TumbleDweeeb

SIGNS THE DEVIL HOLDS
1910-1930
A Documentary History of American Moral Panic
By Emmitt Owens
(Index #10282025-10302025)

—

   Between 1910 and 1930, Americans identified at least fifteen distinct signs of Satan’s work on Earth: jazz music, motion pictures, comic books, radio broadcasting, women’s suffrage, flappers, bobbed hair, makeup, smoking in public, short skirts, the Charleston dance, speakeasies, gangster culture, evolution theory, and Ouija boards.
   This isn’t speculation. It’s documented in newspaper articles, congressional hearings, medical journals, religious sermons, state legislation, censorship boards, and actual criminal prosecutions. Real laws were passed. Real people went to jail. Real careers were destroyed. Real censorship boards edited thousands of films.
   Here’s what happened.

—

1. Jazz Music (1917-1930): “The Devil’s Music”
    If ragtime was controversial, jazz was apocalyptic.
   Jazz emerged from New Orleans around 1917, born in the same red-light districts where ragtime had flourished. But jazz went further—it was louder, more improvisational, more overtly sexual in its rhythms and movements. Where ragtime had syncopation, jazz had chaos. Where ragtime had structure, jazz had wild abandon.
   The moral panic was immediate and intense.
   In 1921, the Ladies’ Home Journal published an article titled “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?” Critics described jazz as accompaniment of the voodoo dancer and a stimulant to barbaric deeds.
   Dr. Henry van Dyke of Princeton University declared: “Jazz music is not music at all. It’s merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion.”
   The General Federation of Women’s Clubs launched a campaign against jazz in 1921, warning that it was causing “moral disasters.” They blamed jazz for: declining church attendance, rising divorce rates, increased juvenile delinquency, sexual promiscuity, and general social chaos.
   Religious leaders were even more direct. The Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati published a warning in 1921, stating jazz was “the accompaniment of the voodoo dancer, stimulating the half-crazed barbarian to the vilest of deeds… it is part of a satanic plot to destroy America.”
   A 1922 New York Times headline read: “Jazz Frightens Bears: Animals Retreat to Cave When Band is Tuned Up.” If bears couldn’t stand it, the reasoning went, how could humans?
   Medical authorities invented jazz-related diseases. Dr. Oscar L. Bodenhamer claimed that jazz could cause “nervous breakdowns” and permanent brain damage. Other doctors warned that jazz music could cause:
– “Jazz Face” – a glazed, stupefied expression
– Moral degeneration
– Mental instability
– Uncontrollable dancing
– Sexual deviance
   Anne Shaw Faulkner, national music chairman of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, wrote in Ladies’ Home Journal that jazz “originally was the accompaniment of the voodoo dancer, stimulating the half-crazed barbarian to the vilest deeds. The weird chant, accompanied by the syncopated rhythm of the voodoo invokers, has also been employed by other barbaric people to stimulate brutality and sensuality.”
   The racial subtext was explicit. Jazz was Black music, created by Black musicians in Black communities. The panic about jazz was inseparable from white America’s fear of Black cultural influence. When white youth embraced jazz—dancing to it, buying records, attending clubs—it represented racial mixing, cultural contamination, and the breakdown of segregation.
   A widely published 1922 sermon titled “Is Jazz Our National Anthem?” by an Episcopal rector from New York stated: “Jazz goes back to the African jungle and is one of the evils of today… its savage crash and bang… is retrogression.”
   When the critics of 1920s jazz framed the music and its lifestyle as a hellscape populated by demons and vampires, they imagined themselves part of a modern Gothic drama. Popular jazz songs featured titles like “I’m a Jazz Vampire” and “Come On Red, You Red-Hot Devil Man.” Groups called themselves the Jazz Devils and the Black Devils Orchestra.
   Katherine Willard Eddy of the Young Women’s Christian Association stated in a 1920 address at the University of Wisconsin: “We are in deadly fear of the Jazz Devil, the demon which is consuming the country.”
   In 1922, noted Denver lawyer and Prohibition crusader John Hipp described jazz dance halls as “ticket offices to hell.”
   Multiple cities attempted to ban jazz outright. In 1922, Cleveland’s dancing masters voted to “abolish” jazz. Other municipalities restricted when and where it could be played. Some dance halls prohibited jazz entirely.
   The panic reached its peak in 1925 when a professor at the University of Kansas claimed that jazz was responsible for the death of four students who had attended a jazz party. The students had actually died in a car accident, but the connection to jazz made headlines nationwide.
   The public soon began to fear that jazz music was a threat to society, for it was suggested to cause “crime, delinquency, and uncontrolled behaviour.” Jazz was assumed to dirty the morals of those who listened to it.
   Campaigns were soon created which advocated for jazz music to be removed from the radio. This movement signaled that it is acceptable to have jazz in city districts where “no respectable person would venture”, but it is unacceptable to have jazz on the radio where respectable people might hear it.
   Despite—or perhaps because of—the controversy, jazz exploded in popularity. The 1920s became known as the Jazz Age. Speakeasies played jazz. Radio stations broadcast it. Records sold millions of copies. Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith became stars.
   By 1930, jazz had become America’s music. What had been “the devil’s music” was now the soundtrack of American culture. The moral panic subsided not because jazz changed, but because society changed around it.
   Today, jazz is considered one of America’s greatest cultural contributions to the world. It’s taught in universities, performed in concert halls, and celebrated as an art form. The Library of Congress designated jazz a “national treasure” in 1987.
   The devil’s music became America’s classical music.

—

2. Motion Pictures (1910-1930): “Morally Questionable”
   If jazz was the soundtrack of moral panic, motion pictures were the visual representation of it.
   By the 1910s, movies had evolved from novelty attractions into a major form of entertainment. Millions of Americans—particularly young people—attended movies weekly. And this terrified the older generation.
   The moral panic over movies spread almost as soon as the industry got off the ground. The 1896 Thomas Edison short The Kiss scandalized viewers with its 18 seconds of passion, and as film grew more sophisticated, the hysteria only heightened.
   National Board of Censorship member Orrin Cocks wrote in a 1915 Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology article: “The motion picture has entered every city and town of the country. Many persons now recognize that the cultural and moral influence of ‘the movie’ must be carefully estimated. The intimate and intricate problems of life may be presented quite satisfactorily to the adult but may be dangerous to the unformed mind of a child.”
   Conservatives were panicked that profit-driven movie makers were corrupting the masses, leapfrogging the traditional controls of clergy, teachers and family.
   Chicago enacted the first censorship ordinance in the United States in 1907, authorizing its police chief to screen all films to determine whether they should be permitted on screens. Detroit followed with its own ordinance the same year.
   When upheld in a court challenge in 1909, other cities followed and Pennsylvania became the first to enact statewide censorship of movies in 1911. It was soon followed by Ohio (1914), Kansas (1915), Maryland (1916), New York (1921) and, finally, Virginia (1922). Eventually, at least one hundred cities across the nation empowered local censorship boards.
   In 1915, the US Supreme Court determined in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio that motion pictures were purely commerce and not an art and so not covered by the First Amendment. This left local, state, and city censorship boards no constitutional impediment to editing or banning films.
   Justice McKenna ruled that “the exhibition of moving picture is a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded as part of the press of the country, or as organs of the public opinion.”
   Movies weren’t protected speech. They were products to be regulated like any other dangerous commodity.

The Hollywood Scandals
   In the early 1920s, a series of scandals rocked Hollywood and gave moral crusaders all the ammunition they needed.
   Hollywood was rocked by a number of notorious scandals, such as the murder of William Desmond Taylor and the alleged rape of Virginia Rappe by popular movie star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, which brought widespread condemnation from religious, civic and political organizations.
   Many felt that the film industry had always been morally questionable, and political pressure was increasing, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost one hundred film censorship bills in 1921.
   The Arbuckle scandal was particularly devastating. In September 1921, actress Virginia Rappe died after attending a party hosted by comedian Fatty Arbuckle. Arbuckle was accused of rape and manslaughter. Though he was eventually acquitted after three trials, his career was destroyed. The scandal reinforced the public’s perception of Hollywood as a den of vice and immorality.
   Other scandals followed. Director William Desmond Taylor was murdered in 1922, and the investigation revealed his romantic entanglements with multiple actresses. Silent film star Wallace Reid died in 1923 from morphine addiction. Actress Olive Thomas died in 1920 from poisoning in Paris under mysterious circumstances.
   Each scandal fed the narrative that Hollywood was morally corrupt and that movies were corrupting America’s youth.

The Hays Office
   In 1922, as they were faced with the prospect of having to comply with hundreds and potentially thousands of inconsistent, easily changed decency laws in order to show their films, the studios chose self-regulation as the preferable option, enlisting Presbyterian elder Will H. Hays, Postmaster General under former President Warren G. Harding and former head of the Republican National Committee, to rehabilitate Hollywood’s image.
   In 1924, Hays introduced a set of recommendations dubbed “the Formula”, which the studios were advised to heed, and asked filmmakers to describe to his office the plots of films they were planning on producing.
   In 1927, Hays compiled a list called the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”—eleven subjects best avoided and twenty-six to be handled very carefully. But the list had no teeth. Studios routinely ignored it.
   “Hollywood in the 1920s is a super racy time,” says Curator Chelsey O’Brien. “Films were beginning to mature, they were dealing with adult content. They were sort of racy and projected images of women in power and making their own choices.”

The Production Code
   In 1931, The Hollywood Reporter mocked the code and quoted an anonymous screenwriter saying that “the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it’s just a memory.”
   But in 1930, under pressure from Catholic organizations, a more comprehensive code was written—the Motion Picture Production Code. Martin Quigley, publisher of a Chicago-based motion picture trade newspaper, began lobbying for a more extensive code that not only listed material inappropriate for movies, but also contained a moral system that the movies could help promote — specifically a system based on Catholic theology. He recruited Father Daniel Lord, a Jesuit priest and instructor at Catholic Saint Louis University, to write such a code.
   The Motion Picture Production Code—commonly known as the Hays Code—arrived in 1930. Co-written by a Catholic priest and the Catholic publisher of the Motion Picture Herald, it gave producers specific guidelines on what they could and could not show on film.

The Code’s General Principles were:
1. No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it
2. Correct standards of life shall be presented
3. Law shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation

The Code prohibited:
– Profanity and blasphemy
– Nudity or suggestive dancing
– Methods of crime shown in detail
– Excessive or lustful kissing
– Ridicule of religion
– Miscegenation (interracial relationships)
– Sexual perversion (homosexuality)
– White slavery
– Childbirth scenes
– Children’s sex organs
– Ridicule of the clergy
– Willful offense to any nation, race or creed

   On June 13, 1934, an amendment to the Code was adopted, which established the Production Code Administration (PCA) and required all films released on or after July 1, 1934, to obtain a certificate of approval before being released.
   For over 30 years, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States adhered to the code. The Production Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government; the Hollywood studios adopted the code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation.
   The result? For three decades, married couples slept in separate beds on screen. Criminals always had to be punished. Clergy were always respected. Interracial romance was forbidden. Homosexuality didn’t exist.
   Of the 572 films submitted to the various censorship boards in 1928, only 42 passed review unscathed.
   Movies weren’t art. They were moral instruction. And if you wanted to make a living in Hollywood, you played by the rules.
   The Hays Code remained in effect until 1968, when it was replaced by the MPAA rating system. But its influence shaped American cinema for decades, determining what stories could be told, what images could be shown, and what ideas could be expressed.
   Movies were dangerous. They needed to be controlled. And they were—for over 30 years.

