1910s AD

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan, 1994 by Milford Prewitt

As a passageway into the decade that would become known as "The Roaring Twenties," the year 1919 was one of those minor doorways in time, known not so much for what occurred as for what would come.

Stuck between one decade battered by war, deprivation and suspicion and another decade consumed with materialism and illusions of greatness, the America of 1919 was a country in the midst of monumental change.

Amid the societal and economic changes, the arts and sciences flourished, ushering in jazz, the flappers, motion picture theaters, consumer electronics, the Charleston and abstruct art -- giving way to some of the century's most influential works of literature.

In the year the National Restaurant Association was born, America was just one year over the "war to end all wars" and while at Johnny-Come-Lately to World War I, the United States helped turn the tide, emerging victorious as a decidely reluctant and diffident superpower.

But a review of newspaper headlines at that time reveals a country that had grown disgusted with the victory and bitter with the peace.

Inflation was raging, the national debt had grown and maimed veterans and impoverished war widows were everywhere. The people's sacrifice during the war seemed to generate none of the benefits that wartime politicians had promised.

But unrivaled economically, America would enter the third decade of the 20th century, vowing to remain univolved in foreign entanglements, disengaging itself from the rest of the world, turning inward, conservative and hostile to unions, Socialists, minorities and even children.

Those attitudes were a direct rebuke to the period between 1912 and 1917 when a Progressive Era, characterized by President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, sought numerous social and economic reforms.

Ironically, Wilson would become better known for his foreign policies.

Considered "the savior of Europe," Wilson lost his health and suffered a stroke on his left side in his unsuccessful attempts to convince a largely Republican Senate in 1919 to embrace the Treaty of Versailles, the document that ended World War 1 and led to the creation of the League of Nations.

Never joined the 'League'

But America would never join the League of Nations, as the Senate refused to endorse the Treaty of Versailles.

While President Wilson was regarded as a world leader and tried to tbe a domestic reformer who fought monopolies, stood up to Standard Oil, created the Federal Trade Commission and bailed out impoverished farmers, the former president of Princeton University at the same time was insensitive to the economic deprivations of blacks and the violence directed toward them in the South.

Because of the president's benign neglect, the country's racial relations were abysmal, with little attention given to the notion of human rights.

Part of the problem was that America was changing from a nation of farmers to one of city dwellers, living in close quarters and struggling to find jobs and housing amid a torrent of immigrants. Those tensions would come to characterize race relations for virtually the balance of the 20th century.

Even though the war was over, there was some other unfinished business that was war-related in 1919 and further accelerated America's turn to the right.

In a federal court case that began during the war, Schenk vs. the U.S., the Supreme Court ruled in 1919 that the First Amendment can be abridged when the nation's security is at stake. Writing for the majority, Oliver Wendell Holmes established the "clear and present danger" test to determine when writings and speeches pose a threat to the nation.

"When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in times of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utternace will not be endured so long as men fight."

At that time in American history, large corporations had unimaginable political and economic power and used it to force municipalities and sometimes Congress to do their bidding.

Although wages had increased 250 percent since of income was woefully unequal and the average industrial job was a threat to life.

Mechanization and industrialization had increased productivity, but the machines were dangerous and in a land with no worker's compensation, unions or insurance, if a man became disabled, his family suffered.

Most blue-collar workers didn't receive pensions, and so those who became too old to work and had no savings were forced to live in large extended families or accept public charity.

Labor historians speculate that impoverished or elderly retired workers were not a strain on the economy because people had much larger families back then and did not live so long.

A white male who was 20 years old in 1919 could expect to live another 35 years. By contrast, a white male who is 20 years old today can look forward to more than five decades of life.

Women, minorities and children had a particularly hard life in 1919.

It was not uncommon, for example, for a child of eight to work 12 hours a day for 75 cents. Even the Supreme Court would strike down the Child Labor Act in 1921 before another version would be restored decades later.