American Experience

"People believed that everything was going to be great always."
-- Rita Mitchell Cushman, daughter of Charles E. Mitchell

"Blue days/All of them gone/Nothing but blue skies/From now on."
-- "Blue Skies," popular song written by Irving Berlin (1926)

Many Americans spent the 1920s in a great mood. Investors flocked to a rising stock market. Companies launched brand-new, cutting-edge products, like radios and washing machines. Exuberant Americans kicked up their heels to jazz music, tried crazy stunts, and supported a black market in liquor after Prohibition. A popular expression of the time asked, "What will they think of next?"

Browse some photographs from "the age of permanent prosperity."