Transcript The 1920s - Plain Local Schools

The 1920s
Prosperity
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WWI good for U.S. economy
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1922-1929: American economy was vigorous
and prosperous
GNP rose at 5.5% annual rate
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Brief period of difficulty in moving from war
economy
From $149 billion to $227 billion
Unemployment never exceeded 5%
Real wages rose 15%
A Consumer Society
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1920s: growth of consumer goods
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Number of cars purchased in the U.S. increased
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Cars, tractors, washing machines, electric irons, radios,
vacuum cleaners
“Consumer durable”
Fresh fruits and vegetables
Paved roads extended beyond the city
Gas stations, hot dog stands, motels
Greater number of Americans bought into the stock
market, especially middle class
Growth of Six Leading Grocery Chains
The Rise of Advertising and Mass
Marketing
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General Motors and annual model change
Advertising appealed to consumer desires
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Professional advertising firms
Beauty products, cigarettes, fashion
Advertisers believed they were helping
Americans achieve self-improvement and
personal pleasure
Advertising aimed at middle class
Advertising Expenditures
Expenditures on Advertising, 1915-1929
An Age of Celebrity
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Mega-events and mass
marketing
George Herman “Babe”
Ruth
Charles Chaplin
Rudolph Valentino
Charles A. Lindbergh
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Spirit of St. Louis
Role of media hype in
celebrity
Industrial Workers
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Skilled workers higher wages, more benefits
Semiskilled and unskilled industrial workers
contended with labor surplus
New machines sometimes replaced workers
40% of workers remained in poverty
Coal and textile workers suffered the most
through the 1920s
Unions lost significant ground in the 1920s
Changing Attitudes Toward Marriage and
Sexuality
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More open-mindedness
“Flappers” : independent-minded young, single
females
Women and Work
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Women were excluded from
skilled craftsmen
Women were often relegated to
areas of “women’s work” within
an industry
Received less pay for equal work
of a man
Opportunities grew for whitecollar work (secretaries, typists,
file and dept. store clerks)
Social services and teaching
Amelia Earhart
Birth Control Movement and
Margaret Sanger
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Speaking out
violated the
Comstock Laws
Griswold V.
Connecticut did not
legalize birth control
until 1965
The Women’s Movement Adrift
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Expected changes from women’s voting did
not occur
Some success
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League of Women Voters
Internal division
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Equal Rights Amendment
Protective labor legislation
The Politics of Business
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1921-1933: Republican presidents governed
the country
Blend of Gilded Age mediocrity and
Roosevelt style state building
Harding and the Politics of Personal Gain
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Warren G. Harding
(1921-1923)
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Albert Fall
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Teapot Dome
Charles R. Forbes
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"Ohio Gang“: Harding’s
drinking and womanizing
cohorts
Veterans’ Bureau
Harding dies in 1923
Coolidge and the Politics of Laissez-Faire
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Calvin Coolidge (19231929)
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Revenue Act (1926)
Curtailed FTC ability to
regulate industry
The Politics of Business Abroad
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Hoover wanted Commerce
Dept. to control U.S.
international economic
relations
Washington Conference
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Dawes Plan
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Charles Evans Hughes
Five-Power Treaty
Hoover shut out
Charles G. Dawes
Kellogg-Briand pact (1928)
Continued intervention in
Latin America
Farmers, Small-Town Protestants, and
Moral Traditionalists
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Not all Americans enjoyed prosperity of the
1920s
Farmers suffered due to overproduction
Moral-traditionalist white Protestants in small
towns
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Fear and suspicion of foreigners
Agricultural Depression
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Slump for farmers after the wartime boom
Tractor enabled over-production
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Produce market flooded
Prices fell dramatically
Many farmers lost, sold, or abandoned their
farms
Price of Major Crops, 1914-1929
Cultural Dislocation
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Majority of farmers saw themselves as ‘backbone of
the nation’
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White, Protestant, Northern-European, hard-working,
honest, God-fearing
1920 Census: urban areas vs. rural areas
Fears of rural whites manifested in their support of
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Prohibition
The Ku Klux Klan
Immigration restrictions
Religious fundamentalism
Urbanization, 1920
Prohibition
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Eighteenth Amendment: prohibited manufacture and sale of alcohol
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Prohibition effect: encouraged law-breaking more than abstinence
Al Capone
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January 1920
Difficulty of enforcing the law
Speakeasies and bootleggers
Liquor trafficking and violence
Chicago
Urban supporters rethink Prohibition
The Ku Klux Klan
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William Simmons
D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation
Hiram Evans
Hatred of members extended beyond Blacks to
include Jews, Catholics, foreigners
1924: 4 million Americans were members of the
KKK, many outside the South
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Women’s Auxiliary group: Women of the KKK
In many ways, Klan was also typical fraternal
organization
Klan hate speech often sexually themed, reaction
against changed attitudes toward sexuality
Immigration Restriction
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Many white Protestants responded to Klan
style nativist arguments
Johnson-Reed Act (1924)
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Limits and quotas on immigration
Western hemisphere exempt
Border Patrol
Limitation quotas spread to other areas
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Ivy League colleges
The First Red Scare
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Attorney General A.
