1920's Lifestyles and Social Trends | Handbook for Guardians of Camp Fire Girls

Handbook

By: Camp Fire Girls, Inc.

Date: 1924

Source: Handbook for Guardians of Camp Fire Girls. New York: Camp Fire Girls, Inc, 1924, 167–171, 173.

About the Author: Camp Fire Girls, Inc., was founded in 1910 by Dr. Luther Gulick and his wife, Charlotte. Initially their organization was known as "Camp Fire USA."

Introduction

Tensions abound in American society between the ethos of individualism and the social pressure that demands conformity. The twentieth century American experience bounced between one extreme and the other. The relatively free-spirited 1910s and 1960s stand in marked contrast to the conformist 1950s and 1980s. Meanwhile, the decade of the 1920s, perhaps more so than any other period in recent American history, epitomizes an era when society exerted tremendous pressure to follow the crowd in order to gain acceptance.

The third...