that sex and autos went well together,

and the pulp magazines confirmed the discovery.

Hollywood knew all about that angle.

Why someone cooked up a audience reaction meter

to test the voltage given off by Rudolph Valentino

clinching with vilma banky.

The love meter almost blew a fuse.

Things got so hot in the movies that the reputable producers

signed up will hays, at 100 grand a year,

to clean up the picture business,

and yet keep the busybodies off the industry's neck.

Anxious reformers thought the movies were overselling girls.

Well maybe they were.

They had some beauties.

Gloria Swanson was one lovely no one could ever forget,

and when she turned up on an incoming liner

with a new husband, this time a French Marquis,

no one bothered about the rest of the passengers.

John Barrymore and delores costello were members

of the royalty of stage and screen,

and even more than that, great box office.

But the star who really laid them in the isles

was Rudolph Valentino, the great lover.

There are fans who will never forget him,

and Broadway will never forget his funeral.

They had to call out all the cops,

and even then it was almost a riot.

Pola negri was there, and the honorary pall bearers

included all the brass from Hollywood.

Dead or alive,

Valentino had made history in the growth of American movies.

As a matter of fact,

everything that happened to a star was important.

The fans went gaga when the romance of rod la rocque

and vilma banky ended just like in the pictures.

As a comedian, Charlie chaplin was already the old master.

Douglas Fairbanks was the kid's hero.

But as a screen couple,

none could surpass garbo and Gilbert.

It wasn't all sex.

There was will Rogers, who had a homespun quality

that no one had ever been able to match.

Will came up the hard way, through the vaudeville circuits.

- Well, all I know is what I read in the paper.

But it was ai jolson who had first

cracked things wide open for the new sound movies

when he starred in "the jazz singer."

J“ mammy, I'm coming j“

j“ oh, god, I hope I'm not late j“

j“ mammy, don't you know me j“

j“ it's your little baby j“

j“ I'd walk a million miles j“

j“ for one of your smiles j“

j“ for my ma, mammy j“

Thing that really wrung the heart was prohibition,

13 long years of it.

That beer they used to make tasted like no beer on earth,

in the first place, and then, when they spiked it

with alcohol and ether, you needed some support.

Flasks were worn in the best circles,

and you just didn't criticize

what a man's bootlegger had sold him,

even if it almost killed you to drink the stuff.

The most disturbing thing about prohibition

was the contribution it made to general lawlessness.

There were, of course, a lot of notorious criminals

in the early '20s, like Gerald Chapman,

who had no connection with the traffic in illegal liquor.

Chapman had murdered a policeman in Connecticut,

and when he was brought to trial,

no one thought of him as a big man.

He was just another bandit with a twisted mind,

and he was condemned to death.

But in many American cities, especially Chicago,

gangs of hoodlums in the pay of wealthy bootleggers

might be arrested,

but it was as sure they would be as quickly freed.

Chicago's mayor at this time was big bill Thompson,

a greedy politician who was less interested in

curbing the gangsters than in holding office.

He got himself reelected in one campaign on the slogan,

"bust king George in the snoot."

His slogan, which after all, didn't have much to do

with conditions in the city of Chicago.

While big bill was mayor, a gangster named al Capone

ruled as undisputed boss of the Chicago underworld.

When he was jailed years later,

it was for income tax evasion.

But crime was abhorrent to most American citizens,

millions of whom were whole-hearted church goers.

There were great numbers of people whose religious instincts

were stirred by the emotional exhalation of Billy Sunday,

a ball player who had become a famous evangelist.

When Billy pitched the gospel,

a congregation never forgot it.

Brightening the twilight zone between faith and science

was Emile coue, a French pharmacist who taught

that one grew in strength by chanting,

"every day in every way, I'm getting better and better."

And when the Austrian surgeon, Dr. Adolph Lawrence,

demonstrated his bloodless surgery technique in america,

his work met with wide approval.

Science was leaping fonnard.

Madame curie, already famed co-discoverer of radium,

arrived to accept a gift of a gram of the magical metal

about which so little was then known

and whose full possibilities were not imagined.

And Thomas Edison, now old and deaf,

basked in the respect of everyone for his invention

of the incandescent electric light, a scientific milestone.

