“Return to Normalcy”

Many progressive activists touted August 26, 1920, as the beginning of a new era of reform.  On this date the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the United States’ Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote.  What these activists failed to realize was that the nation was tired of reform.  Warren G. Harding believed the nation needed, and desired, a “return to normalcy.”  He understood that the war years took their toll on an American public already tired of economic instability and the radical nature of the Age of Reform.  Harding stood poised to use America’s weariness of the previous two decades’ chaos as his platform in presidential candidacy in the presidential election of 1920.

Wanting normalcy, Americans had no idea that they were about to experience the Roaring Twenties, a decade of consumerism and prosperity.  They also had no idea that the boom would come to an abrupt end and send the nation into the worst economic crisis it had ever faced.  Explore the decade's themes in the 1920s Themes Interactive.