The 1920s

Prosperity

    WWI good for U.S. economy  Why?

1922-1929: American economy was vigorous and prosperous GNP rose at 5.5% annual rate  From $149 billion to $227 billion Unemployment never exceeded 5%  Real wages rose 15%

A Consumer Society

 1920s: growth of consumer goods    Cars, tractors, washing machines, electric irons, radios, vacuum cleaners “Consumer durable” Fresh fruits and vegetables  Number of cars purchased in the U.S. increased   Paved roads extended beyond the city Gas stations, hot dog stands, motels  Greater number of Americans bought into the stock market (“on-margin”), especially middle class

Growth of Six Leading Grocery Chains

The Rise of Advertising and Mass Marketing  General Motors and annual model change  Advertising appealed to consumer desires  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

Changing Attitudes Toward Marriage and Sexuality   More open-mindedness “Flappers” : independent-minded young, single females

An Age of Celebrity

   Mega-events and mass marketing George Herman “Babe” Ruth Charles Chaplin    Rudolph Valentino Charles A. Lindbergh 

Spirit of St. Louis

Role of media hype in celebrity

Industrial Workers

 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

Women and Work

      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 white collar work (secretaries, typists, file and dept. store clerks) Social services and teaching Amelia Earhart

The Women’s Movement Adrift

 Expected changes from women’s voting did not occur  Some success  League of Women Voters  Internal division  Equal Rights Amendment  Protective labor legislation

The Politics of Business

 1921-1933: Republican presidents governed the country  Blend of Gilded Age mediocrity and Roosevelt style state building

Harding and the Politics of Personal Gain   Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)  "Ohio Gang“: Harding’s drinking and womanizing cohorts Albert Fall  Teapot Dome   Charles R. Forbes  Veterans’ Bureau Harding dies in 1923

Coolidge and the Politics of Laissez-Faire  Calvin Coolidge (1923 1929)  Revenue Act (1926)  Curtailed FTC ability to regulate industry

The Politics of Business Abroad

     Hoover wanted Commerce Dept. to control U.S. international economic relations Washington Conference    Charles Evans Hughes Five-Power Treaty Hoover shut out Dawes Plan  Charles G. Dawes Kellogg-Briand pact (1928) Continued intervention in Latin America

Farmers, Small-Town Protestants, and Moral Traditionalists  Not all Americans enjoyed prosperity of the 1920s  Farmers suffered due to overproduction  Moral-traditionalist white Protestants in small towns  Fear and suspicion of foreigners

Agricultural Depression

 Slump for farmers after the wartime boom  Tractor enabled over-production  Produce market flooded  Prices fell dramatically  Many farmers lost, sold, or abandoned their farms

Price of Major Crops, 1914-1929

Cultural Dislocation

   Majority of farmers saw themselves as ‘backbone of the nation’  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   Prohibition The Ku Klux Klan   Immigration restrictions Religious fundamentalism

Urbanization, 1920

   

Prohibition

Eighteenth Amendment: prohibited manufacture and sale of alcohol  January 1920   Difficulty of enforcing the law Speakeasies and bootleggers Prohibition effect: encouraged law-breaking more than abstinence Al Capone  Liquor trafficking and violence  Chicago Urban supporters rethink Prohibition

The Ku Klux Klan

       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  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

 Many white Protestants responded to Klan style nativist arguments  Johnson-Reed Act (1924)  Limits and quotas on immigration  Western hemisphere exempt  Border Patrol  Limitation quotas spread to other areas  Ivy League colleges

Fundamentalism vs. Liberal Protestantism  Protestant fundamentalism  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

    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   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

The Ethnic and Racial Communities

 Government policy discouraged “new immigrants”  Continued migration within the United States  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

     “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   Urban-ethnic forces: Smith Rural-Southern forces: McAdoo Election of 1928  Alfred Smith  First Catholic nominated to presidency

African Americans

    African-Americans continue to migrate north Harlem: the “Negro Capital”  A Black ghetto Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters  A. Philip Randolph Jazz     Willie Smith Count Basie Duke Ellington Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington

The Harlem Renaissance

    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  Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston

Mexican Americans

    Johnson-Reed Act, 1924   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

corridos

The “Lost Generation” and Disillusioned Intellectuals       Alienated White artists Sinclair Lewis  

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

    Alienated intellectuals begin to distrust democracy H.L. Mencken: democracy “the worship of jackals by jackasses” Walter Lippmann John Dewey: Faith in democracy H. L. Mencken

Conclusion

 Consumerism and mass production  Society seemed somewhat more egalitarian  However, many groups did not benefit from economic prosperity of the 1920s:  Working-class, rural Americans  Democratic party  Tensions between traditionalists and new populations   Alienated intellectuals Republicans take credit for prosperity