Mitchell Palmer and
his “Palmer” raids
Sacco and Vanzetti
Case
Crusade against
anarchy
The Ethnic and Racial Communities
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Government policy discouraged “new
immigrants”
Continued migration within the United States
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African Americans moved from the South to the
North
Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande into the
Southwest
Creation of vibrant subcultures
Surge in religious
European Americans
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“Americanization campaigns”
Many Americans responded by strengthening their
ethnic and religious identities and cultures through
organizations and associations
Use of the vote: Democrats
Split in the Democratic Party between
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Urban-ethnic forces: Smith
Rural-Southern forces: McAdoo
Election of 1928
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Alfred Smith
First Catholic nominated to presidency
Fundamentalism vs. Liberal Protestantism
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Protestant fundamentalism
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Bible as God’s word
Bible as the source of all “fundamental” truths
Took opposition to liberal Protestantism and the
discoveries of science
Fundmentalists anti-urban
Liberal Protestants believe that religion had
to adapt to modernism, including skepticism
and scientific discoveries
The Scopes Trial
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Fundamentalists pass law prohibiting
teaching of Theory of Evolution in
Tennessee (1925)
ALCU and other worried it could be
start of new wave of restrictions of
Free Speech
John T. Scopes
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William Jennings Bryan vs. Clarence
Darrow
Bryan’s rejection of Darwin partly
reaction of Populist defender against
Social Darwinism
Publishers, afraid of Fundamentalist
backlash, remove Darwin from
textbooks until the 1960s
African Americans
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African-Americans continue
to migrate north
Harlem: the “Negro Capital”
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Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car Porters
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A Black ghetto
A. Philip Randolph
Jazz
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Willie Smith
Count Basie
Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
The Harlem Renaissance
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Harlem Renaissance:
create works in rooted in
African culture not
imitations of white culture
"New Negro“
White owned Harlem Jazz
Clubs refused to admit
African-Americans
Charlotte Mason
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Langston Hughes and Zora
Neale Hurston
Mexican Americans
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Johnson-Reed Act, 1924
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Mexican-Americans became primary source of immigrant
labor 500,000 Mexicans came to U.S. in 1920s
Most settled in Southwestern, U.S.
 Texas, California
 Dominated agriculture and construction jobs
 Exploited and discriminated against
Californios
Los Angeles to Mexican-Americans what Harlem
was to African Americans
The “Lost Generation” and Disillusioned
Intellectuals
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Alienated White artists
Sinclair Lewis
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Main Street (1920)
Babbit (1922)
T.S. Eliot-- The Waste Land
(1922)
F. Scott Fitzgerald-- The
Great Gatsby (1925)
Eugene O'Neill’s plays
Ernest Hemingway-- A
Farewell to Arms (1929)
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
Democracy on the Defensive
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H. L. Mencken
Alienated intellectuals begin
to distrust democracy
H.L. Mencken: democracy
“the worship of jackals by
jackasses”
John Dewey: Faith in
democracy
Conclusion
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Consumerism and mass production
Society seemed somewhat more egalitarian
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However, many groups did not benefit from
economic prosperity of the 1920s:
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Democratic party
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Working-class, rural Americans
Tensions between traditionalists and new
populations
Alienated intellectuals
Republicans take credit for prosperity