Twentieth Century
Although industry was rapidly expanding throughout the northern part of the state, Indiana remained largely rural at the turn of the 20th century with a growing population of 2.5 million. Like much of the rest of the American Midwest, Indiana's exports and job providers remained largely agricultural until after World War I. Indiana's developing industry, backed by inexpensive natural gas from the large Trenton Gas Field, an educated population, low taxes, easy access to transportation, and business-friendly government, led Indiana to grow into one of the leading manufacturing states by the mid-1920s.
In 1907, during the administration of Governor Frank Hanly, Indiana became the first state in the Union to adopt eugenics legislation, then considered part of the Progressive Movement. It was in effect until ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Indiana in 1921. A revised eugenics law was passed in 1927, and it remained in effect until 1974. Hanly was also a spokesman in the temperance movement.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway complex was built in 1909, inaugurating a new era in history. With the new invention of the automobile, Indianapolis rivaled Detroit in auto manufacturing for several years. The speedway was a venue for auto companies to show off their products. The Indianapolis 500 quickly became the standard in auto racing as European and American companies competed to build the fastest automobile and win at the track. Industrial and technological industries thrived during this era, George Kingston developed an early carburetor in 1902; in 1912, Elwood Haynes received a patent for stainless steel.
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Famous quotes related to twentieth century:
“... the nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. Not.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious ‘retreat’ of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)