Yet suddenly religion and science collided.

John scopes, a young teacher of Tennessee, had taught,

contrary to state law, Darwin's theory of evolution.

The Tennessee county people believed

this was contrary to biblical doctrine,

and scopes' trial got worldwide publicity,

with the Tennessee fundamentalist lined up

against the liberals and intellectuals of america.

William Jennings Bryan, old and full of oratory,

defended the beliefs of fundamentalists.

He was aided by the prosecuting zeal of old judge

Ben McKenzie, a local politician, influential in the area,

who helped to make the trial an inquisition.

The courtroom was packed as the case reached a climax.

Arthur Garfield Hayes, defending scopes,

explained Darwin's theory of evolution,

and Dudley field Malone, another liberal,

added his plea for tolerance,

to the cause of freedom of thought.

Then the defense threw in another artful veteran,

Clarence darrow, for what turned out to be

the cross examination of Bryan.

Darrow, in the shirt sleeves analysis,

reduced the elder statesman's antiquated ideas

to intellectual rubble,

but still, the court found scopes guilty,

and so ended a preposterous case.

On the political scene,

there had been some changes.

Harding's death came as a great shock to the nation.

It was entirely unexpected, and the American people

sincerely and affectionately mourned the passing

of this kind and friendly man.

Now Calvin coolidge became the nation's chief executive.

He was an old-fashioned yankee, acid and thrifty,

hardly the type you would expect to find

in professional politics.

Soon after he became president,

certain well hidden irregularities

of the Harding administration began to be revealed.

The chief scandal concerned the secret lease

of government-owned naval oil fields.

Secretary of the interior Albert fall

had been induced to lease an oil field

to the mammoth oil company, headed by Harry f. Sinclair,

already a millionaire oil magnate.

Bit by bit, other truths came out,

some from fall's friend, playboy ed mcclain,

in testimony before a congressional investigating committee.

Enormous bribes were revealed, but in the end,

the act of Harry s. Fall got off

with a fine and a year in jail.

The scandals of the Harding regime never touched coolidge.

He was incorruptible, and in 1924,

he was elected president, in his own right.

The vice presidency went to the imminent

Charles gates dawes, Chicago banker,

who had helped to set up the United States government's

present budget system.

Now the Republicans had really come to town,

and at the inaugural ball, they celebrated in style.

They had an honest, careful man in the white house,

dawes to be a popular figure, and Hughes to lend his dignity

to the administration, and business was booming.

Especially it boomed in Florida,

a fine place to go for a winter vacation.

Elaborate hotels were being built,

and the city of Miami throve mightily.

Soon pople all over the country

were buying Florida house lots

and immediately selling them at huge profits.

A rush to get to the new El dorado began,

and the pioneers couldn't wait for houses to be built.

They had to be in on the ground floor,

and they didn't mind such minor inconveniences

as the lack of a roof over one's head.

It didn't matter where you lived.

When you were within reach of those dazzling profits,

you and your family might become millionaires overnight.

Pyramiding publicity with the stress on girls, girls,

and more girls helped to keep the boom alive.

Then the smashup came, and then a hurricane hit Florida,

wrecking the waning dreams of the last speculators.

But Florida wasn't done for.

Miami wasn't done for.

Slowly they recovered to build again,

on a more rational basis,

but the great Florida land boom was over.

It had been quite a binge.

If Florida had been struck a temporary blow,

most of the rest of the country hummed with prosperity

and was having itself a good time.

Welcoming distinguished visitors, for instance.

Among these was the prince of wales,

an attractive young man, heir to the British crown

and a veteran with a good war record.

He liked to enjoy the pleasures of the rich

and was much in demand among them,

being the world's most eligible bachelor.

When he came to the United States,

New York had hardly learned how to stage

a really razzle dazzle welcome.

That we had mastered a few years later,

when the great ship leviathan steamed into New York harbor

with queen Mary of Romania aboard.

She was a decorative lady, undeniably a queen,

and her welcome set a standard

for all future distinguished visitors.

First came the parade up Broadway,

at the noon hour, when you could always raise a crowd.

Then came the official greeting by mayor Jimmy Walker,

on the steps of city hall.

