Nothing Gold Can Stay (Historical Context)

Historical Context

From today’s perspective, the year that Frost published this poem, 1923, can be seen as a time of glamour, excitement, and prosperity. America was in the middle of the socially vibrant era referred to as “The Jazz Age”: the term had, in fact, just recently been popularized by the 1922 publication of Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novels and short stories are considered by scholars to have captured the spirit of the twenties better than any other writer. The Jazz Age was a social epoch that took place, predominantly among young adults, after the conclusion of World War I in 1919. During this war, young Americans had encountered devastation on a scale to which no previous generation had been exposed. In addition to the sheer global magnitude of the war (32 nations were involved, resulting in the deaths of 37 million military personnel and 10 million civilians; direct costs of the war topped $186 billion), there was the shocking brutality that modern warfare could achieve with new, sophisticated weaponry such as airplane bombs, land mines, and mustard gas. With much of the industrialized world damaged during the war, the United States quickly rose to economic prominence. The generation that became disillusioned with life by witnessing so much wanton destruction had more to spend on self-destructive living than most prosperous postwar societies. Added to this was the fact that, in 1920, the Constitution’s Eighteenth Amendment, prohibited manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor in the United States. Some say this did more to make a self-destructive generation more likely to seek liquor out than avoid it. The Jazz Age embraced flamboyant parties of dancing to “corruptive” jazz music (which, was new, allegedly wild, and associated with troublemakers) and drinking bootleg — or illegally obtained — liquor. The Jazz Age lasted throughout the 1920s, until 1929, when the stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression made it difficult for the aging revelers to laugh at responsibility any more.

The growth of the U.S. economy during the 1920s was truly incredible, making its abrupt reversal by the crash of 1929 all that much more stunning. In retrospect, we can see Frost’s phrase “Nothing gold can stay” as somewhat of a prophesy that applied directly to the rising economic cycle of the times. When the poem was published, however, too many people were busy making too much money for his abstract point to have much effect. Between 1923 and 1929, U.S. corporate profits increased an astounding 62 percent, and dividends to shareholders grew by 65 percent (compare this to the fact that a good, stable investment today will yield eight to ten percent). Much of this huge growth represented profits from investments which were immediately re-invested: often, no real money or goods were involved, but only theoretical earnings, which was why the crash wiped away so many fortunes overnight. Pay for the workers who actually produced goods and services (and who are therefore a better indicator of the country’s true prosperity) rose only 11 percent in the six years following 1923. With so much economic growth resting upon such a small amount of actual production, it was inevitable that the economic system could not handle the flow of imaginary cash: every day during the 1920s one to three banks in the United States went out of business. Many people recognized that the incredible luck of investors was bound to change at any moment, but they still invested, hoping to make a quick fortune and hoping that it would be the next investors who would suffer the consequences when the system crashed. In addition to the profit frenzy in legitimate business, confidence schemes thrived in the twenties. They offered common people the chance to realize huge earnings by investing their savings in land deals, holding companies, and foreign corporations that often did not actually exist.

Organized crime flourished in the 1920s, built mainly by the profits made by selling the illegal liquor that the public demanded. Because legitimate business could not have anything to do with liquor, the supply was low, but demand existed for any type of alcoholic beverage available. Because the demand was so high, criminals could charge an inflated price and always find someone willing to pay it. By 1926, illegal liquor trafficking was estimated to be a $3.6 billion business. Otherwise law-abiding citizens came to associate with criminals at illegal saloons known as “speakeasies,” and much of the easy money that investors were scooping up in the stock market was funneled to crime organizations, where it blended with the profits from murder, prostitution, and extortion. By the late 1920s, more and more Americans came to feel that Prohibition was a “failed experiment”: this feeling became even stronger after the start of the Depression, when it was felt that Prohibition deprived people of jobs. It was repealed by the 21 st Amendment of 1933. The crime organizations that had provided liquor during Prohibition already had a strong foothold in the American economy and transferred their attention into other illegal activities.

Compare & Contrast

• 1923: Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was officially established.

  1945: At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union took control of most of the eastern European countries that Germany had overthrown. To oppose their control, the United States organized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), solidifying cooperation with the nations of western Europe.

  1961: To discourage emigration out of East Germany, which it controlled, the USSR built the Berlin Wall.

  1989: The Soviet Union came apart. First, Poland held free elections — its first since Communist takeover — and elected a non-Communist government. Then the economies of Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania collapsed. In a final, symbolic move, the Berlin Wall was opened and soon after dismantled by the hands of elated citizens.

  1991: The Union of Soviet Socialists Republic officially disbanded.

  Today: Countries of the former Soviet Union are welcome to voluntarily belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States.

• 1923: Volume 1, number 1 of Time magazine was published. This was the first of the national newsweekly magazines.

  1933: The first issue of News-Week magazine was published and competed with Time for readers.

  1936:Life, a magazine devoted mainly to photographs, was first published by the Time corporation and proved to be extremely successful.

  1972: With more people turning to color television for their view of the contemporary world, Life magazine suspended publication.

  Today: In order to keep up with fast-paced electronic news sources, Time and Newsweek, along with most daily papers, are available on the Internet.

• 1923: Clarence Birdseye, who had spent six years developing a method of quick-freezing fish in order to preserve their flavor during storage, opened Birdseye Seafood in New York. Lacking financial backing, he went bankrupt.

  1929: General Foods was created by a merger of the foundering Birdseye company with 34-year-old Postum, which owns the rights to Jell-O, Minute Tapioca, Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, Log Cabin Syrup, Calumet Baking Powder, and Maxwell House Coffee, among others.

  1939: Under the Birdseye label, General Foods introduced the first precooked frozen foods: chicken fricassee and criss-cross steak.

  1985: General Foods was bought by tobacco giant Philip Morris Company, creating the world’s largest consumer products company.

  Today: The Birdseye name is owned by Dean Foods, a much smaller conglomerate.