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:
“If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley’s footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990)
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“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)
“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)