I genuinely don't know. I have a history degree, but have mostly read European early-modern, not American or 20th c. history. I think you're right about manual / un-trained labor jobs being more prevalent / available. The 20s were a decade of full employment, too, so that had to have had an effect. To your list I'll add a few speculative ideas:
1) Housing was easier to come by. Not nice housing, mind you, but there were boarding houses and "SRO" accommodation, at achievable prices, more available than there are today. There were also (this goes to your social support suggestion) nation-wide organizations, like the YMCA and the Salvation Army, who were committed to sheltering people living on the margins of society. They were more successful, and more economical, than localized "homeless shelters" seem to be today. Many people start using substances because they're on the street, and I'd guess that many of them wouldn't if they were in more comfortable circumstances. You'd know more about this than I: what do you think?
2) Along the same lines: drugs, as we have them now certainly weren't the same thing - no fentanyl, no crack; marginal weed, opium, cocaine; all of them relatively more expensive than they are today. People can, however, just as surely ruin their lives just with alcohol. Maybe the fact that booze was illegal during the 20s made it enough harder to get fucked up that that had a marginal effect?
3) The surveillance state wasn't a thing. If you didn't choose to disclose it there was no way for a prospective employer to know that you were a felon and disqualify you for a job on that basis. Heck, if you wanted to change your name and move somewhere else to start an entirely new life there were many fewer obstacles to that than there are today.
4) Mental hospitals. For all of their much-publicized abuses, they kept obviously unstable people off the streets and out of the penal system. I don't know what to think about them overall, but there's nothing like that anymore.
But, we should be wary of overstating our case. The US in the 1920s was a much poorer country, and in general its penal system was harsher than it is today. We shouldn't be eager bring back chain gangs, or early 20th c. execution rates. They did, however, have an enthusiastic constituency for reform, and at least local successes, like the system with which my relative was involved. I don't see either today, when even "Progressives" seem to propose only modest, marginal reforms.
I genuinely don't know. I have a history degree, but have mostly read European early-modern, not American or 20th c. history. I think you're right about manual / un-trained labor jobs being more prevalent / available. The 20s were a decade of full employment, too, so that had to have had an effect. To your list I'll add a few speculative ideas:
1) Housing was easier to come by. Not nice housing, mind you, but there were boarding houses and "SRO" accommodation, at achievable prices, more available than there are today. There were also (this goes to your social support suggestion) nation-wide organizations, like the YMCA and the Salvation Army, who were committed to sheltering people living on the margins of society. They were more successful, and more economical, than localized "homeless shelters" seem to be today. Many people start using substances because they're on the street, and I'd guess that many of them wouldn't if they were in more comfortable circumstances. You'd know more about this than I: what do you think?
2) Along the same lines: drugs, as we have them now certainly weren't the same thing - no fentanyl, no crack; marginal weed, opium, cocaine; all of them relatively more expensive than they are today. People can, however, just as surely ruin their lives just with alcohol. Maybe the fact that booze was illegal during the 20s made it enough harder to get fucked up that that had a marginal effect?
3) The surveillance state wasn't a thing. If you didn't choose to disclose it there was no way for a prospective employer to know that you were a felon and disqualify you for a job on that basis. Heck, if you wanted to change your name and move somewhere else to start an entirely new life there were many fewer obstacles to that than there are today.
4) Mental hospitals. For all of their much-publicized abuses, they kept obviously unstable people off the streets and out of the penal system. I don't know what to think about them overall, but there's nothing like that anymore.
But, we should be wary of overstating our case. The US in the 1920s was a much poorer country, and in general its penal system was harsher than it is today. We shouldn't be eager bring back chain gangs, or early 20th c. execution rates. They did, however, have an enthusiastic constituency for reform, and at least local successes, like the system with which my relative was involved. I don't see either today, when even "Progressives" seem to propose only modest, marginal reforms.