January 1920: the 18th Amendment goes into effect, outlawing the consumption of alcohol
in the United States. Right? Well, not exactly. Hi, I’m Justin Dodd, and this is Mental
Floss on YouTube. From the couch.
Prohibition actually just banned the production and sale of alcohol, not its consumption,
which led some Americans to stockpile booze between the Amendment’s ratification in
1919 and its enforcement in 1920. Ken Burns’ Prohibition documentary tells the story of
New York’s Yale Club, which reportedly amassed enough alcohol in that one year grace period
to comfortably see itself through the 13 years national Prohibition remained in effect.
And that’s just the first misconception about the 1920s I’m excited to share with
you. That’s right: Misconceptions are back, and they’re wronger than ever! OK, I guess
they’re just equally wrong…you can’t really be more- ya know what? Let’s do this.
Real quick, just wanted to address a few things. We’re thrilled to be relaunching one of
our favorite series, Misconceptions, although obviously this isn’t exactly how we planned
to do it. With everyone here working from home, we’re doing our best to keep the videos
coming without putting anyone at risk. That’s why, for now, I’m your host, camera person,
set decorator, editor, and stage-mom for this series. I hope you’ll enjoy what we’re
making, and I can honestly say having an audience to make stuff for is one thing we’re grateful
for as we try to figure out this temporary new normal. Now let’s go back to a time
when the the frightening spread of infectious disease and rampant economic uncertainty were
non-issues: the 1920s!
Car ownership in America skyrocketed in the 1920s, growing from 7.5 million registered
vehicles in 1919 to 26 million by 1929. Almost half the cars purchased between 1920 and 1926
were Model Ts. Savvy history buffs know that Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, he just
invented the assembly line. Even savvier enthusiasts know that that is also a misconception. Ford
didn’t invent the assembly line either. The division of specialized labor predates
Ford by many years, and even in the automobile industry, Ransom E. Olds is generally credited
as developing an assembly line process in 1902, when his refinements to the production
process enabled Detroit’s Olds Motor Works to increase their annual automobile output
by over 400% from the year before.
Ford’s actual contribution was using a moving assembly line to build cars, employing what
was basically a series of conveyor belts to greatly increase production efficiency. Ford
and his team were inspired by dis-assembly lines already in use in the slaughterhouses
of the Midwest, wherein animal carcasses were put on meat hooks and moved from station to
station to cut off different cuts of meat. Reverse the order and swap out a side of beef
for a chassis, and you’ve got the makings of one of the most successful businesses of
the 1900s.
You can’t talk about the 1920s without talking about flappers, and luckily there are plenty
of misconceptions about this renegade historical archetype. First of all, women weren’t just
rebelling in the United States. Germany’s “New Women” gained suffrage after World
War I and instigated conversations around sexuality and gender roles. Japan’s Modern
Girls saw a rise in women working outside of the house and living on their own, and
France’s “new women,” sometimes called garçonnes, fomented similar social change
and pushed women’s fashion in an androgynous direction, influencing styles abroad.
Flappers were no exception; if you look at photos from the time, you might be struck
by the styles of the day—modest by contemporary standards, and at times even a bit boyish.
The dresses were, at times, shorter than was typical in prior years, but they still usually
came down to at least the knee. If you picture something shorter than that in your mind,
it’s probably due to conceptions of the style created well after the twenties, in
fashion and film. And according to Beverly Birks, a vintage dealer and exhibition curator,
“Fringe [was] not the most common thing you saw in the 1920s. That would be beadwork
or embroidery.” Fringe became more popular in later years, once it could be mass-produced
as a lightweight synthetic. That means Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby isn’t always historically
accurate. Huh. Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet which is set in California, 100% historically accurate.
In the world of sports, 1925 gave us the legend of Wally Pipp, the New York Yankee who sat
out sick with a headache one day, only to be replaced by a promising young player named
Lou Gehrig. Gehrig went on to baseball immortality and Pipp never reclaimed his starting role.
