Transcript American Life in the “Roaring Twenties”

American Life in the
“Roaring Twenties”
Insulating America from the
radical virus
 America turns inward in the 1920s
– Shun diplomatic commitments
– Denounced radicals
– Closed gates of immigration
– Condemn un -American lifestyles
Seeing Red
Russian Revolution
 Russian revolution spawns small communist
party in America
 Strikes at wars end associated w/ reds
 Seattle strike said to be brought on by reds
Red Scare 1919-1920
 Nationwide crusade
against left wingers
 A. Mitchell PalmerAttorney General- led the
charge
 Fighting Quaker saw Red
too easily
 Rounded up about 6,000
suspects
 House bombed in 1919
 Buford- Soviet Ark
– 249 suspects deported to Russia
– Bomb on Wall Street kills 38 and wounds
hundreds
States join the red scare
 Anti Red laws
– against advocacy of violence to secure social
change
 critics aroused against freedom of speech
 IWWs and other radical groups prosecuted
 New York refused to seat 5 socialists in
legislature
 Conservatives like it
– Breaks backs of unions
– Closed shops called communistic
– Open shop was the American plan
Court Cases
 Sacco and Vanzetti
– Murder in
Massachusetts
– Jury and judge were
prejudice
– World rallies to their
defense
– Class struggle
– Evidence could not
convict them of
murder
Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK
 New group of Klan members in the 1920s
– More anti-foreign, Catholic, Black, Jewish,
Pacifist, Communist,Internationalist,
Evolutionist, Gambling, etc.
– Extremist ultra conservative group against
forces transforming American life
 Midwest and Bible Belt South
– 5 million dues paying members
– Camaraderie and adventure and secret rituals
– used huge parades, cross for warning, lash as a
weapon
 Collapses suddenly
– Became a financial racket
– members leave
– Leader (Stephenson) jailed for rape & murder
Stemming the Foreign Flood
 Immigrants began
flooding American
shores shortly after the
wars end
– Eastern and Southern
Europe
– 800,000
– Wretched refuse from
Europe
 Emergency Quota
Act of 1921
– Quota from any
given country
 3% if people of their
nationality had been
living in the us since
1910
 By 1910 many
immigrants had come
from Eastern and
Southern Europe
 Immigration act of 1924
– Quota is cut from 3% to 2%
– Shifted national origin base to 1890 from
1910
 Favored Northern Europe
 Southern Europe Protests
– Triumph for Nativists
– No Japanese immigration
 Hate America Rallies in Europe
– Canada and Latin America exempt for
need of workers in tough times
Departure in American
Foreign Policy
 Immigration dried up
 1931 more left than
came to America
 End of an Era
– End of unrestricted
immigration
– 35 million had come
to America
– Separated
immigrants from
native country
– Ethnic Variety
undermines political
and class solidarity
The Prohibition “Experiment”
 18th amendment
– Prohibition
– Advocated by women and churches
– enforced by the Volstead act
– 1919
 Popular in midwest and South
– Keep liquor out of hands of blacks
– Strong opposition
– Immigrants
– Old world sociability built around drink
 Naïve movement
– Tradition of strong drink and weak control by
central government
– Cannot make crime out of something that was
not a crime the day before
– Could not legislate thirst
 Peculiar conditions
– Serious doubts rise
very quickly
– wets thought to end
law, violate the law
 law makers call for
prohibition while drinking
 poor say only rich can
buy illegal brew
 put over while troops
were over there
 Enforcement weak
– Staff small
– Innocent bystanders
killed by mob violence
 Speakeasies
– Bars that ran illegally
– Bootleg liquor sold quite
well
 sold by gangsters and
rumrunners(smugglers)
 Adults began to make
their own
– Home brew or alky
cooking
 Success of prohibition
– bank savings increased
– Absentee workers
decline
– “Prohibition was better
than no liquor at all”
The Golden age of Gangsterism
 Shocking crimes because of Prohibition
– Bribery of police
– Violent gang wars
 Erase bootlegging competitors
 Over 500 killed in gang wars in Chicago
 Al Capone
– 6 years of gang warfare
in Chicago
– To control Alcohol
industry
– Could not be convicted
of St. Valentines day
Massacre of 1929
– Sentenced on income
tax evasion and
served11 years in
prison
 Other gangster areas
– Prostitution, gambling, and narcotics
– Protection money or be destroyed
– Moved into labor unions
– Organized crime became a gigantic business
 made more than the government
 1932 kidnapping of Lindbergh’s baby
– Murder leads to Lindbergh laws
 Interstate abduction a federal crime
Monkey Business in Tenneessee
 Education making
great strides
– More children getting a
high school education
– Required to stay in
longer
 John Dewey
– Set forth “learning by
doing”
– Sets forth progressive
education
– Education for life
primary goal of
teachers
 Schools became more
attractive
– Not a prison
 Science advances
– Rockefeller Foundation
had helped wipe out
hook worm