There were other attractions, too.

Those were really the golden days for sports fans.

The giants trained at sarasota,

and the giants were always good.

Frankie frisch was among the idols,

and you could always count on their manager, John j. McGraw,

being on hand to run things.

The Dodgers trained at clearwater, Florida,

coached by Ben egan, with Zack wheat as captain

and wilbert Robinson as manager.

Tarpon Springs was one training ground

of the St. Louis browns, and they had one of the best

of the all-timers, George sisler, their player/manager.

When the season really got underway,

there were other headliners, Williams, hornsby, and killefer

of the cardinals, and Walter Johnson of the senators,

and mays of the Yankees,

but the best of them all was babe Ruth.

When he wrapped his hands around the bat

and got his feet set right, great things could happen.

In the 1927 world series, wilcy Moore

pitched for the Yankees and Carmen hill for the pirates.

Judge landis and colonel Jake ruppert were on hand.

That was the year the babe knocked out 60 home runs,

and the Yankees won the series in four straight games.

There were other record breakers.

Bobby Jones, an Atlanta, Georgia boy,

who was to win the British open and the British amateur

and the same year, take the American open

and the American amateur championships,

a clean sweep of the field.

Bobby had iron control,

especially with that putter of his, calamity Jane.

Then there was man o' war,

one of the great race horses of all time.

As a two-year-old, big red started in 10 races,

won nine of them, and came in second

in the one race he didn't win.

As a three-year-old, he started 11 times, won 11 times.

Earl sande was top moneyjockey.

He won so often it got to be a habit.

Polo was in its heyday, with boxes at $275 a piece,

and the international matches were the great events

in that magnificent sport.

A hard one to beat for speed, coordination,

and horsemanship.

Football turned out some stars who'll never be forgotten.

Red grange of Illinois, the galloping ghost,

was almost impossible to stop.

Knute rockne, notre dame's great coach,

was on the crest of the wave.

It wasn't often that rock's teams lost a game.

The east had its stars too.

Albie booth of Yale was one of the best running backs

the game produced.

In those days, they were hanging up new records

on the track.

Nurmi, the flying Finn, raced with a stopwatch in his hand.

Johnny weissmuller was another natural athlete.

His record of 51 seconds for the 100-yard freestyle

stood untouched for 16 years.

That made him the fastest swimmer in the world.

The champion water baby Americans really went wild about

was a girl, gertrude ederle,

the first woman to swim the English channel.

It took her only 14 1/2 hours, a new record.

And when Trudy got home,

New York went wild.

This 18-year-old girl

had succeeded where several men had failed.

At city hall, mayor Jimmy Walker

compared her crossing of the channel

with Moses crossing the red sea,

Caesar crossing the rubicon,

and Washington crossing the deleware.

In tennis, it was tilden, long master of the courts.

Among the women, there were the American champion,

molla Mallory and the frenchman, Suzanne lenglen.

But after a while, there was only one, the little girl

with the eye shade and the poker face, Helen wills.

She won 15 championships, British and American.

Most rugged of all the champions was Jack dempsey,

the manassa mauler.

When dempsey worked out with his sparing partners,

he had to hold back.

If Jack was training for a big bout,

he took every workout in dead earnest.

Dempsey tangled with firpo, the wild bull of the pampas,

and in two rounds, almost everything happened.

Firpo knocked dempsey out of the ring,

But dempsey bounced back and flattened firpo for the count.

He was champ for over seven years,

and then there was a new champion.

Gene tunney beat dempsey in Philadelphia,

but dempsey got a second crack at him in Chicago,

and the old-timers are still talking about this fight

and the long count.

Here it is.

Dempsey knocks tunney down.

The referee won't start his count until dempsey

moves to a neutral corner.

One,

two,

three,

four,

five,

six,

seven,

eight,

nine, - Tunney waits

till the count of nine,

and then goes on to win by a decision.

But thousands of fight fans thought dempsey

had been robbed by that long count.

Gene got the official welcome at city hall,

and then after defeating Tom heeney,

he retired from the ring.

Tunney, it appeared, liked books,

and so did a great many other Americans.

