Chapter Nine Sad Fate of the Water-cooled Tube The years at the end of the twenties were high-spirited euphoric times. Well they deserved the name the "Roaring Twenties". Just as the "Sixties" forty years later polarized the values of the youn¬ ger and older generations, so did the twenties. Sedate Victorians blushed and remonstrated at Charleston kicking, bead-swinging flappers. Jazz blared, drowning out the soft strings of Victor Herbert , and fast cars were pushing horses off the roads back to the confines of the farm. There was prohibition, bathtub gin and gangsters in the United States. On Prince Edward Island there was prohibition too, and rum-runners carried on a lucrative trade with the American underworld. Stockmarket investments were making millionaires—on paper—overnight. Almost everyone with a few dollars to spare was having a flutter on the stock- market. Talking pictures were making the world laugh and cry on a scale never known before; and, of course, so was radio. Rural places, such as Prince Edward Island , were having an enor¬ mous dint made in their insularity; and as Dad had predicted, the Aladdin's Lamp of radio had opened up a fantasy world of hitherto untold riches and sophistication. A great aping—especially among the young—of opulent classes began to take place as these were presented through the movies and radio. This opulence was represented in many ways, from society chit-chat columns in newspapers and magazines to different kinds of radio programs. In the U.S . many broadcasting com¬ panies did remotes from large hotels. Through radio, the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria and the palm-treed lobby of the Grand Hotel in 73