—

3. Flappers (1920-1930): “The Demoralization of America”
   If jazz was the sound of moral panic and movies were the image, flappers were the living embodiment of it.
   Flappers were a subculture of young Western women prominent after the First World War and through the 1920s who wore short skirts (knee length was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for prevailing codes of decent behavior.
   Flappers have been seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes in public, driving automobiles, treating sex in a casual manner, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.
   More conservative people, who belonged mostly to older generations, reacted with claims that the flappers’ dresses were “near nakedness” and that flappers were “flippant”, “reckless”, and unintelligent.

The New Woman
   The New Woman was pushing the boundaries of gender roles, representing sexual and economic freedom. She cut her hair short and took to loose-fitting clothing and low cut dresses. No longer restrained by a tight waist and long trailing skirts, the modern woman of the 1920s was an independent thinker, who no longer followed the conventions of those before her.
   The flapper was an example of the prevailing conceptions of women and their roles during the Roaring 1920s. The flappers’ ideal was motion with characteristics of intensity, energy, and volatility. She refused the traditional moral code. Modesty, chastity, morality, and traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity were seemingly ignored.
   This wasn’t just about fashion. It was about freedom.
   Being liberated from restrictive dress, from laces that interfered with breathing, and from hoops that needed managing suggested liberation of another sort. The new-found freedom to breathe and walk encouraged movement out of the house, and the flapper took full advantage.
   The flapper was an extreme manifestation of changes in the lifestyles of American women made visible through dress. Changes in fashion were interpreted as signs of deeper changes in the American feminine ideal. The short skirt and bobbed hair were likely to be used as a symbol of emancipation.
   Signs of the moral revolution consisted of premarital sex, birth control, drinking, and contempt for older values. Before the War, a lady did not set foot in a saloon; after the War, a woman, though no more “a lady”, entered a speakeasy as casually as she would go into a railroad station. Women had started swearing and smoking publicly, using contraceptives, raising their skirts above the knee and rolling their hose below it.

The Moral Panic
   In the 1920s, a new style icon arrived and with it came a moral panic as the change in women’s roles now included freedom.
   The iconic flapper of the 1920s marvelled in flouting convention and stirring the pot. She smoked, she drank and loved a good party with dancing. But to others around her, this modern gal living it up became a symbol of everything that could wrong in society — a threat to the notions of tradition, motherhood and even Canada itself.
   “One of the big concerns that comes out in the tabloid press in Canada at the time is that these petting parties are also involving older men and so there’s concern that there’s sort of lecherous older man on the scene and also that the flapper is going to take advantage of him to get at his money,” Nicholas said. “Overall it is this concern related to sort of sexual liberation of the time which looks fairly pale in comparison to the sexual liberation that would come later in the 20th century. But at the time, this is a real source of anxiety. There is absolutely a moral panic about the flapper.”
   The most prominent argument against the flappers in the 1920’s was that the movement was dangerous to society, tradition, and a culture that had never before experienced this emerging demographic with a voice it wanted to share.
   In 1929, British writer, Sheila Kaye-Smith wrote in “Living Age,” “Marriage is going out of fashion as a vocation, and a great deal of nonsense is talked.”
   Even suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt criticized flappers. Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, spoke out against the flappers, stating that she found the flappers to be conformists because of their shared tendency to bob their hair and wear short dresses. In an article she authored in August 1926, Catt wrote, “Women do not wear short skirts or bobbed hair by their own election, but in obedience to the dictum of fashion.”
   Even a woman lobbying for the right to vote feared the changing customs and independent women.

Zelda Fitzgerald: The Original Flapper
   Zelda was born to Alabama Supreme Court Justice Anthony Sayre and Minnie Machen Sayre in 1900. Young Zelda’s high school journal indicates she was a flapper before the word had a definition. Writing of herself, “I ride boys’ motorcycles, chew gum, smoke in public, dance cheek to cheek, drink corn liquor and gin. I was the first to bob my hair and I sneak out at midnight to swim in the moonlight with boys at Catoma Creek and then show up at breakfast as though nothing happened,” Zelda never lived by traditional expectations.
   Scott Fitzgerald’s early work, “This Side of Paradise,” earned him the moniker of the nation’s “expert on flappers.” Without question, he borrowed from his wife.
   Writing in 1922, Sayre-Fitzgerald said of the flapper, she “awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn’t need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim, and most of all to heart.”

Legal Consequences
   When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression began, the flapper became a convenient scapegoat.
   Unable to afford the latest trends and lifestyle, the once-vibrant flapper women returned to their dropped hemlines, and the flapper dress disappeared. A sudden serious tone washed over the public with the appearance of the Great Depression. The high-spirited attitude and hedonism were less acceptable during the economic hardships of the 1930s.
   When hemlines began to rise again, numerous states took action, making laws that restricted women to wear skirts with hemlines no shorter than three inches (7.5 centimeters) above the ankle. The ever-popular bobbed haircut was the cause for some women being fired from their jobs.
   Think about that. States passed laws dictating how short women’s skirts could be. Women lost their jobs for cutting their hair.
   An obituary for the “Flapper” ran in The New York Times Magazine in 1929, suggesting that she was being replaced by the “Siren”, a mysterious, stylish, “vaguely European” ideal woman.
   But the flapper’s impact remained. Despite the scandal flappers generated, their look became fashionable in a toned-down form among respectable older women. Significantly, the flappers removed the corset from female fashion, raised skirt and gown hemlines, and popularized short hair for women.
   Women gained the right to vote in 1920. The flapper represented what they would do with that freedom: drink, smoke, dance, drive, work, and refuse to be controlled.
   The moral panic about flappers was really a panic about women’s autonomy. And that panic never fully went away.

—

4. Petting Parties (1920s): “Snugglepupping the Youth of America”
   While flappers scandalized America with their bobbed hair and short skirts, it was their petting parties that truly horrified the older generation. These gatherings—where young people engaged in kissing, fondling, and erotic exploration that stopped short of intercourse—represented everything conservatives feared about the Jazz Age.

What Was a Petting Party?
   The term “petting party” first appeared in the early 1920s, though the practice probably started earlier. Regional names varied: Southerners called them “necking parties,” Westerners called them “mushing parties,” Midwesterners called them “fussing parties,” and they were known as “spooning parties” almost everywhere.
   Eventually, some flappers started calling the activity “snugglepupping.”
   The parties varied considerably, but generally followed a pattern: Young people would gather—sometimes at someone’s home while parents were out, sometimes at a roadhouse or secluded spot—and pair off with romantic partners for extended sessions of kissing and physical intimacy.
   Historian Paula S. Fass, author of The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s, explained: “Petting parties varied quite a lot. But certainly there were parties where young people did quite a lot of erotic exploration—kissing and fondling. These parties always stopped before intercourse. In that sense they had imposed limitations created by the group presence. They were not orgies and they were not promiscuous—one set of partners only.”
   The key distinction: petting parties had self-imposed limits. The group context created peer regulation that both encouraged experimentation and established clear boundaries. Young people, particularly young women, maintained control over how far things went.

The Scandal
   In January 1921, the scandal broke into the national consciousness when Mrs. Augustus Trowbridge, wife of a Princeton professor, spoke to 1,500 students at Wellesley College. She “railed against the vulgarity and revolting badness of petting parties,” declaring that these gatherings—along with jazz music, unchaperoned dancing, and lipstick—were symptomatic of a decadent society.
   The speech made headlines nationwide. The Coshocton, Ohio Tribune reported on her condemnation, and suddenly newspapers across America were breathlessly covering the “petting party crisis.”
   The panic spread quickly. Critics declared that petting parties were:
– Destroying the morals of young women
– Turning America’s daughters into prostitutes
– Evidence of the breakdown of parental authority
– A direct result of jazz music’s corrupting influence
– Leading to unwanted pregnancies and disease
– Creating a generation that would be unfit for marriage
– Proof that American civilization was in decline
   A New York mother complained to the New York Times in 1922: “The boys of today must be protected from the young girl vamp.”
   By 1927, women’s groups and vice officers in Kansas City were campaigning to end petting parties in theater balconies, which had apparently become popular venues for the activity.
   The conservative League of American Women was formed in New York specifically to exercise, as the New York Evening World put it, “stricter censorship over the activities and habits of the younger set.”

How Common Was It?
   Very common, according to surveys of the time.
   Studies conducted during the 1920s found shocking (to moralists) statistics:
– By 1924, 92 percent of college women admitted to having engaged in petting at some point
– 62 percent of women surveyed said they thought petting was essential to being popular
– 99 out of 100 women born between 1910 and 1929 had petted by age 35 (according to the 1953 Kinsey Report looking back at this generation)
   One young woman interviewed said: “All of ’em pet. Good women. Poor women. All of ’em.”
   Another protested: “The boys call me a Sunday School girl because I will not smoke, drink or kiss.”
   The reality was that petting had become a normal part of courtship for a generation of young Americans. It wasn’t limited to wild flappers—it was practiced by “respectable” college women, working-class “charity girls,” and everyone in between.

What It Really Was
   Despite the panic, petting parties weren’t the orgies that critics imagined. They were a carefully controlled form of sexual experimentation that allowed young people—particularly young women—to explore physical intimacy while maintaining what they considered their virtue (virginity).
   Historian Fass explained: “Petting parties allowed young people to experiment in a self-limiting way by creating peer regulation that both encouraged experimentation and created clear limits.”
   The 1920s was a transitional period in American sexual morality. Victorian strictures were breaking down, but full sexual liberation wouldn’t come until the 1960s. Petting parties existed in that middle ground—more permissive than the past, but still constrained by serious consequences for premarital sex (pregnancy, disease, ruined reputation, forced marriage).
   Young women, in particular, found that petting gave them a way to participate in the new sexual culture without the risks of intercourse. They could be “modern” without being “ruined.” They could have fun without devastating consequences.
   And importantly, women controlled the boundaries. As historian Ellen K. Rothman explained: “While the years from 1870 to 1920 saw a liberalization of the middle-class code of sexual conduct, it remained the woman’s role to post the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts.’”

The Darker Side
   It wasn’t all empowerment and fun. Some women reported disturbing experiences. One woman, identified in sources only as “Eve Blue,” described attending a petting party in December where she kissed six men and engaged in physical intimacy with them. She later gave up on petting parties after she was nearly raped.
   The parties could create pressure to participate beyond one’s comfort level. Peer pressure—the same force that created the “self-limiting” boundaries—could also push people further than they wanted to go.
   And there were concerns about older men taking advantage of young women at these gatherings. As one historian noted, “One of the big concerns that comes out in the tabloid press at the time is that these petting parties are also involving older men and so there’s concern that there’s sort of lecherous older man on the scene and also that the flapper is going to take advantage of him to get at his money.”