They read the works of Michael arlen and were spellbound

by the superb style of Joseph Conrad,

a pole who had learned to write in English.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans bought

"the outline of history,"

by that tremendously productive englishman, hg. Wells.

Another great English writer, John galsworthy,

delighted the American reading public

with his chronicles of the forsyte family.

There were scores of popular books by American authors, too,

and a few brilliant ones, for it was a time of fresh

and energetic creation in American writing.

A new sort of gadget

began to cut into reading time.

It had been known as the wireless,

but it gradually changed its name to radio.

The early broadcasters operated pretty much like

the present ones, except that now they have

air conditioning in the studios.

It didn't take long for the new gadget to catch on,

especially when there were so many new jazz bands

on the air.

You could get most of the sensational news from radio, too.

There was the hall-mills case, complete with a pig woman.

She was a key witness in a murder mystery

that had everybody baffled.

Mrs. Halls' husband, a preacher, had been killed

in a Jersey back road and so had the wife of James mills.

No one ever figured out why.

Floyd Collins was another great dramatic story.

Collins had been trapped in a Kentucky cave

by a falling Boulder and the whole nation wanted to know,

from hour to hour, what progress his rescuers were making.

The youth had been exploring the narrow, twisting entrance

to the cave when the rock had fallen

and pinned his foot so he couldn't move.

The rescuers planned to sink a shaft to intercept the tunnel

at the point where Collins was trapped,

but before they could finish it, Collins died,

after 18 days in the tunnel.

The nation felt a genuine sense of frustration and defeat.

Tops on Broadway or even at a picnic

were the glamorous stars of the metropolitan opera.

Lawrence tibbitt was one of the promising

home-grown baritones.

Rosa ponselle was one of the best of the native warblers.

Madame schumann-heink was a concert landmark,

but she had made her early fame in wagnerian opera.

An early Missouri thrush was Marion talley,

meteoric soprano at the metropolitan opera house.

And grace Moore, a girl from Tennessee,

one of the loveliest of them all.

American music

Was growing up fast.

George gershwin, the most gifted of the young composers,

moved back and forth between Broadway and the concert stage,

was equally at home in both.

Meanwhile, Irving Berlin

Went on turning out smash hits.

Legit theater boomed along with the rest of the nation.

There were plenty of good shows to take in,

plenty of customers at the box office.

Visiting entertainers from Europe,

if they were as gifted as Harry lauder,

star of the English music halls,

was certain of a generous reception, in the United States.

But Americans were loyal to their own products too.

The girls had just about what they have now.

Noel coward was the first to treat it on a

dead pan, mathematical basis.

Neck, 12 1/2,

bust 34 1/2,

waist 23 1/2,

hips 35.

There was a craze for speed and more speed.

And at the automobile races,

you could never tell when something would happen.

But Ralph depalma and Peter depaolo

were always the indestructible, unbeatable ones.

Aviation was still kind of hazardous too.

You see, people had strange ideas, which almost worked.

And there was one that looked like it oughta work.

And one man who had theories about wings

but couldn't run quite fast enough.

But in spite of real danger,

aviation's pioneers kept on trying.

Some experimented with gliders towed by planes.

The best professionals had their troubles too.

Rene fonck, a French war ace,

started out to fly from New York to Paris.

He gunned his big plane, heavily loaded, down the runway,

tried hard to get her off the ground, but couldn't make it.

Two crewmen were lost in the crash,

but fonck lived to fly again.

But no flyer received a tenth of the adulation

that came to Charles Augustus Lindbergh,

who set off alone in a tiny plane,

to fly from New York to Paris.

In Paris, Lindbergh was taken in tow by ambassador herrick,

and French-American relations

reached a new peak of friendliness.

Back in New York, Lindbergh was given the greatest reception

that anyone had ever had.

The admiration for him in American hearts and minds

was both deep and hysterical.

The governor of New York, al Smith,

was proud and happy to be allowed to stand beside him.

In keeping with the liveliness of the period,

president coolidge accepted an honorary chieftaincy

from the sioux Indians, amid ceremonial merriment,

at the south Dakota reservation.

Chief leading eagle was but mildly amused.

Everybody was having a happy time.

The automobile industry, for example, was booming.

