Transcript The Twenties 1920

Out of Many
Chapter 23
Post-War Prosperity: The Causes

Increased productivity
 Manufacturing process made more efficient w/
methods of mass production
 Henry Ford & the assembly line

Energy technologies
 Increased use of oil & electricity
 Coal was still used for the RR & home heating

Government Policy
 Favored the growth of big business
 Offered corporate tax cuts
 Did almost nothing to enforce the antitrust
laws of the Progressive era
Welfare Capitalism
A paternalistic system of labor relations
emphasizing management responsibility for
employee well-being
 Challenged the power & appeal of trade
unions & collective bargaining
 Examples

 Company stock options
 Insurance policies (accidents, old age, illness)
 Establish recreation programs

Unable to address the problem of seasonal
unemployment
Automobile

By the 1920s, had
become a way of life
 IN: 21 out of 26 families
who had cars did not
have bathtubs w/ running
water
 “You can’t ride into town
in a bathtub!”

Symbol of the new age
WAYS THE AUTO
CHANGES LIFE
IN AMERICA:

Creates many new small
businesses
 Garages, diners, gas
stations, restaurants, motels,
etc.
Tractors replaced animals
on farms
 SUBURBS flourished

 Workers can now commute
to cities – don’t need to live
there

Whole families became
more mobile
 Sunday Drives
CHANGES TO INDUSTRY INTRODUCED BY
HENRY FORD
 ASSEMBLY LINE!
 His greatest achievement
 Divided operations into simple
tasks that could be done by
UNSKILLED LABOR (cheap)

AUTOMOBILE –
 Model T -now affordable to all
(mass produced) - $290
 Ford built half of all autos in
world between 1908 & 1927
 Kept his employees loyal by
high pay ($5) & low hours (8)
Problems of
Farmers
in the 20’s:

Prices went down in ’20 & ’21 & never
recovered
 Farmers are overproducing crops

Farmers had borrowed heavily during
WWI to buy new land & equipment so they
could grow food to feed the troops
 With prices down after the War, they could
not pay off their debts
The New Mass Culture





Movies
Radio Broadcasting
Sports
Sports & Popular Heroes
Journalism & Advertising
THE MOVIES!


Industry moves from NY to
LA
No talking!
 Hired piano players to
provide music during the
movie
 Subtitles


Stars:
 Charlie Chaplin
 Douglas Fairbanks
 Gloria Swanson
Talking pictures by 1927
(“The Jazz Singer”)
Popular Radio Shows & Music


KDKA was the first
NBC & CBS
 First to sell on-air advertising
Music, sitcoms, etc.
 Stimulated America’s
demand for goods
 Advertising industry
booms!
 By 1930s, over 800
stations broadcasting to
over 10 million radios
(about 1/3 of US)

“Golden Age of Sports”
Thanks to radio & motion
pictures, sports like baseball
& boxing reached new
heights
 Babe Ruth (baseball)

 Hitting hundreds of homeruns

Jack Dempsey (boxing)
 Holding the heavyweight title
for 7 years

College Football
JIM THORPE

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Native American
Won Olympic Gold Medals in
Pentathlon & Decathlon
Played college & professional
football – become President of NFL
Played Major League Baseball
Also had career in basketball.
Subsequently lost his Olympic titles
when it was found he had played
two seasons of minor league
baseball prior to competing in the
games
Medals restored, 30 years after his
death (1983)
 AMELIA
EARHARDT
1ST Woman to fly
across the
Atlantic Ocean,
1928
 1st woman to fly
solo across
Atlantic, 1932
 Lost at sea, 1937
New Forms of Journalism


Tabloids became popular in the postwar years
New York Daily News
 Folded in half – made it easy to read on
buses/subways/trains
 Devoted much of its space to pictures
 Emphasized sex, scandal, and sports
Discovered an audience of millions who had never
read a newspaper before
 Most popular feature was the gossip column (invented
by Walter Winchell)

A CONSUMER ECONOMY
Defined as an economy that relies on a
large amount of consumer spending
 It led to…

 large profits for businesses
 pushed up wages
 and encouraged more spending
Is fueled by higher wages, clever
advertising, new products, lower costs, and
CREDIT
 Advertising becomes HUGE!

CREDIT!