– Life expectancy rises
 Fundamentalists
– Teaching Darwinism was destroying faith in
bible and God
– Tried to get laws to prohibit its teaching
 Tennessee passes such a law
 Scopes Monkey trial
– 1925 in Dayton,
Tennessee
– John T. Scopes
challenges law by
teaching evolution in
class
– Becomes a nationwide
story
– Defended by Clarence
Darrow
– Fundamentalists led by
Wm. J Bryan
 Bryan takes stand and
is humiliated by
Darrow
– Dies shortly afterwards
 Clash really
inconclusive
– Scopes fined $100 but
Tennessee Supreme
Court set it aside
– Case cast ridiculous
absurdities of their case
 Fundamentalism remains
a vital force
The Mass Consumption
Economy
 American Economy surges forward
– Small depressionin 1920-1921
– War and Mellon’s tax polices helped economy
– New machines and cheap energy
– Assembly line production
 New industries
– Electric power
– Automobile
– 30 million cars sold by 1930
 Automobile showed shift in character of
economy
– Mastered production now had to master
consumption
 Growth of advertising
– Make Americans discontent with their lot
– New profession
 Bruce Barton “Man nobody knows”
– Talks of Jesus as greatest advertiser
– conquered the world
 Sports became big
business
– Babe Ruth and the
House that Ruth built
– Jack Dempsey Boxing
 first million dollar gate
 Buying on credit new
innovation
– Old Puritans go into
debt
– Prosperity accumulated
debt
 Vulnerable to disruptions
of economy
Putting America on Rubber
Tires
 New industrial revolution in America in
the 1920s
– Machinery was the means
 Automobile was the king
 Automobile creates a whole new
industrial system
– Automobile invented in Europe
– Fords and Olds creating infant industry in
us
– 1910, 69 companies put out 181,000
autos/ unreliable
 Frederick W. Taylor
– Father of Scientific
Management
 Sought to eliminate
wasted motion
 Henry Ford
– Creates the Model T
 Cheap, rugged, and
reasonably reliable
 Adapts and fully applies the assembly line
production of the automobile
– Only in black
– So efficient that the price went down to $260
 Thrifty workers could afford one
– 1914 Ford Produced his 500.000th Model T
 By 1930 over 20 million
 By the time of the crash in 1929 there was I
automobile for every 4.9 Americans
Advent of the Gasoline Age
 Impact of Automobile tremendous on
American life
– Replaces steel as king of industry
– 6 million employed in auto industries
 Supporting industries sprang up that created more
wealth
– Rubber, glass, fabrics, highway construction
 American Standard of living also rises
Effects of Auto industry
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Older industries die out
Oil industry booms
Railroads begin to die
Speedy marketing of perishables
Enriched farms
New roads
Agents of social change
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Necessity
Badge of freedom
Self respect
Open road vacations
Isolation among sections broken down
Americans own more cars than bathtubs
Consolidation of schools
Suburbs spread
Demon machine
 Thousands injured
– Americans become statistics
– By 1951 more Americans die in autos than wars
 Home life broke down
– Morals of youth break down
– Crime waves of 20s use automobile
No one willing to go back to horse
and buggy
 Brought more convenience , pleasure,
excitement than pollution and deaths
Humans Develop wings
 Orville and Wilbur
Wright In North
Carolina in Dec.17,
1903
– 12 seconds and 120
feet
The world shrinks
 Aviation grows slowly
– Stunt planes at first
– Used during WWI
– Private Passenger lines and mail carrying after
WWI
 New York to San Fran in 1920
 Charles Lindbergh in
1927
– $25,000 prize
– Crosses Atlantic in spirit
of St. Louis
 Lucky Lindy becomes
America’s hero
– Did much to dramatize
and popularize flying
– Gives boost to infant
aviation industry
Impact of the Airplane
1 .Gave American spirit another dimension
2 .Gave rise to new industry
3 .Death rate high at first
4 . Regular air travel by 1930s and 40s
5 .Increase tempo of civilization
6 .Hurt RR industry even more
7 .Making the world smaller
8 .New weapons of war
The Radio Revolution
 Guglielmo Marconi, invents wireless
telegraph in 1890s in Italy
– Used during WWI
 November 1920 KDKA airs the Harding
presidential race
– At first local only
– Began to broadcast to larger areas
– National commercial radio overcomes
local radio
Effects of the radio
 Draws families back to home
 Brings nation together
– Standardized shows
– Nationwide products
– American cultural standards
– Stimulated sports industry
– Politicians had to adjust to the radio
– Ministers used to reach millions of listeners
– Brought new music into homes
Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies
 Edison’s invention still a novelty in early
20th century
– Nickelodeons and peep shows
 The Great Train Robbery, and Birth of a
Nation (1915)
 Southern California becomes capital of film
industry
 Southern California
becomes capital of film
industry
– Censorship had to be