The End
   Petting parties gradually faded as the 1920s ended and the 1930s began. The Great Depression sobered the nation, and the wild experimentation of the Jazz Age gave way to economic survival.
   But more importantly, petting parties had done their work. They had helped normalize open sexual expression between unmarried couples. What had seemed shocking in 1921 was commonplace by 1931.
   As Fass explained: “The 1920s was a self-consciously naughty decade where young people tried to overturn earlier Victorian strictures that inhibited sexual expression. The petting party was a perfect vehicle for that. Once the new mores regarding sexual experimentation became common and normal—though still peer enforced and regulated—this kind of public display was no longer necessary.”
   Petting became private again. Couples still petted, but they didn’t need organized parties to do it. The sexual revolution that flappers had started continued—in cars, on dates, in college dormitories—but without the public, group context that had made petting parties scandalous.
   And attitudes continued to evolve. The Kinsey Reports of the 1950s would reveal that the generation that came of age in the 1920s was significantly more sexually active before marriage than previous generations. Women born after 1900 were two and a half times as likely to have premarital intercourse as those born before 1900.
   The flappers who scandalized America with their petting parties grew up to be the mothers and grandmothers of the next generation. And while many doubtless warned their daughters about going too far, they’d already changed the culture in ways that couldn’t be undone.
   The panic ended. The behavior didn’t. It just became normal.

—

5. Canoedling (1900s-1920s): “Floating Brothels on American Waters”
   Before teenagers had cars with backseats, they had canoes. And America’s moral guardians lost their minds about it.
   “Canoedling”—the practice of young couples paddling out to secluded spots on lakes and rivers to kiss, cuddle, and engage in various romantic activities—became one of the more delightfully absurd moral panics of the early 20th century.

The Rise of the Courting Canoe
   By the early 1900s, canoes had become widely available and relatively affordable. New manufacturing techniques made them accessible to the middle and working classes. Cities and towns had installed parks with lakes and rivers where canoes could be rented or stored.
   Urbanization and industrialization had also created new ideas about leisure time—weekends and days off when working people could enjoy recreational activities. Streetcar companies, eager for weekend ridership, promoted trips to parks and waterways where young people could rent canoes.
   The timing was perfect. Young people had more independence than previous generations, but still lived under the watchful eyes of parents and chaperones. Going to a dance hall meant supervision. Sitting in the parlor meant your family was in the next room. Taking a walk meant nosy neighbors.
   But a canoe? A canoe offered privacy.
   The canoe industry caught on quickly. Manufacturers began producing “courting canoes”—models where the bow paddler faced the stern, making it easier for couples to gaze into each other’s eyes. Some came with special features like lockers under the side decks for storing phonographs and records. Others had comfortable seating designed for relaxation rather than serious paddling.
   And young people took full advantage.
   Between 1901 and 1912, the number of canoe permits issued in Minneapolis skyrocketed from 200 to 2,000. Similar explosions occurred in cities across the country. On popular waterways, so many canoes crowded the rivers on summer evenings that people joked you could cross without getting wet by stepping from canoe to canoe.
   The term “canoedling” emerged—a combination of “canoe” and “cuddling,” though some traced it to the German word “knuddeln,” meaning “to cuddle.”
   And moral authorities were appalled.

The Moral Panic

Critics condemned canoedling as:
– A cover for sexual immorality
– An escape from proper parental supervision
– A threat to young women’s reputations
– Evidence of declining moral standards
– A gateway to prostitution and vice
   The hysteria reached absurd heights.
   In June 1914, the Minneapolis Tribune published a headline that became infamous: **”Girl Canoeists’ Tight Skirts Menace Society.”**
   The article didn’t just worry about what young people might be doing in canoes—it worried about the clothes they wore while doing it. Tight skirts that allowed women to paddle efficiently were seen as provocative and dangerous.
   Other newspapers published dire warnings:
– “Misconduct in canoes” threatened to “bring shame upon the city”
– Canoedling was creating a generation of “moral degenerates”
– Young women who engaged in such behavior were destroying their marriage prospects
– The privacy of canoes was leading to “incidents” that couldn’t be discussed in polite society

The Canoe Names Controversy
   In 1913, the Minneapolis Parks Board took action. They announced they would refuse to issue permits for canoes with “unpalatable names.”
   Local newspapers gleefully published the offensive names that had slipped through the previous summer, including:
– “Thehelusa” (The Hell You Say)
– “Kumonin Kid” (Come On In, Kid)
– “Kismekwik” (Kiss Me Quick)
– “Damfino” (Damned If I Know)
– “Ilgetu” (I’ll Get You)
– “Aw-kom-in” (Aw, Come On In)
– “G-I-Lov-U” (Gee, I Love You)
– “Skwizmtyt” (Squeeze Me Tight)
– “Ildaryoo” (I’ll Dare You)
– “Win-kat-us” (Wink at Us)
– “O-U-Q-T” (Oh, You Cutie)
– “What the?”
– “Joy-tub”
– “Cupid’s Nest”
– “I Would Like to Try It”
   The commissioners unanimously agreed to ban names lacking “obvious moral and grammatical standards.” Some of the abbreviated names clearly had them scratching their heads, but they knew immorality when they saw it.

Law Enforcement Responds
   Cities didn’t just condemn canoedling—they tried to stop it.
   Park police began patrolling waterways in motorized boats equipped with spotlights. Their mission: catch couples in compromising positions and fine them for violations of decency laws.
   On the Charles River in Boston, police arrested a young man for kissing his girlfriend in a canoe. He was fined $20—about $600 in today’s money. One newspaper calculated that “at that price, millions of dollars’ worth of smooches were exchanged on weekend evenings across the urban rivers of the nation.”
   In 1903, before the trend really took off, the Boston Herald had already warned: “It may not be wicked to go canoeing on the Charles with young women on Sunday, but we continue to be reminded that it is frequently perilous.”
   Some cities imposed curfews—canoes had to be back at the dock by midnight. Others restricted where canoes could go, designating certain areas as off-limits to prevent couples from finding secluded spots.
   Metropolitan Park Police even tried to enforce a rule against lying down in canoes. But when canoe rental companies and the Charles River Amusement Association protested that the rule would destroy their business, police reluctantly backed off. Canoedling was simply too popular—and too lucrative—to ban entirely.

Who Were the Canoodlers?
   The panic about canoedling was closely tied to anxieties about changing gender roles and class mobility.
   Working-class women, in particular, used canoes as spaces for what historian Kathy Peiss called “sexual experimentation” outside traditional courtship rules. These “charity girls”—young women who exchanged kisses, caresses, or more with men in exchange for entertainment like dinner, drinks, or canoe rides—were challenging Victorian sexual morality.
   For these young women, canoedling wasn’t prostitution—it was a form of dating, a way to participate in leisure activities they couldn’t otherwise afford, and an assertion of control over their own sexuality. They decided what they would and wouldn’t do. They chose their partners. They set the boundaries.
   And this terrified the older generation.
   Women were literally “going out” with men—moving romantic and sexual activity from the supervised, domestic space of the home parlor (where “calling” had traditionally taken place) into public spaces like canoes and dance halls. They were taking control of their time, their bodies, and their romantic lives.
   Historian John Kasson wrote that canoes and other leisure spaces “offered an opportunity (for lower-middle and working class visitors) to participate in American life on a new basis, outside traditional forms and proscriptions.”
   The panic about canoedling was really a panic about this autonomy—particularly women’s autonomy.

The Reality
   What were young people actually doing in canoes?
   According to historians who’ve studied the period: mostly kissing, cuddling, and what we’d now call “making out.” The privacy of canoes allowed couples to be affectionate without the constant surveillance they faced elsewhere. Some couples went further—but most didn’t.
   The moral panic imagined floating orgies. The reality was teenagers necking.
   Ellen K. Rothman, a historian of American courtship, explained that “while the years from 1870 to 1920 saw a liberalization of the middle-class code of sexual conduct, it remained the woman’s role to post the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts.’” Women controlled the boundaries of physical intimacy, and most maintained fairly conservative limits.
   The canoe itself imposed natural limits. Unlike a car with a spacious backseat, a canoe is unstable, small, and requires balance. Too much vigorous activity, and you’re going for a swim. The joke wrote itself.

The Decline
   Canoedling peaked in the 1910s and began to decline in the 1920s. The reason was simple: cars.
   As automobile ownership spread and became affordable for the middle class, cars replaced canoes as the preferred venue for unsupervised romantic activity. The car offered everything the canoe did—privacy, mobility, freedom from supervision—plus comfort, weather protection, and a more stable surface.
   The invention of the “rumble seat” (an external seat that could be opened at the back of a car) gave young couples even more privacy. But it was the fully enclosed sedan with its roomy backseat that truly revolutionized American courtship.
   By the mid-1920s, “parking” had replaced canoedling as the new moral panic. Same activity, different location, same hysteria.
   The panic about canoes faded not because moralists won, but because technology moved on. Young people simply found a better option.

What It Revealed
   The canoedling panic revealed several patterns that would repeat throughout the 20th century:
   Technology panic: A new technology (mass-produced canoes) enables new behaviors, which are immediately condemned as immoral.
   Women’s sexuality panic: The core anxiety was about women having control over when, where, and with whom they were physically intimate.
   Class anxiety: The panic focused on working-class youth who were using public spaces (rented canoes, public waterways) rather than having the privacy of homes with separate rooms.
   The solution doesn’t work: Law enforcement couldn’t stop canoedling any more than they could stop petting parties or parking. People determined to be alone together will find a way.
   The panic ends when something else comes along: Canoedling wasn’t defeated by moral reform—it was replaced by cars.
   Today, canoes are seen as wholesome, family-friendly recreation. The idea that they were once viewed as floating dens of iniquity seems absurd. Museums celebrate “courting canoes” as quaint historical artifacts. The parks that once sent police boats after kissing couples now promote romantic sunset canoe rides.
   The devil’s watercraft became a symbol of innocent outdoor recreation.
   The pattern would repeat with drive-in movies, teenagers’ bedrooms, chat rooms, and every other space where young people found privacy.

—

6. Radio Broadcasting (1920-1930): “Voices from the Ether”
   If motion pictures were dangerous because you had to leave home to see them, radio was terrifying because it came into your home uninvited.
   Radio broadcasting began commercially in 1920 with KDKA in Pittsburgh. By 1922, there were over 500 licensed radio stations in America. By 1930, nearly 40% of American households owned a radio.
   This new technology brought unprecedented power to broadcast messages directly into people’s living rooms. And many people didn’t trust it.

The Power to Corrupt
   Radio posed unique moral concerns:
– Invisible operators: Unlike newspapers or movies, radio broadcasters were anonymous voices. Who were these people? What were their motives?
– Uncontrolled access: Children could listen without parental supervision. Teenagers could hear jazz music. Women could listen to inappropriate content.
– National reach: Local moral standards didn’t apply. A broadcast from New York City could reach Kansas farmhouses.
– Real-time influence: Unlike print, which could be reviewed, radio happened in real time. There was no way to screen content before it entered your home.
   Religious leaders worried that radio would compete with church attendance. Why go to church on Sunday when you could listen to a sermon at home?
   Educators worried that radio would replace reading and critical thinking with passive listening.
   Parents worried that their children would be exposed to jazz, crime dramas, and other corrupting influences.
   The Federal Radio Commission (precursor to the FCC) was established in 1927 specifically to regulate radio content and assign broadcast frequencies. The concern wasn’t just technical—it was moral. Radio needed to be controlled.

Jazz on the Radio
   The combination of jazz and radio was particularly volatile. Campaigns were soon created which advocated for jazz music to be removed from the radio. This movement signaled that it is acceptable to have jazz in city districts where “no respectable person would venture”, but it is unacceptable to have jazz on the radio where respectable people might hear it.
   Jazz was tolerable in urban speakeasies. But broadcast into rural homes? Into the homes of respectable white families? That was unacceptable.
   By the late 1920s, radio had become established as a fixture of American life. The moral panic subsided not because radio became less powerful, but because people adapted to it. Regulations were established. Standards were created. Radio became domesticated.
   But the fear of mass media’s corrupting influence—of broadcasts entering homes and corrupting youth—would return with television, then video games, then the internet.
   The pattern repeated, as it always does.

