The "New Era" of the 1920s, as contemporaries called it, was far more important than traditional stereotypes of a frivolous and self-absorbed "Jazz Age" imply. The decade witnessed the birth of modern America, as the transforming forces of modern life--technology, bureaucratization, suburbanization, and consumerism--vastly accelerated. Yet modernism did not mix easily with more traditional values. Americans of the decade, therefore, simultaneously looked back toward a cherished past of neighborliness, small communities, and comfortable sameness and forward toward a glorious future of machines, consolidated organization, and middle-class urban living. However, by the end of the decade, the corporate industrial economy had grown for more than half a century. Along with its strengths, serious weaknesses had developed. Few Americans noticed them because of their hot pursuit of material wealth. The consumer culture of the 1920s and a business-oriented government promoted the pursuit not only of money but of debt as well. When mass purchasing power could no longer sustain prosperity, the economy collapsed.