The author describes the changes in the United States that would have affected what life would have been like for our ancestors between 1915 and 1945. This book is part of a series – “The Everyday Life in America Series”, which consists of six books, by as many authors, which start in “Early America” and go through 1945. This thirty year span was one of the most eventful in our history, since it included two World Wars, a pandemic, and the Great Depression. In addition to these major upheavals, there were other changes to virtually every aspect of our ancestors’ lives. Green has broken this book into chapters covering work, housing, what people ate, and what they did for recreation. There were major, and minor, changes and inventions in all of these areas.
The Great Depression colored the lives of even those not directly impacted. Eventually, the government stepped in with the New Deal programs. While there were strikes in many industries, unions became weaker during at least part of this era. Women got the vote, and Prohibition went into effect, and then was repealed, during this time frame. For most people, housing improved, since most people were likely to have both indoor plumbing and electricity by the post WWII period. There were changes in people’s work lives as well. Not only were things becoming more automated, but more women joined the workforce, especially when the men were called away to fight the World Wars. The improvements in appliances to make housework easier helped women in one way, taking up some of the slack since fewer people were willing to work as maids and other servants. But the new field of Advertising tried to convince people that purchasing the correct product would make your family successful.
One of the most interesting chapters, at least to me, was the one on food. While you may not be surprised at all of the innovations in packaging and preserving food, including the modernization of the home refrigerator, there were also changes in the way people thought about food and nutrition. A number of products and brands from this era are still familiar to us today. There were also changes in what was thought to be a desirable physique. Most of us know that in the 1920’s a very slim look was fashionable, but that was not the case both before and after that era. This is also the time frame when people started trying to eat food that was nutritious, and attempts were made to make the food supply safer.
If this was your family, how would you research them? This is the era of our grandparents and great-grandparents, so we may already have a few stories about this period from them. Births and deaths were finally being consistently reported (for the most part), and most records for this period should still be intact. For men, if you can find their draft registration cards, you may find an exact birth date and place, and possibly a parent or spouse name. If you have relatives who died in 1918-1919, it might have been from influenza. Comparing the 1920 and 1930 censuses, did your ancestors move, or can you tell that their lives were impacted by the Depression?