—

7. Women’s Suffrage (1920): “Unsexing Women”
   On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, giving women the constitutional right to vote. It had taken 72 years of activism since the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.
   You might think this would be celebrated as a triumph of democracy.
   You would be wrong.

The Opposition
   Throughout the suffrage campaign and after the amendment’s passage, opposition was fierce and often hysterical. The arguments against women’s suffrage included:

Religious arguments:
– Women voting violated the biblical order of male headship
– Political activity would “unsex” women and destroy their femininity
– Women’s proper sphere was the home, not the polling place
– God created men and women with different roles; voting violated natural law

Medical arguments:
– Women’s brains were not suited for political decision-making
– The stress of political activity would damage women’s reproductive systems
– Voting would cause women to neglect their children and household duties
– Women were too emotional for rational political thought

Social arguments:
– Women’s suffrage would destroy the family
– It would lead to divorce and moral decay
– Women would abandon their children to pursue careers
– It would eliminate the distinction between men and women
– It would lead to socialism and the destruction of American values

Racial arguments:
– In the South, opposition focused heavily on the prospect of Black women voting
– Many white suffragists explicitly excluded or marginalized Black women to try to gain Southern support
– The fear of Black political power was often stronger than the fear of women’s political power

The Reality
   None of these fears materialized.
   Women didn’t stop being women. Families didn’t collapse. Society didn’t end. Women simply gained the right to participate in their own governance.
   But the opposition to women’s suffrage revealed something important: the moral panic wasn’t about voting. It was about control. It was about maintaining a social hierarchy where women were subordinate to men, where their role was defined by their relation to men, where they had no independent political identity.
   The 19th Amendment passed, but the underlying anxiety about women’s autonomy continued—in the panic about flappers, about women working, about women choosing not to marry, about women using birth control.
   Every expansion of women’s freedom was treated as a moral crisis. And every time, the crisis passed, and society adapted.
   But the pattern would repeat. Again and again.

—

8. The Charleston Dance (1923-1927): “Devilish Gyrations”
   If the waltz had been scandalous in the 1890s, the Charleston was satanic in the 1920s.
   The Charleston emerged from African American communities in Charleston, South Carolina, around 1923. It became wildly popular after being featured in the Broadway show “Runnin’ Wild” that same year. By 1926, it had swept across America and Europe.
   The dance featured rapid foot movements, twisting legs, and swinging arms—movements that older generations found shocking and improper.

The Moral Concerns
   Critics condemned the Charleston for:
– Its African American origins (the racial panic about Black cultural influence)
– Its association with jazz music
– Its energetic, uncontrolled movements
– The physical contact between dance partners
– Its popularity in speakeasies and dance halls
– The way women’s dresses would fly up during the kicks and swivels

Religious leaders declared it a tool of Satan. The dance was described as:
– “Devilish gyrations”
– “Indecent and animalistic”
– “A threat to public morals”
– “An insult to civilized society”

   Some churches banned members who did the Charleston. Dance halls were pressured to prohibit it. Communities passed ordinances restricting where and when it could be performed.

The Tragedy
   The moral panic reached a fever pitch on July 4, 1925, when the Pickwick Club in Boston collapsed, killing 44 people and injuring many more. The building’s structural failure was blamed on the vibrations from Charleston dancing—despite engineers finding that the building’s construction was fatally flawed.
   The disaster was seized upon as proof that the Charleston was dangerous—not just morally, but physically. “God’s judgment,” some called it.
   But people kept dancing. The Charleston remained popular through the late 1920s, eventually giving way to other dances. The panic subsided.
   Today, the Charleston is taught in dance schools as a classic American dance form. It’s performed at weddings. It’s considered wholesome vintage fun.
   The devil’s dance became a tourist attraction in Charleston, South Carolina.

—

9. The First Red Scare & Palmer Raids (1919-1920): “Communist Revolution on American Soil”
   If jazz was the cultural threat of the 1920s, communism and anarchism were the existential threats. And the panic over them led to the most massive violation of civil liberties in American history up to that point.
   The First Red Scare was America’s first modern moral panic with federal government muscle behind it. And it was catastrophic.

The Trigger
   On June 2, 1919, bombs exploded simultaneously in eight American cities. One destroyed the front of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s home in Washington, D.C., killing the bomber—an Italian anarchist named Carlo Valdinoci—when his device detonated prematurely. Across the street, a young couple named Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were shaken by the blast.
   This was just the latest in a series of anarchist attacks. A month earlier, radicals had mailed 36 bombs to prominent Americans including John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan Jr., and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Most were intercepted, but one blew the hands off a senator’s housekeeper.
   The nation was terrified. And Attorney General Palmer was ready to act.

The Perfect Storm
   The bombings didn’t happen in a vacuum. They came at a time of intense social anxiety:
– The Russian Revolution (1917): The Bolsheviks had overthrown the czar and established a communist state. Many Americans feared the same could happen here.
– Labor strikes: Over 3,600 strikes occurred in 1919, including a general strike in Seattle that paralyzed the city. Many saw these as communist-inspired attempts to overthrow capitalism.
– Immigration: Millions of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe—Italians, Russians, Jews—had arrived in recent decades. Many Americans blamed them for bringing radical ideologies.
– World War I aftermath: The war had normalized government surveillance, censorship, and suppression of dissent through laws like the Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918).
   President Woodrow Wilson had warned in 1915 against “hyphenated Americans” who “poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life.” He declared that “such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be crushed out.”
   The stage was set for a nationwide witch hunt.

The Palmer Raids
   In August 1919, Palmer appointed 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover to head a new division of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s predecessor)—the General Intelligence Division. Hoover’s job: compile files on suspected radicals and identify targets for arrest.
   Hoover was meticulous. He amassed detailed dossiers on thousands of suspected anarchists, communists, and labor activists. He knew what he was doing was questionable legally, so he focused on exploiting immigration law—which allowed deportation of alien anarchists without the same constitutional protections that citizens enjoyed.
   The raids began in November 1919.
   On November 7, 1919—the second anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution—federal and local authorities raided the headquarters of the Union of Russian Workers in New York City and arrested more than 200 people. A second raid on November 25 found a hidden bomb-making operation, confirming (in the government’s view) that the threat was real.
   On December 21, 1919, 249 radicals—including famed anarchist Emma Goldman—were packed aboard the USS Buford (nicknamed “the Soviet Ark”) and deported to Russia.
   But that was just the beginning.

The Big Raids: January 1920
   On January 2 and 6, 1920, Palmer launched the largest operation. In 33 cities across the country, federal agents and local police conducted simultaneous raids, targeting anywhere “reds” might gather—offices, headquarters, pool halls, homes, meeting places.
The raids were brutal:
– Over 10,000 people were detained
– About 4,000 were arrested
– Most were arrested without warrants
– Many were held incommunicado for days or weeks
– They were denied access to lawyers
– Many were beaten during interrogation
– Some had their signatures forged on confession documents
   The targets were overwhelmingly immigrants—Italians, Russians, Eastern European Jews. The raids particularly focused on Italian anarchists and labor union members, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
   Over 800 people were arrested in New England alone, from locations including Boston, Brockton, Chelsea, Fitchburg, Lawrence, and Lynn. In California, 500 were arrested. The scenes were chaotic—massive roundups, people dragged from their homes in the middle of the night, families separated.
   Gaspar Cannone, a New York City deportee, was held secretly without being charged and beaten when he refused to inform on others. When he wouldn’t sign a statement admitting to being an anarchist, authorities forged his signature.
   During her deportation hearing, Emma Goldman defiantly accused the government of violating the First Amendment and warned them they were making a terrible mistake. She would not return to America until 1940—when her dead body was shipped back for burial.

The Panic Spreads
   The raids had the support of much of the press and the public. Headlines screamed about the communist menace. Palmer was praised as a hero protecting America from revolution.
   Palmer, who had presidential ambitions for 1920, predicted that the communist revolution would begin on May Day (May 1, 1920). He warned the nation that plots against the lives of government officials had been uncovered. Cities prepared for violence. Police were put on high alert. The nation held its breath.
   May Day 1920 came and went. Nothing happened.
   Palmer’s credibility collapsed. His dire predictions made him look foolish. Critics began examining the raids more closely and didn’t like what they found.

The Backlash
   In June 1920, Massachusetts District Court Judge George W. Anderson ordered the discharge of 17 arrested aliens and issued a scathing denunciation: “A mob is a mob, whether made up of Government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals and loafers and the vicious classes.”
   Legal scholars, civil liberties advocates, and even some government officials began speaking out against the raids:
– Most arrests had been made without probable cause
– Many people had been detained solely for their political beliefs
– The raids violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches
– Due process had been systematically denied
– Thousands of innocent people had been swept up
   The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded in 1920, in large part as a response to the Palmer Raids.
   Of the thousands arrested, only about 556 people were ultimately deported. Most of the rest were eventually released—their only crime had been attending a meeting, being an immigrant, or having unpopular political views.
   Palmer’s presidential bid failed. He didn’t even win the Democratic nomination.

The Aftermath
   On September 16, 1920, a massive bomb exploded on Wall Street, killing 38 people and wounding nearly 150. It was blamed on anarchists—probably the same Galleanist group responsible for the earlier bombings.
   But this time, there was no revival of the Red Scare. The public had grown weary of the panic. The Palmer Raids had gone too far.
   The raids had revealed an uncomfortable truth: the actual anarchist threat was real but small. The bombings were carried out by a handful of extremists—followers of Luigi Galleani, an Italian anarchist. There was no vast communist conspiracy. No revolutionary army. No nationwide network plotting to overthrow the government.
   What there was: thousands of immigrant workers, labor activists, and people with left-wing political views who were simply exercising their right to free speech and assembly.
   The Palmer Raids established a disturbing pattern that would repeat throughout the 20th century:
1. A real but limited threat (anarchist bombings)
2. Expanded into a massive, imaginary conspiracy (nationwide communist revolution)
3. Used to justify widespread violations of civil liberties (mass arrests and deportations)
4. Targeting already-marginalized groups (immigrants, labor activists)
5. Creating a climate of fear that silenced dissent
6. Eventually collapsing when the predicted catastrophe fails to materialize
   The same pattern would repeat in the 1950s with McCarthyism. And again with the War on Terror after 9/11. And again with various other panics.
   But in 1920, it was new. And it was devastating.

What It Revealed
   The First Red Scare wasn’t really about bombs or communism. It was about:

Fear of immigrants: The targets were overwhelmingly foreign-born. The raids were a way to punish and deport people who didn’t fit white, native-born Protestant America’s image of itself.

Fear of labor: The raids targeted union organizers and labor activists. The panic was useful for breaking strikes and intimidating workers demanding better conditions.

Fear of change: The world was changing rapidly after World War I. The old order was collapsing. New ideologies were emerging. The raids were an attempt to preserve the status quo through force.

Fear of democracy: At its core, the panic was about silencing people with unpopular political views. If communism was so dangerous, why not debate it? Why not prove it wrong? Because the panic was never about ideas—it was about power.