Even today when an athlete loses his place on a team due to injury, he is said to have
been “Pipped.” Now, it’s worth pointing out here that there was a similar usage of
the word pip that actually predates Wally entirely. The Oxford English Dictionary tells
us that to pip meant “to reject or disqualify” by the early 20th century, as in the horse-racing-inspired
expression “pipped at the post,” meaning to fail after coming very close to achieving
one’s goal. But whether this is just a coincidence or an instance of one expression leading to
the other, it’s clear that many modern sportswriters are thinking of the first basemen when they
describe a modern athlete as “being Wally Pipped” after losing his job due to injury.
The only problem? Contemporary accounts of Pipp’s benching don’t mention an injury
at all. He was apparently struggling to hit at the time, and the Yankees were facing a
left-handed pitcher. The New York Sun said “Pipp is notoriously weak batting against
lefties, and lately his hitting has been scant against all varieties of slinging.” Which,
first of all, harsh. The story of Pipp’s headache didn’t appear until 1939, and even
then it’s hopelessly convoluted. Some stories included Pipp taking a ball to the head, leading
to headaches and double vision, but accounts of the beaning match up with an event that
took place a month after the supposed headache-induced benching.
In all likelihood, Pipp didn’t lose his job because of any one event or headache.
He was just a declining player, with a once-in-a-generation talent coming up behind him. Perhaps, in the end it’s
the inexorable march of time that truly Pipps us all.
On the subject of people replacing other people, it’s a misconception that Woodrow Wilson
was president of the United States in 1920. OK, not exactly, but hear me out. In October
1919, Wilson suffered a stroke, leaving him paralyzed on the left side of his body and
confined to bed. It’s difficult to know how severely his abilities were limited in
the year and a half that remained of his presidency, but what’s clear is that his wife Edith
took on a self-proclaimed role as Woodrow’s “steward” and acted as the sole conduit
between him and his cabinet. In her memoir, Edith Wilson claimed she “never made a single
decision regarding the disposition of public affairs” during this period, but some modern
day historians remain unconvinced of her version of events. While it is probably going too
far to claim, as some sources have, that Edith was America’s “first female president,”
it seems fair to say that Woodrow was unable to perform many of his presidential duties
for at least part of 1920.
Moving from a disputed case of responsibility to…a disputed case of responsibility. It’s
a misconception that Walt Disney invented Mickey Mouse with 1928’s Steamboat Willie.
First of all, Mickey had already appeared in an animated short months before called
Plane Crazy, though it was screened only for limited audiences. Steamboat Willie’s distinction
is being the first Mickey cartoon with synchronized sound. More importantly, Mickey was actually
co-created with animator Ub Iwerks, who is the man primarily responsible for Mickey’s
initial design. The collaborators’ relationship eventually frayed, and Iwerks left to start
his own studio in 1930. Disney began sharing different versions of Mickey’s conception,
which all featured him alone as the creative source behind the lovable rodent. Shady business
from Walt, though I have to admit, I can’t imagine anyone ponying up $7 a month for Iwerks+.
Let’s end in 1929, with the infamous stock market crash that supposedly caused the Great
Depression. Of course, this show isn’t called Accurate Historical Beliefs, and it’s really
a misconception to say that the market crash caused the Depression. Most modern economists
say that the crash was just as much a symptom of a failing economy as it was a contributing
factor to that failure. Other factors that likely contributed to the Depression included
tariffs that hindered international trade, Germany, France, and Britain temporarily returning
to the gold standard, and decreased economic activity as a result of the Federal Reserve’s
interest rate hikes. My personal great depression is caused by chemical imbalance.
And Germany returning to the gold standard.
If you have a topic whose misconceptions you’d like to see us debunk, let us know in the
comments. And if you’re happy to see Misconceptions come back, we wouldn’t mind hearing about
that, either. Thanks for watching!