*With apologies to Messrs. Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle, and Moon. (Who?)
In my last “View” I explored reports that suggested that Americans’ attitudes about the workplace had changed “remarkably” and reviewed some of the factors that affected work expectations for both the baby boomer and millennial generations.
In drafting that essay, I became curious about who is responsible for developing those names, and wondered whether it was some government agency. In this essay, I continue my inquiry and abundant commentary on generations, focusing on the 20th century period that preceded the Boomers.
Generational theorists William Strauss and Neil Howe defined America’s generations in their 1991 book “Generations: The History of America’s Future”; and posited 18 generations that occupied the United States beginning with the founding of the first English colony — i.e., the short-lived Roanoke colony. They considered America’s history as a sequence of generational cohorts that began in 1584; they then examined how differences among generations could shape attitudes, behaviors, and the course of history. Most of their proposed names still hold.
“The Capitol Steps”:
Of special note; in 1981, and prior to his career as a generational scholar, William Strauss, a baby boomer, organized a group of Senate staffers to perform satirical songs at the annual Christmas party of his employer, Senator Charles Percy (R-IL); and then went on to co-found the satirical troupe, “The Capitol Steps”, who performed parodies of contemporaneous administrations, political events, and scandals — on a very bipartisan basis.
The ”Steps” continued performing well into the 21st century under their trademark, “We put the ‘mock’ in democracy”. They released 40 albums, performed live in concert, and before a few, but not all presidents, and also on SNL as well as both PBS and NPR, the latter in their annual “Politics Takes a Holiday” specials.
The group is named for an alleged scandal involving a congressman that occurred behind a pillar on the steps of the Capitol Building. However, my editor in this publication doesn’t do salacious; and unwilling to risk her red sharpie, I include none of that event’s tawdry details in this essay. By way of context, their song and album titles include “One Bush, Two Bush, Old Bush, New Bush”, “Between Iraq and a Hard Place”, and “Orange Is the New Barack.”
The “Lost Generation”:
Gertrude Stein, an American expatriate living in France, is usually credited with creating the name, “The Lost Generation”, for those born near the turn of the 20h century and coming of age during World War I (WWI). “Lost” refers to the “disoriented and directionless” spirit that affected many of the War’s survivors in the aftermath of the War’s horrific bloodshed.
The countries engaged in that, “War to end all wars” mobilized more than 70 million people; — about 8.5 million who were killed, 21 million who were wounded, and an estimated 2 million, who died from disease.
Unfortunately, the generation was also very vulnerable in the 1918 flu pandemic, which was first identified in American military personnel in the spring of 1918; and then spread globally. It became, at the time, one of history’s deadliest pandemics, with an estimated 50 million deaths, worldwide.
American women entered the military in uniform for the first time in WWI, many serving as nurses and ambulance drivers on the front line. On the homefront, they filled jobs that had been vacated by fighting men, or created as part of the war effort. By 1918, munitions factories collectively became the largest employer of women in the United States.
Wartime service enabled women to claim full citizenship, and in the War’s aftermath, they gained greater political freedom. Significantly, the 19th amendment, which guaranteed American women the right to vote, was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920.
“Lost” also become synonymous with the large group of American expat writers living in France after the War; which included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and poets E.E. Cummings and Ezra Pound.
Notably, Ms. Stein wrote “You are all a lost generation” as the epigram in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”, which was published in 1926.
The Curse of the Bambino:
Boston Red Sox fans have a special link to this generation. On Dec. 26, 1919, Red Sox owner and theatrical producer, Harry Frazee made the regrettable decision to sell baseball superstar, Babe Ruth, (aka the “Bambino”), to the New York Yankees.
Adding insult to injury, Frazee used the proceeds to finance the production of a Broadway musical, usually said to be “No, No, Nanette”. According to baseball folklore, the sale precipitated an 86-year-championship drought that finally ended in 2004 when the Red Sox beat the Cardinals.
The Silent Generation:
This generation includes those born just before the Great Depression and through the end of World War II (WWII). They are the progeny of “The Lost Generation” and the parents of the baby boomers. Many were children during WWII, and came of age during the 1950s and 60s. They are sometimes referred to as “Radio Babies”; and, of course, radio was an important source of news and entertainment. They relied on FDR’s evening broadcasts, the “fireside chats”, for information on the recovery from the Great Depression and news of WWII.
