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Responding to Change: Hoosiers Chart a Middle Path:
Prosperity expands the economic pie in 1920s Indiana ... and brings new questions about how that pie will be divided. Bustling cities and factories, increased immigration and migration, alter communities. Social pressures build as blue-collar workers, minorities, women, and other disenfranchised groups increasingly demand their due.
The 1920s and 1930s are decades of upheaval and turmoil, spanning both boom years and economic depression. The era's social pressures breed diverse responses, from Prohibition's attempt to combat the vice that many associate with industrialization, to the Ku Klux Klan -- a retreat to fear and hate in the face of change.
Hoosiers chart a cautious, conservative course. They finally allow women the vote, then withdraw it. They rally behind Prohibition -- briefly. They join the anti-immigrant KKK, yet also launch well-meaning programs to "Americanize" immigrants. The tensions of the times abate only when the national emergency of World War II unites all Americans ... temporarily. |