never heard that complaint leveled against the 'greatest generation' ..........
The August 13, 1927 issue of the Southeast Missourian reads: “Modern Youth on Down Grade.” Dr. Stagg, director of athletics at the University of Chicago declares, “It is [youth] guilty of more violations of morality and honesty than ever before” (“Mothers Blamed by Dr. Stagg” 1). Inez Haynes Irwin, a renowned feminist, is also abashed by the perceived lack of morals of the Greatest Generation. She protested youth in the August 21, 1927 issue of the Milwaukee Journal, “They are frightful, terrible, horrible. They have no manners. They have no morals. They race around in automobiles all day, and they dance in cabarets all night. They smoke. They drink.” They are also guilty of a lack of social responsibility (Irwin), an observation entirely inconsistent with a generation that would later fight genocide. “New Generation of Lazy Youths Roaming Nation” reads a title in the July 28, 1934 issue of the Spokane Daily Chronicle. A columnist complains about “shiftless boys…growing into manhood with no more ambition than to rove around the country” (“New Generation of Lazy Youths” 15). These boys would be fighting a war in just a few years and might have been “roaming” the nation because of the collapse of world economies that left thirty million Americans jobless.
Another disgruntled adult, George J. Chandler wrote to the Milwaukee Sentinel in October of 1940 lamenting youth with their “gambling, drinking and erotic pastimes.” He also accuses them of the horrendous crime of dancing the Jitterbug as opposed to ballroom and preferring swing over classical (Chandler). Also writing to the Milwaukee Sentinel in October 19, 1941, is an actual member of this godless generation who finds fault among her peers when she ponders, “What is wrong with America’s young people?” She expresses her rage at how they “expect the world to be brought to them on a silver platter” (Creed). While little empirical data exists on the characteristics of this generation, one does not need a fancy graph to know these statements sound familiar
