ABSTRACT
The opportunities and the pressures of a new age created new kinds of people. Whether or not there was freedom and a new chance for all-and there was not-there existed an erroneous but cheering belief that there was change ahead. The openness of the future and the accessibility, as it seemed, of success produced a froth upon the times, and many short-lived, heedless, sometimes graceful, careers danced upon this foam of confidence. A later, more solid time that would have more real opportunity would lack this effervescence, which was a unique attribute of the twenties. An English observer characterized a conspicuous part of the population: “Dancing as aimlessly as gnats in winter sunshine it brings to bear on the jolly business of being ephemeridae the same hard and cheerful efficiency that it uses in its money making.” 1 Observers from overseas were keen, but never got it quite right. They assumed in Americans a hard, deliberate choice in the universal career of money-making with other choices discarded, whereas, for Americans, there was nothing else they knew, and they put into money-making the traits reserved in Europe for other careers: sports, gambling, politics, status-creation, even remotely, a kind of esthetics.