The cars, themselves, had certain features

of a utilitarian order,

such as running boards, driver visibility, and fresh air.

The prices were right, too.

The flivver was a thing of beauty,

and when Henry Ford turned out his 15 millionth car,

we knew the automobile age had really arrived.

The earliest autos had become museum pieces, and Henry Ford,

father of the American assembly line technique,

sat proudly in his own first car, which he had made by hand.

Production in industry was steadily increasing,

and with it came a steady rise in national income

and in international trade.

Under the guidance of Charles dawes and Owen d. Young,

considerable efforts were made to help solve

such naughty problems as Europe's war debts

and reparations claims.

During such prosperous times, everyone thought of peace.

The kellogg-briand pact, negotiated to outlaw war

as an instrument of national policy,

seemed to many to make perfect sense, in those days.

If coolidge was not wildly enthusiastic,

it was probably because he realized that if the pact

had been a good gesture politically,

it was also a futile one.

Good political moves like the negotiation of the pact

were not to be likely regarded at that time.

The presidential campaign of 1928 had been a tough one.

Democrats had convened at Houston, Texas,

and al Smith was their choice for president.

He was nominated by Franklin Roosevelt,

who lauded him as the happy warrior.

Al Smith was a fighter and a man of character,

but the odds against him were too great.

Republicans had nominated Herbert hoover,

and hoover was just what the country seemed to need,

an engineer, honest and competent,

who knew commerce and industry.

That's what the people wanted,

And on election night, in Times Square,

the crowds waited excitedly for the results to come in.

The cheers were for four more years of prosperity

with the unbeatable republican ticket, hoover and Curtis.

Now it became hoover's turn to ride up to the capitol

to take the oath of office.

It seemed to most Americans as if the years of prosperity

would go on forever and the crowd before the capitol

was in a holiday mood as the ceremony got underway.

Then the rain began to fall, but the spectators

listened on quietly to hoover's inaugural address.

Another sort of storm was gathering that day,

but it still hadn't broken when the coolidges

pulled out of Washington, headed for retirement.

Americans with a bank roll

could make summer last the year round.

Arthur hammerstein wintered in palm beach

and so did Mrs. George m. Cohan and Mrs. Sam Harris.

Irene castle, famed as a dancer, added glamor.

Flo Ziegfeld with his wife, Billie Burke,

and his daughter, Patricia, went in for the nautical life.

Most of Broadway showed up in Florida at one time or other.

Helen Morgan was one of the standbys.

She was the star of showboat.

She could make any song famous.

The girls and the men too,

got a kick out of the fashion parades,

and the dresses were, well they looked fine then.

You could always count on finding his honor Jimmy Walker,

mayor of New York, in the middle of things.

Jimmy was always dapper and lively

with a smile for all comers.

The Florida press agents ideas got wackier and wackier.

But Florida had no patent on wackiness.

You could whip up a Charleston contest

anywhere in the country.

It was along Broadway that the nightlife was reallyjumping.

There were plenty of customers and the butter and egg men

with bank rolls they were steaming to get rid of.

You could always make more.

Make it in the market.

Spend it at a named band clubs.

J“ who cares if hard luck may be ahead j“

j“ an empty cupboard, a crust of bread j“

j“ a little kiss each morning j“

j“ a little kiss each night j“

The speakeasies did a land office business,

and Texas guinan with her gals kept customers roaring.

- Love is really the sugar coating on the cake of trouble

and many a sucker has cut himself too big a piece of cake.

You understand?

Somehow it didn't last forever.

The time came when the ticker tape

in the broker's office told a new story.

It was panic.

161/2 million shares of stock sold in a single day,

sold hopelessly, desperately, at any price.

It was the forerunner of depression and crisis.

So ended the golden playtime of the twenties.

But beneath the froth, it was a decade of great achievements

in many fields of work, in science,

in industry, in education.

No one was wise enough to turn the piece and prosperity

of that decade into permanent peace and prosperity.

But the nation had lived for a few brief years,

in a new kind of world, where there was happiness and peace,

and if that brief world ended rudely and abruptly,

there was still left, in its pattern, the hope of an america

of abundance and fun, of peace and accomplishment,

to be created again in other golden days still to come.