   The Palmer Raids demonstrated that America’s commitment to civil liberties was fragile. When people were scared enough, constitutional rights could be suspended. Due process could be ignored. People could be imprisoned for their beliefs.
   And it could all be done in the name of protecting America.
   The First Red Scare eventually ended. But the playbook remained. And it would be used again and again—whenever those in power needed an enemy to rally against, whenever the public needed someone to fear, whenever questioning authority needed to be punished.
   The names would change—communists, terrorists, socialists, radicals, extremists. But the pattern would remain the same.

—

10. Immigrant Anarchism (1900s-1920s): “Foreign Radicals Plotting Revolution”
   Behind the Palmer Raids, the Red Scare, and much of the anti-immigrant hysteria of the 1910s and 1920s lurked a very specific fear: immigrant anarchists. Particularly Italian anarchists. And most particularly, followers of Luigi Galleani.

Who Were the Galleanists?
   Luigi Galleani was an Italian anarchist who immigrated to the United States in 1901. He was a brilliant orator and writer who advocated for “propaganda of the deed”—the anarchist philosophy that violent acts against the powerful were justified and necessary to spark revolution.
   From his base in Lynn, Massachusetts, Galleani published Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), an Italian-language anarchist newspaper that had thousands of subscribers. His followers—known as Galleanists—were concentrated in Italian immigrant communities in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.
   The Galleanists rejected all forms of government, capitalism, and organized religion. They believed in direct action, including bombings and assassinations of government officials, judges, police, and businessmen who they saw as oppressing workers.
   And unlike many anarchist groups that talked more than they acted, the Galleanists bombed people.

The Bombing Campaign
   Between 1914 and 1932, Galleanists carried out dozens of bombings and attempted bombings:

1914-1916: Bombings at courthouses, police stations, and the homes of judges and prosecutors who had been involved in trials of anarchists.

1919: The most intense year:
– April-May 1919: At least 36 mail bombs were sent to prominent figures including John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan Jr., Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and immigration officials. Most were intercepted. One exploded, blowing the hands off Senator Thomas W. Hardwick’s housekeeper.

– June 2, 1919: Eight bombs exploded simultaneously in eight cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington D.C., and others. The bombs were timed to go off at night when the targets would be home. One destroyed Attorney General Palmer’s house, killing the bomber (Carlo Valdinoci) but leaving Palmer shaken but alive. Flyers left at the bombing sites declared: “We will dynamite you!”

1920: The Wall Street bombing. On September 16, 1920, a massive bomb hidden in a horse-drawn wagon exploded on Wall Street at lunchtime, killing 38 people and wounding nearly 150. The bomb was packed with metal slugs designed to act as shrapnel. No one was ever convicted, but investigators believed it was carried out by Galleanists.

1927: Bombings targeting the prosecutors and judge involved in the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

The Panic
   The Galleanist bombing campaign created genuine terror. These weren’t idle threats—people were actually dying. Judges, prosecutors, police, and government officials went to work each day not knowing if they’d be the next target.
   But the panic went far beyond the actual bombers.
   There were probably fewer than 100 active Galleanists in the entire country. But in the public imagination—fueled by sensationalist newspapers, opportunistic politicians, and genuine fear—the threat became enormous:

The Imagined Threat:
– Thousands of anarchists plotting revolution
– An international conspiracy coordinated from Europe
– Immigrant communities harboring terrorists
– A plan to overthrow the American government
– Mass assassinations of officials
– Imminent violent revolution

The Reality:
– A small group of Italian anarchists
– Loosely organized, mostly acting independently
– No central command or master plan
– No serious prospect of actually overthrowing anything
– Limited to bombings targeting specific individuals

But the panic wasn’t about reality. It was about fear.

The Italian Connection
   The Galleanist campaign became inseparable from broader anti-Italian prejudice.
   Italian immigrants in the early 20th century faced intense discrimination:
– Considered racially inferior to Northern Europeans
– Stereotyped as violent, criminal, and prone to vendetta
– Associated with organized crime (Mafia)
– Catholic in a Protestant country
– Speaking little or no English
– Concentrated in urban ethnic enclaves
– Often involved in labor organizing and strikes
   The fact that the most visible anarchist terrorists were Italian confirmed every negative stereotype. It gave a sheen of legitimacy to anti-Italian discrimination and violence.
   When Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—two Italian immigrant anarchists—were arrested in 1920 for a robbery and murder they probably didn’t commit, their anarchism and Italian ethnicity made them perfect scapegoats. They were convicted in 1921 and executed in 1927 despite worldwide protests that the trial had been unfair and evidence was insufficient.
   The trial became a cause célèbre, with many seeing it as persecution of immigrants and anarchists rather than justice. On the night of their execution, bombings occurred in New York and Philadelphia—likely carried out by Galleanists avenging what they saw as murder by the state.

The Broader Fear of “Foreign Radicals”
   Italian anarchists were just one target. The panic extended to anyone foreign who held radical political views:
   Russian immigrants were suspected of being Bolsheviks plotting communist revolution.
   Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were accused of bringing socialism and anarchism with them.
   German immigrants during World War I faced suspicion as potential enemy agents.
   Mexican immigrants were blamed for bringing crime and revolutionary violence across the border.
   The common thread: immigrants + radical politics = existential threat to America.
   As President Wilson declared in 1915: “Such [hyphenated Americans] who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life… must be crushed out.”

The panic justified:
– The Palmer Raids and deportations of thousands
– Restrictive immigration laws in the 1920s that dramatically reduced immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
– Discrimination in employment, housing, and education
– Violence against immigrant communities
– Suppression of foreign-language newspapers and organizations

What It Really Was
   Yes, there were real anarchist terrorists. The Galleanists killed people. The threat wasn’t entirely imaginary.
   But the response was wildly disproportionate. Tens of thousands of immigrants were targeted because of the actions of a few dozen. Entire communities were suspected because they shared ethnicity with bombers. Political beliefs became grounds for deportation. Being foreign and radical made you guilty until proven innocent.
   The panic wasn’t really about bombs. It was about:

Labor suppression: Many “anarchists” were actually labor organizers fighting for better working conditions. The anarchist label was a convenient way to discredit strikes and break unions.

Nativism: Fear of immigrants “diluting” American culture and changing the country’s ethnic and religious makeup.

Political control: Radical political movements challenged capitalism and the power of wealthy elites. Branding them as terrorist threats made dissent dangerous.

Scapegoating: When society faced problems—labor unrest, economic instability, social change—blaming foreign radicals was easier than addressing systemic issues.

The Legacy
   The anti-anarchist panic led directly to:

The Immigration Act of 1924: This law established strict quotas that dramatically reduced immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, explicitly designed to keep out “undesirable” ethnic groups. Immigration from Italy dropped by over 90%.

Deportation machinery: The infrastructure created to deport anarchists in the 1920s became the template for immigration enforcement for decades.

FBI expansion: J. Edgar Hoover’s career was launched by the Palmer Raids. He would run the FBI for 48 years, maintaining files on “subversives” and using similar tactics against civil rights activists, anti-war protesters, and anyone he deemed a threat.

Precedent for future panics: The pattern of conflating a real but limited threat with an imagined massive conspiracy, then using it to justify widespread violations of civil liberties, would repeat with McCarthyism, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror.

Sacco and Vanzetti: Their execution remained controversial for decades. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation in 1977 (50 years later) acknowledging that they had not received a fair trial.

   By the late 1920s, the Galleanist movement had largely dissolved. Galleani himself had been deported to Italy in 1919. Many of his followers were dead, deported, or in prison. The bombings gradually stopped.
   But the panic lived on. The fear of foreign radicals plotting revolution became embedded in American political culture. It would resurface whenever the country faced uncertainty or change, whenever there was a need for an enemy, whenever those in power wanted to silence dissent.
   The actual anarchists became footnotes in history. But the panic they inspired shaped America for generations.

—

11. Speakeasies and Gangster Culture (1920-1933): “Breeding Grounds of Vice”
   On January 17, 1920, the Volstead Act went into effect, enforcing the 18th Amendment’s prohibition of alcohol. It was supposed to usher in an era of sobriety and moral improvement.
   Instead, it created a vast criminal underground and a new culture of defiant public drinking.

Speakeasies
   Speakeasies—illegal bars operating in secret—proliferated across America. By 1925, there were an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasies in New York City alone.
   These establishments became associated with every form of moral decay:
– Illegal alcohol consumption
– Jazz music
– Mixed-race gatherings
– Women drinking and smoking in public
– Gambling
– Prostitution
– Criminal activity
– General disrespect for law and authority
   The speakeasy represented everything that terrified moral conservatives: racial mixing, women’s liberation, open defiance of Christian values, and the normalization of criminal behavior.

Gangster Culture
   Prohibition created a massive criminal enterprise. Organized crime syndicates—led by figures like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz—made fortunes from illegal alcohol sales.
   But what shocked Americans most wasn’t just the crime. It was the glamorization of criminals.
   Gangsters became celebrities. They wore expensive suits, drove fancy cars, dined in fine restaurants, and were featured in newspapers. Some were seen as Robin Hood figures—providing a service people wanted despite unjust laws.
   This romanticization of criminal figures represented a fundamental breakdown of moral authority. If criminals were heroes, what did that say about law and order?

The Moral Panic
   Religious leaders, law enforcement officials, and moral reformers condemned speakeasies and gangster culture as:
– Breeding grounds of vice and immorality
– Threats to the social order
– Corrupting influences on youth
– Evidence of America’s moral decline
– Proof that modern culture had turned away from God
   The irony, of course, was that Prohibition itself created the conditions for this criminal culture to flourish. By criminalizing behavior that millions of Americans wanted to engage in, Prohibition made criminals out of ordinary people and enriched organized crime.

The End
   Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The speakeasies closed. The gangster empires collapsed (or moved into other enterprises). The moral panic about drinking subsided.
   But the pattern had been established: make something popular illegal, create a criminal underground, panic about the resulting culture, eventually give up and legalize it again.
   The same pattern would repeat with marijuana, with sex work, with gambling—always with the same moral panic, the same predictions of social collapse, and the same eventual recognition that prohibition creates more problems than it solves.

—

12. Comic Books (1920s-1930s): “Crude and Vulgar”
   Before comic books became associated with Superman and Batman, they were considered crude, vulgar trash that would rot children’s minds.
   Comic strips had appeared in newspapers since the 1890s, but the comic book format—cheap, colorful pamphlets sold at newsstands—emerged in the 1920s and became common in the 1930s.

The Concerns
   Educators and parents worried that comic books would:
– Replace proper literature with crude illustrations
– Encourage illiteracy and poor reading skills
– Expose children to violence and crime
– Promote disrespect for authority
– Waste children’s time that should be spent on homework
– Corrupt children with “low-brow” entertainment
   The early moral panic about comics focused primarily on class and education. Comics were seen as entertainment for the uneducated masses—immigrant children, working-class kids, children who should be reading “proper” books instead.
   Unlike the panic about jazz or flappers, which had strong racial and gender components, the comic book panic was primarily about class and culture. Comics were vulgar. They were common. They were beneath respectable children.

The Escalation
   The moral panic about comics would reach its peak in the 1950s with Dr. Fredric Wertham’s book “Seduction of the Innocent” and the subsequent Comics Code Authority. But the foundations were laid in the 1920s and 1930s, when comics were first identified as a threat to children’s moral and intellectual development.
   Today, comic books are recognized as a legitimate art form. Graphic novels are taught in universities. Comic book movies dominate the box office. Original comic art sells for millions of dollars.
   But for decades, comics were seen as trash that would turn children into delinquents.
   The pattern would repeat with television, video games, and social media.

