The decade of the 1920s is also characterized as a period of American prosperity and optimism. It was the "Roaring Twenties," the decade of bath tub gin, the model T,the $5 work day, the first transatlantic flight, and the movie. It is often seen as a period of great advance as the nation became urban and commercial (Calvin Coolidge declared that America's business was business). The decade is also seen as a period of rising intolerance and isolation: chastened by the first world war, historians often point out that Americans retreated into a provincialism evidenced by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the anti radical hysteria of the Palmer raids, restrictive immigration laws, and prohibition. Overall, the decade is often seen as a period of great contradiction: of rising optimism and deadening cynicism, of increasing and decreasing faith, of great hope and great despair. Put differently, historians usually see the 1920s as a decade of serious cultural conflict. .
On January 16, 1920, the Volstead Act became effective and made the sale of a drink containing as much as one half-ounce of alcohol unlawful. This one unsuccessful act brought about much of the flavor of the Jazz Age or Roaring Twenties as we know them. This was a period of prohibition and intolerance, speakeasies, flappers, gangsters, and crime. Hootch was supplied by Dutch Schultz (one of the best known New York mobsters of the prohibition era).and Al Capone. .
Perhaps more serious manifestation of irreverence in the 1920's, particularly in America, was the widespread acceptance of certain criminal activities. Men like Al Scarface' Capone became national and world celebrities. Partly because they were unconventional and partly because they defied an unpopular law. The Volstead Act or Prohibition', which came into being in 1920 and lasted until 1933, made it illegal to sell, buy or make alcohol. (It effectively established Organized Crime in the US and gave the Cinema and other popular forms a new genre' the gangster genre'.
