Frederick Lewis Allen

The 1920s were a time of moral upheaval in the United States. While parents, politicians, and business leaders worried about the communist revolution spreading from Russia to the United States, young people were experiencing their own form of rebellion that had nothing to do with politics. Jazz music, flappers, speakeasies, cigarettes, and so-called "petting parties" in Model T Fords frightened American adults almost as much as the Red Menace. In the following excerpt, written in 1931, Frederick Lewis Allen, editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's, explores the youth revolution of the 1920s.

A first-class revolt against the accepted American order was certainly taking place during those early years of the [twenties], but it was one with which [communist leader] Nikolai Lenin had nothing whatever to do. The shock troops of the rebellion were not alien agitators, but...