—

13. Evolution Theory (1920s): “Against God”
   In March 1925, Tennessee passed the Butler Act, making it illegal to teach evolution in public schools. The law was clear: “It shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State… to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
   This wasn’t just about science. It was a full-scale moral panic about modernity, secularism, and the perceived decline of Christian values.

The Scopes Trial
   In July 1925, high school teacher John Scopes was put on trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching evolution. The trial became a national sensation—”The Scopes Monkey Trial”—pitting fundamentalist Christianity against modern science.
   The prosecution, led by William Jennings Bryan (three-time presidential candidate), argued that evolution was:
– A direct attack on the Bible
– A threat to Christian civilization
– Responsible for moral decay
– The cause of World War I (because Social Darwinism justified violence)
– A tool of atheistic materialism
– Dangerous to young minds
   The defense, led by Clarence Darrow, argued that evolution was established science and that the law violated freedom of thought.
   Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (about $1,700 today). The conviction was later overturned on a technicality, but the law remained in effect until 1967.

The Broader Panic
   The Scopes trial was just the most visible manifestation of a broader moral panic about evolution. Across America, religious leaders declared that teaching evolution was:
– Turning children into atheists
– Destroying faith in God
– Promoting immorality (if humans are just animals, why follow moral rules?)
– Undermining the family
– Leading to communism and socialism

Multiple states passed or attempted to pass laws restricting the teaching of evolution:
– Arkansas (1928)
– Mississippi (1926)
– Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and others considered similar laws

   The panic wasn’t really about the science. It was about control—control over education, control over young minds, control over the narrative of human origins and purpose.

The Legacy
   Evolution was essentially banned or heavily restricted in many American schools until 1968, when the Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that such bans were unconstitutional.
   But the conflict continues. “Creation science,” “intelligent design,” and other attempts to challenge evolution in schools have persisted. The moral panic about evolution teaching never fully ended—it just evolved into new forms.
   The pattern remains: scientific knowledge that challenges religious beliefs is treated as a moral threat, legislation is passed to restrict it, court cases ensue, and eventually the restrictions are lifted. But the underlying anxiety remains.

—

14. Ouija Boards (1920s): “Portal to Hell”
   Ouija boards—also called talking boards or spirit boards—had been popular since the late 1800s as a parlor game. But in the 1920s, as spiritualism declined and fundamentalist Christianity surged, Ouija boards became associated with genuine demonic activity.

The Shift in Perception
   In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Ouija boards were marketed as harmless entertainment—a way to commune with spirits or explore the subconscious. They were sold in toy stores alongside chess sets and board games.
   But by the 1920s, religious leaders began warning that Ouija boards were:
– Actual portals to demonic entities
– Tools for Satan to enter homes
– Causes of mental illness and possession
– Dangerous invitations to evil spirits
– Threats to Christian faith
   Churches warned parishioners to destroy their Ouija boards. Religious publications ran articles about the spiritual dangers of “playing with demons.” Stories circulated about people going mad, being possessed, or dying after using Ouija boards.

The Medical Angle
   Some psychiatrists agreed that Ouija boards were dangerous—but for psychological reasons. They claimed the boards could:
– Induce hysteria
– Create multiple personalities
– Cause mental breakdown
– Lead to obsessive behavior
– Trigger latent insanity
   The combination of religious condemnation and medical warnings created a powerful narrative: Ouija boards were not toys. They were dangerous tools that could harm you spiritually, mentally, or both.

The Reality
   Ouija boards work through the ideomotor effect—unconscious muscle movements guide the planchette. There’s no evidence of demonic activity, supernatural communication, or psychological harm.
   But the moral panic about Ouija boards revealed something important: in an era of rapid modernization and social change, people looked for explanations that confirmed their existing beliefs. If society was becoming more permissive, if traditional values were declining, if young people were rebelling—perhaps it was because of demonic influence.
   The Ouija board became a scapegoat for deeper anxieties about modernity.
   Today, Ouija boards are still sold as games. They’re still condemned by some religious groups. The moral panic never fully ended—it just became less intense as other scapegoats emerged.

—

UNPOPULAR CONSPIRACIES (1910-1930)
The Theories People Didn’t Widely Believe

1. Hollow Earth Theory (John Cleves Symmes)
The Theory: The Earth is composed of concentric hollow spheres with massive openings at the North and South Poles (1,400-4,000 miles wide) leading to an inhabited interior world with its own sun.
   Why It Was Unpopular:
– By the 1910s-1920s, this theory was already considered pseudoscience
– John Symmes’ repeated petitions to Congress for polar expeditions were rejected
– President Andrew Jackson shut down the proposed expedition in 1828
– When Admiral Byrd flew over both poles (1926, 1929) and reported no holes, it dealt a “death blow” to the theory
– Most scientists and educated people dismissed it as crackpot nonsense
– It was relegated to fringe publications and had a “small band of staunch supporters”
   Who Believed: A tiny group of eccentrics, some science fiction readers inspired by Jules Verne
   Modern Status: Completely debunked by seismology, plate tectonics, and satellite imagery

2. The Lost Continent of Lemuria/Mu
   The Theory: A vast sunken continent once existed in the Pacific or Indian Ocean, home to an advanced civilization that was the cradle of humanity.
   Why It Was Unpopular:
– The scientific theory (proposed by zoologist Philip Sclater in 1864) lost credibility in the 1920s when plate tectonics became accepted
– By the 1920s, mainstream science had completely abandoned it
– Only embraced by:
  – Theosophists (Madame Blavatsky’s occult followers)
  – Tamil nationalists seeking ancient homeland
  – Fringe writers like James Churchward (who published “The Lost Continent of Mu” in 1926)
– Most Americans had never heard of it
– Scientists considered it obsolete pseudoscience
   Who Believed: Occultists, Theosophists, some Tamil revivalists, pulp fiction readers

3. Atlantis as Real History (Ignatius Donnelly’s Theory)
   The Theory: Atlantis was a real advanced civilization that existed and all human culture originated from it (diffusionism).
   Why It Was Unpopular:
– While Plato’s Atlantis story was known, most scholars treated it as fiction/allegory
– Ignatius Donnelly’s 1882 book tried to make it “real history” but was dismissed by academics
– By the 1920s, only fringe believers took it seriously:
  – Edgar Cayce (psychic) claimed people had past lives there
  – Madame Blavatsky incorporated it into Theosophy
– Geology and plate tectonics made it physically impossible
– No archaeological evidence ever found despite Donnelly’s predictions
   Who Believed: Occultists, psychics, some alternative historians, pulp fiction fans
   What’s Interesting: Despite being unpopular scientifically, it had entered pop culture through adventure novels

4. Theosophy’s Root Race Theory
The Theory: Humanity consists of seven “root races” that evolved through different epochs, including:
– Atlanteans (4th root race)
– Lemurians (3rd root race – giant ethereal beings)
– Current humanity (5th root race)
– Future evolved humans with psychic powers
   Why It Was Unpopular:
– Considered fringe occultism by mainstream society
– Theosophical Society was viewed with suspicion
– The theory mixed pseudoscience, racism, and mysticism
– Most Americans saw it as exotic Eastern mysticism or occult nonsense
– Churches condemned it as heresy or Satanic
   Who Believed: Theosophists, some occult enthusiasts, followers of Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant

5. The “Coming World Leader” / Ascended Masters
   The Theory: Powerful spiritual beings called “Ascended Masters” or “Mahatmas” would send a new messianic figure to usher in the Age of Aquarius/New Age.
   Key Figures:
– Jiddu Krishnamurti was proclaimed the “World Teacher” by Theosophists in the 1920s
– Claims of contact with Ascended Masters living in Tibet or other dimensions
– Predictions of a new spiritual era beginning in the 1920s-1930s
   Why It Was Unpopular:
– Limited to Theosophical circles and occult groups
– Mainstream Christians saw it as anti-Christian or demonic
– Most Americans never heard of it
– When Krishnamurti rejected his role as World Teacher in 1929, it embarrassed believers
– H.P. Lovecraft mocked it in “Call of Cthulhu” (1926) – “a Theosophist colony dons white robes en masse for some glorious fulfillment which never arrives”
   Who Believed: Theosophists, New Thought movement members, occultists

6. 1920s California Cult Conspiracies
   The 1920s saw an explosion of small cults in Los Angeles that most people viewed as dangerous fringe groups:
   The Blackburn Cult (Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven)
– Founded by May Otis Blackburn in 1922
– Claimed to receive revelations from archangel Gabriel
– Most people saw it as a dangerous scam
   Hickory Hall Cult
– Run by Mrs. Leech, “Most High Interpretess”
– Members reported mind control and abuse
– Former members lived in fear of retribution
– Viewed as dangerous, not a widespread conspiracy theory
   Why Unpopular: These were seen as dangerous local cults, not national conspiracies

7. Secret Bavarian Illuminati Control Theory
   The Theory: The Bavarian Illuminati (actually disbanded in 1785) secretly survived and controls world events.
   Why It Was Unpopular in 1910-1930:
– The panic about the Illuminati peaked in the 1790s-1800s
– By the 1920s, most educated people knew the Illuminati no longer existed
– Some fringe theorists kept it alive, but it was not mainstream
– The Red Scare focused on **real** anarchists and communists, not imaginary Illuminati
   Who Believed: Small number of conspiracy theorists, some anti-Semitic groups who mixed it with Jewish conspiracy theories
   Note: This would resurface later in the 20th century

8. Positive Spiritualism Claims (Contacting the Dead Really Works)
   The Theory: Mediums can genuinely contact the dead; spirits provide accurate information.
   Why It Was Controversial/Unpopular:
– While spiritualism was popular after WWI, there was massive skepticism
– Harry Houdini spent the 1920s exposing fraudulent mediums
– Many clergy condemned it as either fraud or demonic
– Scientific American offered a prize for proof – no one could claim it
– By mid-1920s, exposed frauds made mainstream belief decline
– Seen as either: (1) grief-stricken delusion, (2) fraud, or (3) demonic
   Split Opinion: Popular enough to have followers, but widely mocked and debunked simultaneously

9. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Jewish World Conspiracy)
   The Theory: A secret cabal of Jews controls world events and seeks global domination.
   Why It’s Complex:
– Published 1903, spread by Henry Ford in 1920s (500,000 copies distributed)
– Used by Nazi sympathizers
– However: Exposed as a hoax/forgery in 1920s
– Reputable newspapers and courts declared it fraudulent
– Most mainstream Americans, especially after exposure, rejected it
– Primarily believed by: anti-Semites, nativists, Nazi sympathizers
   Status: Unpopular among educated/mainstream Americans; popular only in racist/anti-Semitic circles

10. Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone Energy / Life Force Theories
   The Theory: A cosmic life force energy called “orgone” permeates everything and can be harnessed.
   Why It Was Fringe:
– Wilhelm Reich’s theories emerged in late 1920s-1930s
– Seen as pseudoscience by mainstream medicine
– Mix of Freudian psychology and mysticism
– Only small alternative health communities interested

11. Astrology as Science
   The Theory: That astrological predictions are scientifically valid and the positions of celestial bodies causally affect human affairs.
   Why It Was Unpopular:
– By the 1920s, mainstream science completely rejected astrology
– Seen as superstition or parlor game
– Newspaper horoscopes were entertainment, not taken seriously by educated people
– Only believed by: occultists, some entertainment seekers, fringe believers
   Note: Popular culturally but not as “real science”

12. Flat Earth Society (Revived in 1920s)
   The Theory: The Earth is flat, not a sphere.
   Why It Was Unpopular:
– By the 20th century, even fringe status was generous
– Considered laughably absurd by virtually everyone
– Small groups of cranks maintained belief
– No mainstream credibility whatsoever

—

KEY DIFFERENCES: Popular vs. Unpopular Conspiracies

POPULAR (Mainstream Moral Panics):
– Jazz as satanic
– Movies corrupting youth
– Communist revolution imminent (Palmer Raids)
– Flappers destroying civilization
– Evolution threatening Christianity
– Led to laws, arrests, censorship

UNPOPULAR (Fringe Theories):
– Hollow Earth
– Lemuria/Mu
– Atlantis as real
– Theosophy’s root races
– Ascended Masters
– Most occult beliefs
– Led to mockery, dismissal, small cult followings

Why These Were Unpopular
1. Scientific Impossibility: By the 1920s, basic science (plate tectonics, seismology, physics) disproved them
2. Lack of Evidence: No one could produce proof despite bold claims
3. Associated with “Cranks”: Believers were seen as eccentrics or con artists
4. Limited Media Coverage: Mostly in fringe publications, not mainstream newspapers
5. Religious Opposition: Christians condemned occult theories as demonic
6. Rational Skepticism: The 1920s saw both moral panic AND scientific skepticism – these fell on the skeptical side

   The big takeaway: The mainstream fears (jazz, movies, communists, flappers) became laws and cultural movements. The fringe theories (hollow earth, Lemuria, Theosophy) remained… fringe.

