In 1904, muckraker John Spargo's The Bitter Cry of the Children augured the determination of Missionaries in their thirties and forties to do better for a new generation, to join forces and seal off the child's world from urban danger and adult vice. In government and family life, Missionaries began building what Emmett Holt called "antiseptic" child environments. New vitamin-rich diets and anti-hookworm campaigns promoted the cause of child health. A "milk station" movement culminated in widespread pasteurization, while Little Mothers' Leagues advised parents, "Don't give the baby beer to drink." (Indeed, a major purpose of Prohibition itself was to push alcohol away from the presence of children.)26
Thanks to the "protective food" movement, capital investment in food processing grew faster than that of any other industry between 1914 and 1929. Businesses that had once exploited children with impunity now found themselves facing public outcry and legal punishment.
In most measures of health, the Greatest showed a swifter improvement over their next-elders than any other American generation: infant and child mortality fell by 50 percent.27
The rate of child labor fell by half during the Greatest youth era--the largest one-generation decline ever. These were the first boys and girls whose pin money came from "allowances" for good behavior, not from earnings. They put three-fourths of their allowance money into school supplies, church boxes, or savings. From the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, the proportion of youths doing the family dishes rose from 32 to 52 percent, even as more adults remained at home.28
Missionaries were determined to see their offspring grow up as "clean-cut" as the world being created for them. From Pollyanna to Little Orphan Annie, popular literature idealized children who were modest, cheerful, and deferential to adults. As the Literary Digest demanded "a reassertion of parental authority," Missionary parents proclaimed the first Mother's Day (in 1908) and Father's Day (in 1910), and founded new scouting organizations to redirect the "gang instinct" to useful purpose. Armies of young scouts learned to help others, do things in teams, develop group pride, and show respect to adults--in short, to show virtues seldom seen in the circa-1900 Lost Generation street urchins.29
Nearly the entire array of modern scouting organizations were founded by midlife Missionaries just when the first-wave Greatest were reaching puberty: Boy Scouts (1910), Camp Fire Girls (1912), and 4-H Clubs (1914). From their scouting days forward, the Greatest have been the most uniformed generation in American history.30
Public education showed a parallel interest in instilling the skills of productive citizenship. Most of the "progressive" Lost-era experiments were replaced by a new emphasis on "vocational" education ("home economics" for girls, "industrial education" for boys). For the first time ever, more teens were in class than out, making school an important socializing force. Thus arose the golden era of high school, well captured in the teen-movie musicals of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The ethos: Work hard, play by the rules, and everybody gets a reward.31
The Greatest Generation produced by far the largest one-generation in educational achievement in American history. From Lost Generation to the Greatest, the average length of schooling rose from the ninth grade to the twelfth, the share of 20-year-olds attending college tripled, and math and science aptitudes rose sharply. Meanwhile, the proportion of high school students taking foreign languages fell from a pre--World War I peak of 83 percent to a World War II--era low of 21 percent. On campus, religious or "missionary" organizations experienced a sharp decline in memberships during the 1920s--and practically disappeared during the 1930s.32
Upon reaching adolescence, the new youths began building the peer society they would retain through life. Adults encouraged kids to police themselves, though always under the resolute grip of adult authority that grew tighter with each advancing decade. According to historian Daniel Rodgers, parents "injected a new, explicit insistence on conformity into child life." Starting at a very young age, kids learned to be sharers and helpers. (Two-year-old George H. W. Bush [41] acquired the nickname "Have-Half" because he liked to give half his presents to his elder brother.) In an increasingly standardized youth culture, teens watched the same movies, listened to the same radio songs, and packed the Rose Bowl and other new 100,000-seat stadia to cheer the same sporting events.33
Having "fine friends" and a busy extracurricular life became more important than getting higher grades than other students. Fraternities and sororities imposed rigid pressures on youths to stay within the bounds of the normal, and administered a ritual of "rating and dating" (understood lists of "do's and don'ts") to control the libido. Those who were too forward or too shy faced peer disapproval, as did those who did not engage in "fair play" (a notion the Lost Generation, at like age, would have found bizarre).34
Youths began taking pride in their ability to achieve as a group, to fulfill the 4-H Club motto and "make the best better." By the mid-1920s, the word kid shifted in meaning from a word of elder criticism to one of praise. The Lost Generation Joseph Krutch described his juniors as "not rebellious, or cynical, or even melancholy. They do what they are told, believe what they are told, and hope for the best." The Lost Malcolm Cowley remarked how the "brilliant college graduates" of the 1920s "pictured a future in which everyone would be made secure by collective planning and social discipline."35