Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's

If time were suddenly to turn back to the earliest days of the
Postwar Decade, and you were to look about you, what would seem
strange to you? since 1919 the circumstances of American life have
been transformed--yes, but exactly how?

Let us refresh our memories by following a moderately well-to-do
young couple of Cleveland or Boston or Seattle or Baltimore--it
hardly matters which--through the routine of an ordinary day in
May, 1919. (I select that particular date, six months after the
Armistice of 1918, because by then the United States had largely
succeeded in turning from the ways of war to those of peace, yet
the profound alterations wrought by the Post-war Decade had hardly
begun to take place.) There is no better way of suggesting what
the passage of a few years has done to change you and me and the
environment in which we live.



From the appearance of Mr. Smith as he comes to the breakfast table
on this May morning in 1919, you would hardly know that you are not
in the nineteen-thirties (though you might, perhaps, be struck by
the narrowness of his trousers). The movement of men's fashions is
glacial. It is different, however, with Mrs. Smith.

She comes to breakfast in a suit, the skirt of which--rather tight
at the ankles--hangs just six inches from the ground. She has read
in Vogue the alarming news that skirts may become even shorter, and
that "not since the days of the Bourbons has the woman of fashion
been visible so far above the ankle"; but six inches is still the
orthodox clearance. She wears low shoes now, for spring has come;
but all last winter she protected her ankles either with spats or
with high laced "walking-boots," or with high patent-leather shoes
with contrasting buckskin tops. Her stockings are black (or tan,
perhaps, if she wears tan shoes); the idea of flesh-colored
stockings would appall her. A few minutes ago Mrs. Smith was
surrounding herself with an "envelope chemise" and a petticoat; and
from the thick ruffles on her undergarments it was apparent that
she was not disposed to make herself more boyish in form than ample
nature intended.

Mrs. Smith may use powder, but she probably draws the line at
paint. Although the use of cosmetics is no longer, in 1919,
considered prima facie evidence of a scarlet career, and
sophisticated young girls have already begun to apply them with
some bravado, most well-brought-up women still frown upon rouge.
The beauty-parlor industry is in its infancy; there are a dozen
hair dressing parlors for every beauty parlor, and Mrs. Smith has
never heard of such dark arts as that of face-lifting. When she
puts on her hat to go shopping she will add a veil pinned neatly
together behind her head. In the shops she will perhaps buy a
bathing-suit for use in the summer; it will consist of an outer
tunic of silk or cretonne over a tight knitted undergarment--worn,
of course, with long stockings.

Her hair is long, and the idea of a woman ever frequenting a barber
shop would never occur to her. If you have forgotten what the
general public thought of short hair in those days, listen to the
remark of the manager of the Palm Garden in New York when reporters
asked him, one night in November, 1918, how he happened to rent his
hall for a pro-Bolshevist meeting which had led to a riot.
Explaining that a well-dressed woman had come in a fine automobile
to make arrangements for the use of the auditorium, he added, "Had
we noticed then, as we do now, that she had short hair, we would
have refused to rent the hall." In Mrs. Smith's mind, as in that
of the manager of the Palm Garden, short-haired women, like long-
haired men, are associated with radicalism, if not with free love.