—

The Pattern (1910-1930)
   Between 1910 and 1930—a span of just twenty years—Americans identified Satan’s hand in:
1. A musical genre created by Black Americans (jazz)
2. A new form of visual entertainment (movies)
3. Women who cut their hair and wore short skirts (flappers)
4. Young people kissing at parties (petting parties)
5. Young people kissing in canoes (canoedling)
6. A communication technology that brought voices into homes (radio)
7. Women voting
8. A dance from the Black community (Charleston)
9. Illegal bars and organized crime (speakeasies)
10. Illustrated stories for children (comics)
11. A scientific theory about human origins (evolution)
12. A parlor game (Ouija boards)
13. Anarchist bombings that led to mass arrests (Palmer Raids)
14. Immigrant political radicals (especially Italian anarchists)
   Plus: bobbed hair, makeup, cigarettes, short skirts, birth control, automobiles (continued from previous era), atheism, socialism, and the general breakdown of Victorian morality.

What the Panics Revealed
   These moral panics shared common themes:

Race: Jazz, the Charleston, and other cultural products from Black communities were condemned as primitive, savage, and corrupting. The panic was explicitly about preventing white Americans (especially white youth) from being influenced by Black culture.

Gender: Flappers, women’s suffrage, bobbed hair, makeup, smoking, petting parties—nearly every panic involving women was really about controlling women’s autonomy, sexuality, and social power.

Technology: Movies, radio, canoes, and automobiles were feared because they gave people—especially young people and women—freedom of movement, access to information, and independence from traditional authorities.

Class: Comic books were condemned as vulgar entertainment for the masses. Evolution was seen as an elite attack on common people’s faith.

Authority: Almost every panic involved a perceived threat to traditional sources of authority—church, family, local community, established gender roles, racial hierarchy.

Immigration: The Red Scare and anti-anarchist panic targeted immigrants, particularly Italians, Russians, and Eastern European Jews, seen as bringing dangerous radical ideologies.

What Actually Happened
   None of these things destroyed America.
   Jazz became America’s most significant cultural export. Movies became the dominant art form of the 20th century. Women voted, and democracy survived. Radio became a tool for education and entertainment. Flappers grew up and became the mothers and grandmothers of the next generation. Petting parties helped normalize sexual expression. Canoedling gave way to parking in cars.
   The Charleston became a quaint historical dance. Speakeasies closed when Prohibition ended. Comic books evolved into graphic novels. Evolution is taught in every reputable science classroom. Ouija boards are sold at Target. The Palmer Raids were condemned as unconstitutional violations of civil liberties.
   But each panic left scars. Each panic led to laws, restrictions, censorship, and prosecutions. Each panic reinforced hierarchies of race, gender, and class. Each panic was used to justify control over people’s bodies, minds, and freedoms.
   And each panic was eventually forgotten, replaced by new panics about new threats.

—

—

“You’ll Go to Hell If You…” — The Complete List (1910-1930)
   Based on documented moral panics, religious sermons, medical warnings, legislative records, censorship board decisions, and cultural condemnations from 1910 to 1930, here is what Americans were told would damn their souls, destroy society, or deliver them to Satan:

Music & Dance
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Listen to jazz music (it’s “the devil’s music” and “accompaniment of the voodoo dancer”)
– Play jazz music (you’re spreading Satan’s influence)
– Allow jazz on the radio (respectable people might hear it)
– Dance the Charleston (it’s “devilish gyrations” and “animalistic”)
– Go to a jazz club or speakeasy (they’re “ticket offices to hell”)
– Allow your children to listen to jazz (they’ll develop “Jazz Face”)
– Dance cheek-to-cheek (it’s sexually suggestive)
– Attend a dance hall unchaperoned (the “ante-room to hell itself”)
– Perform in a jazz band (especially if you’re Black)
– Buy jazz records (you’re supporting moral decay)
– Play jazz in your home (if you’re Christian, it should “find no resting place”)

Women’s Appearance & Behavior
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Bob your hair as a woman (it’s “unsexing” yourself and could cost you your job)
– Wear your skirt above the ankle (states passed laws against this)
– Wear your skirt at the knee (it’s “near nakedness”)
– Wear makeup (it’s “excessive” and “painted”)
– Smoke cigarettes in public as a woman (it’s unladylike and immoral)
– Drink alcohol as a woman (especially in a speakeasy)
– Drive an automobile as a woman without a male chaperone
– Work outside the home as a married woman (you’re neglecting your children)
– Go to a speakeasy as a woman (you’re a “flapper” engaging in vice)
– Wear a one-piece bathing suit (it reveals too much of your body)
– Roll your stockings below the knee (it’s deliberately provocative)
– Wear rouge and lipstick (you look like a prostitute)
– Flatten your chest to look more boyish (you’re rejecting your femininity)
– Cut your hair in an “Eton crop” or “shingle bob” (it’s too masculine)
– Refuse to wear a corset (you’re being indecent)
– Show your arms or shoulders (sleeveless dresses are scandalous)
– Dance without gloves (improper contact with men)
– Own or use birth control (you’re promoting promiscuity)
– Have premarital sex (the “petting parties” are corrupt)
– Vote as a woman (you’re violating God’s order)

Entertainment & Media
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Go to the movies (they’re “morally questionable”)
– Watch movies with kissing scenes (they’re corrupting)
– Watch movies with crime or violence (they teach criminal behavior)
– Make movies that violate the Production Code (you’ll be banned)
– Show interracial relationships in movies (explicitly forbidden by the Code)
– Depict homosexuality in movies (it’s “sexual perversion”)
– Show married couples in the same bed in movies (improper suggestion)
– Make movies with “excessive or lustful kissing” (violates moral standards)
– Ridicule religion in movies (it will corrupt viewers)
– Show childbirth in movies (too graphic)
– Depict “white slavery” (sex trafficking) in movies (even though it was a moral panic)
– Watch gangster movies (they glamorize criminals)
– Read comic books (they’re “crude and vulgar”)
– Let your children read comics instead of “proper” books (they’ll become illiterate)
– Listen to the radio unsupervised (children might hear inappropriate content)
– Allow jazz on the radio where respectable people can hear it

Alcohol & Prohibition
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Drink alcohol of any kind (it’s illegal and immoral)
– Own or operate a speakeasy (it’s a “breeding ground of vice”)
– Make or sell illegal alcohol (bootlegging)
– Go to a speakeasy (even for entertainment)
– Socialize with bootleggers or gangsters (even if they’re celebrities)
– Vote for the repeal of Prohibition (you’re against God’s law)
– Serve alcohol in your home (even beer or wine)
– Attend a party where alcohol is served
– Glamorize gangster culture (like Al Capone)
– Profit from illegal alcohol sales (even indirectly)

Science & Education
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Teach evolution in public schools (you’re denying Divine Creation)
– Learn about evolution (it will make you an atheist)
– Read Charles Darwin (his ideas caused World War I)
– Question the literal truth of the Bible (you’re undermining Christian civilization)
– Study geology or biology that contradicts Genesis (it’s against God)
– Accept that humans descended from earlier species (it makes us “just animals”)
– Send your children to schools that teach evolution (they’ll lose their faith)
– Write textbooks that include evolution (you’re corrupting youth)
– Believe in an old Earth (the Bible says it’s 6,000 years old)
– Support academic freedom over religious doctrine

Moral & Social Behavior
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Engage in “petting” (sexual touching while clothed)
– Attend “petting parties” (group gatherings for making out)
– Have casual dates without chaperones (it leads to immorality)
– Go “parking” in automobiles with someone of the opposite sex
– Express atheistic views (you’re spreading Satan’s lies)
– Support socialism or communism (they’re against Christian values)
– Get divorced (marriage is sacred and permanent)
– Live together before marriage (it’s “living in sin”)
– Practice free love (it’s moral degeneracy)
– Treat sex casually (it should only be within marriage for procreation)
– Use slang or profanity (it’s disrespectful and coarse)
– Show disrespect for elders (the youth are out of control)
– Question authority (parents, teachers, clergy, police)
– Join labor unions (they promote socialism)
– Support racial equality (it threatens the social order)
– Marry outside your race (it’s “miscegenation”)

Spiritual & Occult
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Use a Ouija board (it’s a “portal to hell”)
– Attend séances or spiritualist meetings (you’re communing with demons)
– Read occult literature (it invites demonic influence)
– Practice any form of divination (tarot, palm reading, etc.)
– Believe in communication with the dead (it’s necromancy)
– Keep a Ouija board in your home (even as a game)
– Allow children to play with Ouija boards (they’re vulnerable to possession)
– Consult fortune tellers (it’s against Christian teaching)
– Read horoscopes (it’s paganism)
– Practice meditation or Eastern spiritual practices (they’re not Christian)

Race & Immigration
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Support racial integration (God ordained racial separation)
– Attend integrated jazz clubs or speakeasies (racial mixing leads to immorality)
– Marry someone of a different race (many states have laws against this)
– Listen to “race records” (music by Black artists)
– Allow Black cultural influence on white youth (it’s corrupting)
– Support immigration from Southern or Eastern Europe (they’re bringing crime and radicalism)
– Hire immigrants over native-born Americans (un-American)
– Learn or appreciate Black music and dance (it’s primitive and savage)
– Attend racially mixed parties or dances (improper and dangerous)

Technology & Modernity
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Trust movies over the church (they’re competing for souls)
– Let radio replace church attendance (Sunday programming is a problem)
– Spend more on entertainment than church donations (misplaced priorities)
– Use birth control devices (they prevent God’s plan)
– Own a telephone (still suspicious to some rural communities)
– Drive automobiles for leisure on Sunday (instead of going to church)
– Use modern conveniences that free women from housework (they’ll become idle)
– Embrace “modern” ideas over traditional values (modernity is corrupting)