Installment Plan
buying
 Small down payment
& pay the rest off in
periodic installments

Primary method for
purchase of cars,
radios, furniture,
vacuum cleaners,
refrigerators, etc.
THE NEW MORALITY
Taking over the nation,
challenged traditional ways of
seeing & thinking
 Marriages

 More emphasis on romance &
friendship

Automobile
 Youth loved it because it gave
them independence
 Didn’t have to socialize w/family
– found new forms of
entertainment
Women in the Workforce
Single: needed wages for
themselves or family, break
away from parental authority
 Making $$ allowed them to
participate in the consumer
market
 More women attending college &
encouraged to pursue careers
 Salesclerks, secretaries, or
telephone operators

WOMEN OF THE 20’S
Shortened (“bobbed”)
hair, shorter skirts,
silk stockings
 Liquor, cigarettes
 BUT, few really
dressed more
daringly
 Most are NOT true
flappers

Flappers
At Home & Away

New technology at
home
 Vaccum cleaners
 Washing machines

Still faced
discrimination outside
of home
Divorce
As a result of women’s suffrage,
state lawmakers were now forced
to listen to feminists
 Demanded changes in the divorce
laws to permit women to escape
abusive & incompatible husbands
 1 in 8 marriages ended in divorce
in 1920
 Thanks to more liberal laws,
increased to 1 in 6 marriages by
1930

Education
Belief in the value of
education becoming
widespread
 Combined with economic
prosperity, more state gov’ts
enacted compulsory school
laws
 By the end of the decade, #
of high school grads
doubled to over 25%

CHANGES IN SOCIETY:

18TH Amendment PROHIBITION:
 Rural – pro; Urban – anti
 Bootleggers & Speakeasies
flourished

VOLSTEAD ACT
 Purpose was to enforce
Prohibition
 BUT, it was never fully enforced
 only 1500 agents nationwide
 Even with 540,000 arrests, people
still blatantly broke the law
PROHIBITION LEADS DIRECTLY TO GROWTH OF
ORGANIZED CRIME:
Chicago
 AL CAPONE

 One of the most successful gangsters
 Dominated organized crime
 Bootlegged liquor

Eliot Ness
 Brought down Capone
for tax evasion

Alcatraz
NATIVISM / RACISM:


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


Rises during the 1920s
due to the massive rise in
immigration
Fear/prejudice of
Germans & Communists
spreads to all immigrants
Immigrants from Southern
& Eastern Europe
From low economic levels
Posed a threat to jobs for
Americans
KKK
 a national force by this time
 more nativist than racist
What is the main idea of this cartoon?
SACCO & VANZETTI TRIAL, 1921
Italian immigrants
 Anarchists, atheists,
draft dodgers
 Accused of murder
 Sketchy evidence but
convicted
 Executed 1927
 IMPORTANCE:
Symbolizes mistrust of
immigrants in US

Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco (Dedham courthouse, 1923)
EMERGENCY QUOTA ACT, 1921

QUOTAS are set on
immigration
 Discriminatory in
manner applied since it
eliminated much of
immigration from
Southern & Eastern
Europe
 Only 3% of any ethnic
group in the U.S. in 1892
could be admitted in any
year
“The hardest quota cases were those that separated
families. When part of the family had been born in a
country with a quota still open, while the other part had
been born in a country whose quoata was exhausted,
the law let in the first part and deported the other part.
Mothers were torn from children, husbands from wives.
The law came down like a sword between them.” –
quoted in Ellis Island: Echoes from a Nation’s Past
NATIONAL ORIGINS ACT, 1924:
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
Made immigrant restriction a
permanent policy
Changed quota policy to only
2%
Eventually changed it to only
150,000 immigrants per
ethnic group
Exempted natives of the
Western hemisphere from the
quota system (Mexico &
South America)
Accounted for northwestern
Europeans making up 87% of
quota
Ku Klux Klan



Most extreme expression of nativism
Northern branches directed their hostility not only against
blacks, but also against Catholics, Jews, foreigners, and
suspected Communists
Tactics





Dressed in white hoods to disguise their identity
Burn crosses
Apply vigilante justice
Whips, tar & feathering, hangman’s noose
Decline
 At first, many tolerated the KKK because it upheld the standards
of Christianity & new morality by driving out bootleggers,
gamblers, & adulterers
 1923, fraud & corruption were rife – leader convicted of murder
 Influence & membership rapidly declined
FUNDAMENTALISM

Fundamentalism:
 A name derived from a series of pamphlets titled
The Fundamentals
 Believe that the Bible was literally true & w/out error

Rejected Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
 Human beings had developed from lower forms of
life over the course of millions of years

Believed in Creationism
 Belief that God created the world & described it in
the Bible
The Scopes Trial

Butler Act, 1925
 Outlawed evolution
education


Dayton, TN
American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU)
 Hired biology teacher, John
T. Scopes
Scopes actually LOST the
trial – fined $100
 BUT, Darrow’s attacks on
William Jennings Bryan
dealt a blow to the
Fundamentalists

President Harding:
Harding served one term in U.S. Senate
before running for President in 1920
 Harding’s Philosophy:
 “A Return to Normalcy”

○ Means a return to normal life (like
before WWI)
 “America First!”
○ Forget foreign affairs; rest, relax, enjoy
life in America
 Isolationism
○ U.S. will NOT join League of Nations
Scandals in Harding’s
Administration:
Very corrupt administration
 OHIO GANG

 poker-playing friends who used their
connections to sell gov’t pardons,
immunities & appointments
○ Immunity = freedom from prosecution