installed
– Came into use of
propaganda during
WWI
 1927 the first talkie
The Jazz Singer
– Al Jolsen
– Age if silent film gone
– Color also being tried
Effects of the movies
 Movies were the the
number 1 form of
entertainment
– Movie stars rose over
night
– More popular than
politics
 Effects
– Culture standardizes as
Vaudeville dies and
attracts immigrant youth
– Standardized language
and tastes
– Working class coalition
will emerge
The Dynamic Decade
 Changes in lifestyle and value of the 1920s
– More Americans lived in the cities than in the
rural areas
– Women finding work in the cities
– Margaret Sanger champions birth control
– National Women’s Party organizes
 Wants Equal Rights
– Some thought the world had gone mad
Churches affected
 Modernists gain
over
Fundamentalists
 Had to turn to
advertising and
marketing to
compete with new
forms of
entertainment
Erotic Eruption
 Advertisers exploit sex
 Flappers
– Goddess of the 20s
– Bobbed dresses
– Elevated hemlines
– Make up
– Symbolize independent woman, adventure
Sigmund Freud
 Justified for new sexual frankness
 Psychiatrist
 Health demanded sexual gratification
Many taboos go
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Teenagers pioneer the sexual frontier
Listened and danced to jazz
Sat in movie houses
Rode in cars
 Jazz was the sacred music of the age
– Begins in New Orleans and moves to the cities
with the black migration
 Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver ( Louis Armstrong)
 Whites get in on the act
New racial pride develops in AfricanAmericans
 Harlem was one of the
largest black
communities in the
world (100,000)
– Langston Hughes poet
Marcus Garvey
 Political leader
– United Negro Improvement Association
 Wanted to resettle blacks back to Africa
 Black was beautiful
 Avoid integration with whites
– He failed and was eventually deported
– Inspired many young blacks who had moved to
the cities
Literary Liberation
 Old novelists and literary giants dying out
– Some still popular like Edith Wharton and Willa
Cather
 New literary movement after WWI
– Not always from New England which had
dominated literature
– American literature now has new vitality,
imagination and artistic quality
 HL Menken
– Critical attitude toward
all American life
– Wrote in the Atlantic
Monthly
 Attacked the South,
Puritanism , middle class
values, Democracy,
prohibition, and more
 Writers searched for
new codes of morals
and understanding
and fresh forms of
expression
– Turn Against traditional
values
 F. Scott Fitzgerald
– This Side of Paradise becomes a bible for the
young
– Followed with The
Great Gatsby
 Theodore Drieser’s An
American Tragedy
 Ernest Hemmingway
– Affected by the war
– The Sun Also Rises Expatriates in Europe
after the war
– A Farewell To Arms War
 Sherwood Anderson
– Winesburg Ohio
– About small town life
 Sinclair Lewis
– Main Street - Women
against provincialism
– Babitt - Traditional
lifestyle
 William Faulkner
– Strong Southern writer
from Mississippi
– The Sound and the
Fury
– Writes about southern
character
 Strong New Poetry
– Ezra Pound
 Left America as the old bitch civilization gone in
the teeth
 T.S. Elliot
– Also left for Europe
 Robert Frost
– Wrote about New England
 EE. Cummings
– Most daring of all poets
 Drama
– Eugene O’Niell
 Laid bare Freudian sexual notions
 Noble prize in 1936
 From New York’s Greenwich Village
Harlem Renaissance
 New outpouring of
creative art from
blacks in New York
 Louis Armstrong,
Langston Hughes,
Zora Neale Hurston
 Called for the New
Negro with full
citizenship rights
Architecture
 New materialism and functionalism
– Frank Lloyd Wright
 Buildings should grow from their sites
 Not imitate Greek and Roman styles
 Empire State Building finished in 1931
 Machine age out does itself
Wall Street’s Big Bull Market
 American standard of
living rises
– Even though banks
failed and scams were
everywhere economy
kept right on rolling
 Stock Market a great
lure for wealth
– Stock Market becomes
a gambling den
– Stock prices soared
– Speculation runs wild
 Buying on Margin
– Everyone was doing
it even the little guy
– Rags to Riches
stories all over
 Washington does
not help
– Debt rose during war
years
– From $1.8 billion to
over$23 billion
 Bureau of Budget
created in 1921
– Work with president to
create a budget
– Want to stop
extravagant
appropriations
 Andrew Mellon - Sec of Treasury
– Tax Burden on rich hurts economy
 Forced to invest in tax exempt securities not in
industry to create jobs
 Discouraged business
 Brought less into treasury
 Mellon’s tax reduction for the “poor” rich
– Repealed excess profits tax, abolished the gift
tax, reduced excise taxes
– Rich taxed less
– Tax Burden transferred to middle income
groups
 Controversial figure
– Reduced national debt by $10 billion
– Rich wanted more tax cuts
– Indirectly encouraging the bull market
 If income would have paid off national debt then less
money for speculation and crash