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Axios
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Revisiting Utah's great flapper debate of the 1920s
A century ago this week, SLC flung itself into a heated debate: Were flappers marriage material? This is Old News, where we examine the shifting hemlines of Utah's past. The big picture: The 1920s brought a redefinition in women's roles and ideals, from social mores to fashion. Flappers rejected the corsets — real and metaphorical — of yore, delaying marriage in favor of independence, dating and adventure. Skirts and hair became shorter than ever before, and jazz matched dances that showed off women's newly-exposed legs. What drove the news: The Salt Lake Telegram launched a short essay contest to answer the question, "Should a flapper marry?" Hundreds of letters poured in from around the state. The intrigue: You might expect Utahns' answers to veer toward the pearl-clutching — which some did. But, the editors declared, "the contest goes to the flappers." Losers: The flappers' detractors were, as you'd expect, bitter over men's loss of control over their wives, dismissive of women's value in any sphere outside homemaking — and still PO'd about suffrage. Winners: The flappers' defenders — many of them men — noted the unfair double-standard that damned young women for doing the same things that young men had always done. Some said flappers would turn out smarter and stronger than their foremothers. What they said:"I picked out the flappiest flapper in mu' hometown, an' took her seventy-five miles out in the country to help me boss a ranch," wrote one "Sagebrush Sandy" from Delta. It was all "a great big game," he said. "Cookin', ridin' range, carin' for a sick puncher, goin' t' a dance, watchin' a perty sunset — all fun an' part o' the game of livin'." The bottom line: Pour one out for Sagebrush Sandy, Utah's original Wife Guy. Previously in Old News
Axios
18-02-2025
- Business
- Axios
Amid Trump tariffs, the econ lesson Ferris Bueller missed
As President Trump enacts his protectionist trade agenda, a Depression-era tariff law is gaining new relevance: The Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. The intrigue: The Act, sponsored by Utah's Sen. Reed Smoot, earned its modern fame in 1986 as the boring classroom arcana that illustrates why Ferris Bueller couldn't possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this. Welcome to Old News, our weekly fake fever dream about Utah's past. Flashback: In his blockbuster "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," John Hughes cast Ben Stein, a presidential speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, as the droning econ teacher whose class Bueller ditches. Stein explains to the glazed-over students how the 1930 tariffs backfired by stopping trade rather than generating tax revenue. Reality check: The tariffs were less about collecting revenue than giving American businesses an advantage. Context: In the 1920s, technology like automobiles and electricity rapidly made farms and factories so productive that the U.S. ended up with an oversupply of many goods. That lowered prices to where many businesses were selling at a loss. Zoom in: Farmers were at particular risk, and their commodities and land were losing value well before the 1929 stock crash. Taxing imports would stabilize prices domestically, protectionists argued. Yes, but: Other industries wanted their own tariffs, and they found a receptive audience in Smoot — the "high priest of tariff protection," per the Salt Lake Telegram. If you stuck a lump of coal through Smoot's tariffs, in two weeks you'd have a lump of coal that costs as much as a diamond. What happened: Smoot and Oregon Rep. Willis Hawley drafted what became the second-highest tariff rates in U.S. history. Did it work? Anyone? It did not work. Other countries retaliated with their own tariffs. Global trade petered out. The score was nothing to nothing, and the Bears were winning. The bottom line: The Great Depression got worse, and the Smoot-Hawley Act is now seen as one of the " most catastrophic acts in congressional history." After five Senate terms, Smoot lost his next election — as did Hawley and then-President Hoover. Hoover, who signed the act reluctantly, is particularly maligned for not having the backbone to rein in its scope. The meek get pinched, the bold survive. Fast forward: During Trump's first term, economists compared his trade positions to Smoot-Hawley, even quoting from the warnings economists sent to Hoover in 1930. State of play: Those comparisons have revived since Trump promised broader tariffs during his second term — including one from Stein himself. Trump is now ushering in an era in which trade policy is managed country by country, using sweeping tariffs to address what his administration calls unfair trade dynamics, Axios' Courtenay Brown reports. The latest: He recently threatened reciprocal tariffs on any country with import duties that are higher than what the U.S. charges. What we're watching: Whether Trump makes good on a separate, 25% tariff against Canada and Mexico. That is now set to take effect March 1 after being pushed back earlier in February. Previously in Old News When Alta was seen as "the jaws of death" The Fort Utah Massacre: Murder, execution and decapitation The most popular baby in SLC A vigilante killing in Hell's Hollow Donny Osmond's debut
