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Jaclyn Perry Mrs. Rogers Honors English III 16 November 2011 1920s Culture Research "Social Trends in the 1920s: Overview." DISCovering U.S. History. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering Collection. Gale. 16 Nov. 2011 In the 1920s money spent on leisure activities such as movies, dances, and sports rose by 300 percent. Prohibition transformed saloons into speakeasies, which got their name from the use of passwords to gain entrance. Many nightclubs had ties to organized crime, and Chicago's Al Capone amassed a fortune by supplying drinkers. New leisure-time pursuits became an arena of cultural conflict. Suddenly, respectable members of the middle class, and middle-class youth especially, partook of amusements formerly associated only with the working and immigrant classes. Young unmarried women who worked in cities increasingly patronized dance halls, amusement parks, and, with an escort, cabarets and nightclubs. Public mingling of sexes, classes, and even ethnic groups challenged older ideas of moral order and resulted in the posting of rules and restrictions to enhance the respectability of these new nightspots. Not only did dance become popular in the 1920s, but also movies and sports. Also, besides just dance halls, people danced at amusement parks, cabarets, and nightclubs, which

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suggests that this dancing was rebellious and scandalous, not something the elder generation would have been proud of. After World War I women in makeup and men with hip flasks demanded "wild" music to dance and were rewarded by songs such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band" by Irving Berlin and jazz music by black musicians. Exuberant new dances from the black tradition included the Black Bottom, the Shimmy, the Varsity Drag, and the Charleston, which was introduced in the 1923 black revue Runnin' Wild. Social dancing flourished in new dance halls of the 1920s, in areas of commercial nightlife such as San Francisco's Barbary Coast, New Orleans's French Quarter, and Chicago's South Side. Civic groups sponsored dances at local public facilities; elaborate dance palaces or commercial ballroomsRoseland and the Savoy in New York, the Trianon and Aragon in Chicago, the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angelescatered to the dressy set and offered safe settings for young men and women to meet without chaperons. The 1920s introduced styles of dancing that were much more upbeat and wild than previous dances. Instead of the ballroom, people gathered at dance halls to enjoy jazz music and dance the Shimmy, Black Bottom, and Charleston. These new dances were a big part of the nickname The Roaring Twenties. In general, it seems that the culture of the 20s involved anything that violated previous morals and standards, especially wild, not elegant, dancing with the intermingling of all genders and races. Newman, Barbara. "Charleston (dance)." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online, 2011. Web. 5 Dec. 2011.

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The Charleston, a frenzied combination of swinging arms, kicking legs, and turned-in toes and knees in syncopated 4/4 time, was the ballroom dance sensation of the 1920s. Named for Charleston, S.C., it probably evolved from black dance steps then common in the South, specifically the Jay-Bird and the Juba. What began as a simple, rhythmic twisting of the feet took on a fast, flapping kick in Harlem, and added taps for the stage. With the opening (1923) in New York of Runnin' Wild, an all-black revue by Cecil Mack and James P. Johnson that introduced the dance to the public, the Charleston took the United States by storm. Men who had avoided the shimmy as too effeminate danced with even greater abandon than women. Although at first denounced as degenerate, the Charleston lasted through the 1920s. The Charleston is one of the most popular and well-known dance crazes of the 1920s because of its new, wild moves that contradicted the conservative dances of earlier ages. It also introduced a new rhythm, a more syncopated way of counting to complement the jazz music of the South. Maclinn, Walter A. "Frozen Foods." Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier Online, 2011. Web. 5 Dec. 2011. Frozen Foods, foods that are preserved by freezing and should be kept at temperatures of 0 F ( 18 C) or below. Freezing preserves foods because the low temperatures inhibit the growth of organisms that cause spoilagebacteria, yeasts, and molds. Generally, the spoilage agents are not killed but are rendered inactive. When the food is later warmed to room temperature, the organisms become active.

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I never knew this! The science behind frozen foods is that the freezing and low temperatures makes the bacteria inactive, so that the food does not go bad nearly as fast as usual. Freezing is one of the most widely used methods of food preservation. In the United States commercial food-freezing plants process over 55 million pounds (25 million kg) of frozen products a day. Among the most popular frozen products are TV dinners, meat pies, baked goods, and fruit juices. Frozen vegetables packaged in boilable bags are also popular. A major factor in the popularity of frozen foods is the minimum amount of preparation needed to serve them. Another reason is that their color, flavor, and texture are generally superior to those of canned foods. In addition, most frozen foods can be stored for months at temperatures of 0 F (18 C) or lower. However, many home refrigerator freezing units cannot be chilled to less than about 15 F (9 C), which limits storage time. Generally, the reason why convenience food became a trend was because of its quick preparation and somewhat good quality. Mothers before the 1920s were known to work in the kitchen all day preparing meals, so it would have been a great relief to have meals ready in minutes. In the early 1920s, Clarence Birdseye, an American engineer, developed a method for freezing foods rapidly. This technique was the method accepted by most commercial freezers. Birdseye's research and that of other food scientists and packaging engineers led to the marketing of the first family-size units of frozen foods. These foods were first marketed about

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1933 and were identified as "Quick Frozen Foods" to distinguish them from cold-storage frozen foods. In Birdseye's method, called the indirect-contact method, the refrigerant was circulated through many hollow shelves on which the packaged foods rested. The entire apparatus was enclosed in an insulated cabinet. By means of a hydraulic lift, the shelves were raised until the packages on one shelf were in contact with the shelf above it. Wooden staves, the height of the packages being frozen, were inserted between the shelves to prevent crushing. Because the packages were brought in contact with two low-temperature shelves, freezing time was reduced. However, the loading and unloading of the cabinet was slow, and production was limited. In present-day modifications of Birdseye's method, the insulated cabinet is replaced by an insulated tunnel, and the food is carried through the tunnel on conveyor belts.