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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1920s) Editor's Note
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Editor's Note
</hdr>
<body>
<p> The 1920s was the first decade of modernism; the world more
or less as we know it today emerged from the carnage of World
War I and the disillusionment that followed an armistice that
did not bring real peace. It was a time of flux, of flappers,
flasks and the frenetic activity of the Jazz Age. Economic
prosperity caught up with millions of Americans for the first
time, making them able to buy automobiles, refrigerators and
radios, and speculate in the stock market; but it passed
millions of others, especially farmers, by.
</p>
<p> Elsewhere in the world, the consequences of the war were far
harsher than for Americans. The advent of Communism had wrecked
the Soviet Union and Despot Josef Stalin had to let the country
recover from civil war and widespread starvation before
consolidating his tyranny. Germany, devastated by war and
economic collapse, lurched from one political crisis to another.
War debts and reparations hindered economic activity and trade
and guaranteed that, when the 1929 stock market crash ended
America's prosperity, many countries would share in the
resulting Depression.
</p>
<p> TIME CAPSULE/THE '20s has been adapted and condensed from the
contents of TIME, the Weekly Newsmagazine. The words, except
for connecting passages in brackets [ ] are those of the magazine
itself. The date at the beginning of each excerpt is the issue
date of the magazine.
</p>
<p> The world into which TIME was born in 1923 and survived its
first years was enormously different from that of the 1980s. The
magazine's style, concerns, assumptions and prejudices reflect
a much smaller, simpler, more parochial and much less
well-informed world. The people who made news and those who read
about it had much in common or even overlapped. There were large
areas of national and international life with which that elite,
and hence TIME, never concerned itself; indeed, in the 1920s the
magazine had no newsgathering staff but simply digested, albeit
with style and skill, the contents of New York City's
newspapers. Seeking its journalistic niche, it tried out various
forms of organization: an early department called "Imaginary
Interviews," for example, gradually evolved into the much-read
People section.
</p>
<p> For these reasons, the selections in this TIME CAPSULE, while
reflecting the way the magazine looked and read then, have
emphases and priorities quite different from those that
Founder-Editors Henry Luce and Briton Hadden would have brought
to bear. The acts of selecting the texts and writing the
bridging passages necessarily reflect the assumptions and
attitudes, conscious or unconscious, of this decade and of its
editor.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>