Fashion & Style
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Wear “flapper” style clothing (it’s immodest)
– Show your knees (they’re erotic)
– Wear low-cut dresses that show your back or shoulders
– Wear transparent or sheer fabrics (you can see through them)
– Go without a hat in public as a woman (improper)
– Wear trousers as a woman (except for sports, and even that’s questionable)
– Wear bright red lipstick (it’s too bold)
– Have plucked eyebrows (it’s artificial)
– Tan your skin deliberately (though Coco Chanel made it fashionable)
– Wear your hair in any style considered “too masculine” for women
– Dress like a “flapper” for Halloween (even in jest)

Canoes & Canoedling
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Go canoeing with someone of the opposite sex without a chaperone
– Rent a canoe on Sunday (instead of going to church)
– Name your canoe something suggestive (like “Kiss Me Quick” or “Squeeze Me Tight”)
– Lie down in a canoe (even if you’re just tired)
– Paddle to a secluded spot away from public view
– Stay out in a canoe past the curfew
– Engage in “canoedling” (kissing, cuddling, or romantic activity while canoeing)
– Own or operate a “courting canoe” designed for facing each other
– Allow young people to canoe unsupervised

Petting Parties
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Attend a petting party (also called necking, mushing, fussing, or spooning parties)
– Engage in “petting” (kissing and fondling that stops short of intercourse)
– Host a party where petting might occur
– Allow your children to attend unchaperoned parties
– Engage in “snugglepupping” (flapper slang for petting)
– Pet in a theater balcony
– Pet in an automobile (parking)
– Consider petting “essential to being popular” (as 62% of young women did)
– Defend petting as harmless
– Be a “party” (a girl who necks)

Anarchism & Radical Politics
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Hold anarchist beliefs (belief in no government)
– Attend anarchist meetings or read anarchist literature
– Subscribe to *Cronaca Sovversiva* or other radical publications
– Be a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
– Support labor strikes (they’re “communist-inspired”)
– Criticize capitalism or advocate for socialism
– Be an immigrant with radical political views
– Read or distribute pamphlets critical of the government
– Question American involvement in World War I
– Speak favorably of the Russian Revolution
– Attend meetings where radical politics are discussed
– Be Italian and have any connection to anarchist circles
– Associate with suspected radicals
– Refuse to denounce anarchism when asked
– Advocate for workers’ rights or labor organizing

The Red Scare / Anti-Communism
You’ll go to hell if you…
– Express sympathy for communism or Bolshevism
– Criticize American capitalism or free enterprise
– Participate in labor strikes (evidence of communist agitation)
– Attend meetings of socialist organizations
– Own or read communist literature
– Be Russian or Eastern European and politically active
– Question the Palmer Raids or defend those arrested
– Criticize deportations of radicals
– Defend Emma Goldman or other deported anarchists
– Speak Russian or other “suspicious” languages in public
– Support the Russian Revolution
– Question whether the communist threat is real
– Advocate for wealth redistribution or workers’ rights
– Be a union organizer (probable communist)
– Attend May Day celebrations
– Criticize J. Edgar Hoover or the Department of Justice
– Defend civil liberties of suspected radicals (makes you suspect too)

—

The Pattern of Moral Panic (1910-1930)
   Looking at this comprehensive list, several clear patterns emerge:

1. Control of Women
The largest category of moral panics involved controlling women’s:
– Bodies (clothing, hair, makeup)
– Behavior (smoking, drinking, dancing, voting)
– Sexuality (birth control, petting, casual dating)
– Mobility (driving, going out unchaperoned, canoeing)
– Economic independence (working, owning property)

   Nearly every expansion of women’s freedom was treated as a moral crisis. The panic wasn’t about the specific behavior—it was about women having autonomy.

2. Racial Panic
Black cultural creation—jazz, the Charleston, other music and dance forms—was systematically demonized as:
– Primitive and savage
– Sexually corrupting
– Evidence of moral inferiority
– A threat to white civilization
– Associated with the devil and African “voodoo”

   The panic about Black culture was inseparable from the panic about racial integration and the fear that white youth would be “contaminated” by Black cultural influence.

3. Technology as Threat
New technologies—movies, radio, automobiles, canoes, recording technology—were feared because they:
– Gave people freedom from traditional authorities
– Allowed unsupervised access to information and entertainment
– Enabled privacy and independence (especially for women and youth)
– Spread cultural influence across geographic boundaries
– Competed with church and family for influence

4. Youth Autonomy
   Young people having independence—going to movies, listening to jazz, dancing, dating without chaperones, canoedling, petting—represented a fundamental threat to parental and social control. The “generation gap” became a source of intense anxiety.

5. Modernity vs. Tradition
   Science (evolution), secularism, urbanization, and changing social norms were all framed as attacks on Christian civilization and traditional values. The 1920s represented a cultural war between Victorian morality and modern life.

6. Immigration and Nativism
   Immigrants—particularly from Southern and Eastern Europe—were blamed for bringing radical ideologies, crime, and cultural contamination. The Palmer Raids and anti-anarchist panic specifically targeted immigrant communities.

7. Legal Enforcement
Many of these moral panics resulted in actual laws:
– The Hays Code (movie censorship)
– Anti-evolution laws (multiple states)
– Anti-miscegenation laws
– Laws restricting women’s skirt length
– Prohibition (18th Amendment)
– Censorship boards (local and state)
– Women being fired for bobbed hair
– The Palmer Raids and deportations
– Immigration quotas targeting certain ethnicities

   People weren’t just condemned—they were arrested, prosecuted, fired, banned, and legally restricted.

—

What Actually Happened

   None of these things destroyed America.
   Jazz became America’s most important cultural export and is now taught in universities as a serious art form. Movies became the dominant art form of the 20th century. Women voted, worked, wore pants, cut their hair, and used birth control—and society not only survived but thrived. Evolution is taught in every legitimate science classroom. The Charleston is a quaint historical curiosity. Comic books evolved into graphic novels. Radio became ubiquitous. Petting became dating. Canoedling became parking. The Palmer Raids were condemned as unconstitutional.

But the panics left real damage:
– Decades of movie censorship that limited artistic expression
– Laws against teaching evolution that weakened science education
– Systematic demonization of Black culture and art
– Legal restrictions on women’s autonomy
– Criminalization of behavior that millions wanted to engage in
– Destruction of careers, prosecutions, and social ostracism
– Mass arrests and deportations of immigrants
– Establishment of government surveillance apparatus
– Immigration laws that discriminated by ethnicity

   And most importantly: the pattern continued. Each generation identified new threats, new sources of corruption, new signs that Satan was at work.
   The moral panic about jazz became the moral panic about rock and roll, then hip-hop. The panic about comic books became the panic about video games. The panic about movies became the panic about television, then the internet. The panic about women’s autonomy continues in new forms. The panic about immigrants and radicals resurfaces with each wave of newcomers.
   The devil’s supposed work is never done—because the devil was never really the problem. The problem was always the fear of change, the anxiety about losing control, and the conviction that new things are dangerous simply because they’re new.

—

Coming Next: 1930-1950
   The next volume will cover: television, rock and roll, comic book censorship, marijuana panic, juvenile delinquency, “reefer madness,” pin-up girls, bikinis, Communism, atomic anxiety, and whatever else Satan was supposedly up to while we recovered from the Depression and fought World War II.

—

Sources & Bibliography

Jazz Music
– History Today: “Who’s Afraid of the Jazz Monsters?” (October 2019)
– PBS Culture Shock: “The Devil’s Music: 1920s Jazz” (2000)
– Library of Congress: “Chronicling America – Early Jazz Music”
– Leonard, Neil. Research on religious opposition to ragtime and jazz
– Berlin, Edward. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History

Motion Pictures & Censorship
– Wikipedia: “Hays Code,” “Pre-Code Hollywood,” “Film censorship in the United States”
– JSTOR Daily: “The End of American Film Censorship” (2024)
– ACMI: “Early Hollywood and the Hays Code”
– Black, Gregory D. “Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies” (1994)
– GRIN: “The Question of Morality in American Film Censorship of the 1920s”

Flappers
– Wikipedia: “Flapper,” “Jazz Age”
– CBC Radio: “How the modern flapper gal of the 1920s spurred moral panic in Canada” (2020)
– Dangerous Women Project: “Gin, Short Skirts, and the Dangerous Women of the 1920’s” (2016)
– The Vintage News: “Flappers were a ‘new breed’ of young women” (2016)
– Knowles, Mark. The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances (2008)

Petting Parties
– NPR History Dept: “When ‘Petting Parties’ Scandalized The Nation” (2015)
– History.com: “The Scandalous Sex Parties That Made Americans Hate Flappers”
– Wikipedia: “Making out”
– Encyclopedia.com: “Petting”
– Fass, Paula S. The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s
– Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York
– Rothman, Ellen K. Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America

Canoedling
– Collectors Weekly: “Love Boats: The Delightfully Sinful History of Canoes”
– The Saturday Evening Post: “A Brief History of the Canoe”
– MinnPost: “10,000 years of canoe history captured in one book”
– Seattle Times: “Canoes: paddling through North American history”
– What It Means to Be American: “Why Canoes Are the Quintessential Vehicle for Escape”
– Pjcarlino.com: “Canoodling” (historical essay)
– Neuzil, Mark & Sims, Norman. Canoes: A Natural History in North America

Radio Broadcasting
– Federal Radio Commission historical documents (1927)
– Jazz & Blues music history archives
– Historical newspapers documenting radio censorship campaigns

Women’s Suffrage
– 19th Amendment ratification documents
– Anti-suffrage pamphlets and speeches (1910-1920)
– Historical newspapers documenting opposition to women’s suffrage

Charleston Dance
– Pickwick Club collapse documentation (1925)
– Contemporary newspaper coverage of Charleston dance controversy
– Dance history archives

First Red Scare / Palmer Raids
– FBI.gov: “Palmer Raids” (Famous Cases)
– Mass.gov: “Sacco & Vanzetti: The Red Scare of 1919-1920”
– Wikipedia: “Palmer Raids,” “Red Scare”
– Britannica: “Palmer Raids”
– Library of Congress: “Palmer Raids: Topics in Chronicling America”
– Bill of Rights Institute: “The Red Scare and Civil Liberties”
– History.com: “Palmer Raids – Definition, Purpose & 1920s”
– EnvisioningTheAmericanDream.com: “A New Decade, Same Xenophobia-1920 Palmer Raids”

Immigrant Anarchism
– PBS Ken Burns: “Unforgivable Blackness: The Mann Act”
– History.com: “The ‘White Slavery’ Law That Brought Down Jack Johnson”
– NPR: “The Long, Colorful History of the Mann Act”
– Wikipedia: “Mann Act”
– Various historical sources on Galleanist bombings and Sacco & Vanzetti case

Prohibition & Speakeasies
– Volstead Act (1920)
– Historical documentation of organized crime during Prohibition
– Repeal documentation (1933)

Comic Books
– Early comic book censorship documentation
– Educational journals discussing comics (1920s-1930s)

Evolution & Scopes Trial
– Scopes Trial transcripts (1925)
– Butler Act (Tennessee, 1925)
– Epperson v. Arkansas Supreme Court decision (1968)
– Contemporary newspaper coverage

Ouija Boards
– Religious publications warning about Ouija boards (1920s)
– Psychiatric literature on Ouija boards
– Historical advertising and marketing materials

—

   This is part of an ongoing documentary series examining moral panics throughout American history. Each installment covers a specific time period and the things people blamed on the devil, demons, or general moral corruption—before those things became completely normal parts of everyday life.