WORST is TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL:
 Sec. Of Interior, Albert Fall, leased out for
use by private individuals oil reserves that
had been set aside for the U.S. Navy at
Teapot Dome, WY
 Harding
feels betrayed by his
friends
 Depressed; takes trip to AK (1923)
 On
return home, gets ill & dies
before scandals were made public
 Albert Fall eventually convicted &
sent to prison
CALVIN COOLIDGE

Former Gov. of MA
 Settled the Boston Police
Strike
“Silent Cal” – didn’t talk much!
 Cautious, calm, & simple style – very
different from Harding
 Slept 10 hours a night and took a 4
hour nap every day!


Philosophy on Government:
 “The business of America is business.”
 Favored big business
○ It provided plenty of jobs and plenty of products at
cheap prices
○ Business would keep the prosperity of the 1920s
going
○ Government’s job is to interfere with business as
little as possible
Election of 1924
Coolidge – Republican
 Davis – Democrat

 Took 103 attempts to find a candidate
Democrats are divided between rural and
urban issues (such as Prohibition and
the KKK)
 Led to easy victory for Coolidge

 “KEEP COOL WITH COOLIDGE!”
 Don’t “rock the boat” – keep business
thriving

Also wins easily due to the low voter
turnout.
Promoting Prosperity

Andrew Mellon, Sec. of
Treasury’s goals were to
 Balance Budget
 Reduce government debt
 Cut taxes (down to 25% for
wealthy)

Believed if taxes were
lowered, businesses &
consumers would spend their
extra money and keep the
economy stimulated


Isolationism is foreign policy desired by most
Americans after WWI.
Allies owe $10.3 billion to US but are not paying &
claim:
 US lost fewer people in war so U.S. should assume more of
the debt
 Argue high US tariffs hurting their economies


US says Allies got territory & reparations but US
gained nothing, so Allies should pay
Dawes Plan:
 American banks make loans to GER, GB & FRA agree to
take smaller payments & pay their war debts
 Renegotiated and reduced debts but US will never get fully
paid back
Washington Conference
Treaties

First major world disarmament conference
 Proposed that countries should take a 10 yr
moratorium (or pause) in making new warships
 Each country would need to destroy already made
warships, starting w/ US

4, 5 & 9 power treaties made agreements about
reducing navies, respecting territory owned by
other countries in the Pacific and open trading
policies (China)

MAJOR FAILURE: no agreements to limit
military land forces
KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT
A Treaty that attempted to outlaw war
 France & U.S. took the lead in getting it
accomplished
 64 nations sign the treaty
 Weaknesses:

 NO MEANS OF ENFORCEMENT (without
aggression!)
 Countries retained right to defend
themselves against aggression
Harlem Renaissance

The Great Migration
 escape the
segregated society of
the South
 Find economic
opportunities
 Build better lives
Rebirth; explosion of
black culture
 Showed new spirit of
unity & pride among
blacks

Writers & Authors

Langston Hughes
 Writer/Poet
 Wrote with a proud
defiance & bitter
contempt for racism
 Harlem Shadows

Zora Neale Hurston
 Author
 Portrayed rural African
American culture
 First to set African
American females as
central characters
Music & Dance

JAZZ
 New Orleans style
 Mix of Dixieland bands & ragtime

Louis Armstrong
 Solo Trumpeter




Duke Ellington Band
Harlem, Cotton Club
Charleston is the new dance
craze
BLUES
 Themes of unfulfilled love, poverty,
& oppression
 Evolved from African American
spirituals

Bessie Smith
MARCUS GARVEY


Jamaican
“Negro nationalism”
 Glorified the black culture &
traditions
IMPORTANCE: Despite
theof the past
 movement,
Leader of UNIA
failure of Garvey’s
 Message of racial pride,
he inspired millions of
Africanand unity
independence
Frustrated
Americans with a sense
ofby continued
violence & discrimination
pride in their heritage
& hope for
 Return to “Motherland
the future.
Africa”

Seen as threat by FBI
 deported due to immigrant
status
ELECTION OF 1928
Herbert Hoover
Alfred E. Smith
Republican
“A Dry Country Quaker”
Democrat
“A Wet City Catholic”

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


Represents rural
(“country”) agrarian
interests
Favored Prohibition (“dry”)
Radio helped him
(dignified, serious)
Slogan: “A chicken in
every pot & two cars in
every garage!”
Wins by landslide mainly
due to the Republican
prosperity of the 20s




Represents urban (“city)
& industrial interests
Favors Prohibition, but
admits that he drinks
(“wet”)
Radio hurts him (a
strong NY accent & too
much joking)
Hurt by Republican antiCatholic smear tactics