In addition, American broadcast journalist and war correspondent, Edward R. Murrow, set the standard for frontline journalism during the War with a series of live radio broadcasts for CBS News from the London rooftops during the nightly “Blitz” of Britain’s capital city by Hitler’s Luftwaffe.
The “Silents” bore witness to the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ intrusive investigation of “alleged disloyalty and subversive activities” by private citizens, public employees, and organizations alleged to have “fascist or communist ties”, which included the Hollywood movie industry. Created in 1938, the Committee had a significant role in the decision to relocate and incarcerate more than 100,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps during WWII.
These attacks on America’s political freedoms extended beyond the House investigation to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s false and unfounded accusations of subversion and treason in the media, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Army, and the Screen Actors Guild. Americans became cautious and did not speak freely about their opinions and beliefs. Unable to produce any credible evidence, McCarthy was finally condemned by the Senate on Dec. 2, 1954.
“Time Magazine” described the generation’s young as withdrawn, and cautious in a 1951article. “The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum.” The article used the term “Silent Generation” to refer to those individuals … and the label remains.
Perhaps inevitably, the generation also witnessed the emergence of the “beat movement”, which originated with a group of anti-conformist Greenwich Village authors and artists of the mid-1940s and early-1950s, who challenged the cultural and social norms of the period. They first met in 1944 at Columbia University.
The core group in the formative years of the movement include authors Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. By 1960, they ended up together in San Francisco, where they were associated with the San Francisco Renaissance. The movement also influenced many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jerry Garcia and the Doors.
The Greatest Generation:
Strauss and Howe identified the generation that fought in WWII as the “G.I. Generation”. However, “G.I.” was replaced when Tom Brokaw’s cultural history of the Great Depression and WWII, “The Greatest Generation”, was published in 1998.
In 1984, Brokaw went to Normandy, to work on a documentary on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. He commented on his inspiration to write “The Greatest Generation”: “there on the beaches of Normandy I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives were laced with the markings of greatness.”
Brokaw profiled Americans, who came of age during the Great Depression and went on to either fight in the War or contribute to the war effort on the home front.
He wrote that “these men and women fought not for fame or recognition, but because it was the “right thing to do”; and applauded them “for their ability to adapt and thrive in crisis and for leaving the world better than they found it”.
Sources:
- Strauss, William and Howe, Neil. “Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069”. William Morrow & Company, 1991.
- Townshend, Pete. “My Generation”. Brunswick Records, 1965.
- Vyse, Graham. “The Fall of the Capitol Steps“. The Washington Post Magazine, 02/16/2022.
- Brokaw, Tom. “The Greatest Generation”. Random House, 1998.
- Hemingway, Ernest. “The Sun Also Rises”. Scribners, 1926.
- Wells, H.G.” The War That Will End War” F. & C. Palmer, 1914.
- Belser, Jessica A. and Tumpey, Terrence M. “The 1918 flu, 100 years later”. Science Jan 18, 2018 Vol35, No. 6373
- Alexander, Roy; editor. “People: The Younger Generation.” Time, November 5, 1951 | Vol. LVIII No. 19
- Sperber, Ann M. “Murrow: His Life and Times”. Freundlich Books 1986.
Author’s Comments: I can relate to the “named” generations more so than I can to the various alphabet cohorts. For example, those that were born last or this year are in Gen “Alpha”, which really isn’t too bad, although it sounds a little science fiction-ish. Right before the Alphas are the “zoomies” of Gen Z.
I recognize that I cut the beat movement a little short in in my discussion of “The Silent Generation,” although it had great influence in the United States.
I read Jack Kerouac as a high school student; probably because he was described as the icon of the movement. He published more than a dozen novels and several poetry volumes, and became an underground celebrity after his second published novel, “On the Road”, in 1957.
In closing, I want to challenge the members of either of the two book clubs that Christina participates in to read one of his novels at an upcoming meeting. For the record, I don’t endorse Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”.
Editor’s Note: This is the opinion of Thomas D. Gotowka.
About the author: Tom Gotowka is a resident of Old Lyme, whose entire adult career has been in healthcare. He will sit on the Navy side at the Army/Navy football game. He always sit on the crimson side at any Harvard/Yale contest. He enjoys reading historic speeches and considers himself a scholar of the period from FDR through JFK. A child of AM Radio, he probably knows the lyrics of every rock and roll or folk song published since 1960. He hopes these experiences give readers a sense of what he believes “qualify” him to write this column.