Transcript Document 7218724

in the
Roaring
Twenties
1919-1929
Urban Growth
• Urban growth drove up land values and reshaped the
skyline of America’s cities; forced architects to build
“up”
• Launched first great era of skyscrapers
• By 1929, U.S. had more than 377 buildings with 20
or more floors
• 1920 Census: more Americans lived in cities than
rural areas for first time
• 3.2 million immigrants poured into the country and
cities between 1919 and 1921
Urban Growth
• Racial composition of cities also changed:
– 1910: 75% of African Americans lived on farms
and 90% lived in the South
– Great Migration during World War I
– 1.5 million moved to cities during 1920s to escape
sharecropping and debt peonage
– Most settled in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland
(307%), Detroit (611%), and Chicago (148%)
Urban Growth
Urban Growth
• Competition for housing became a major source of
friction; cities passed municipal residential
segregation ordinances, white realtors refused to
show houses in white areas to African Americans, and
“neighborhood improvement associations” formed
• Supreme Court ruled municipal resident segregation
ordinances were unconstitutional in 1917
• Whites resorted to the restrictive covenant; struck
down by Supreme Court in 1948
• Zoning laws offered a more subtle way of segregating
cities; segregated on the basis of wealth
Urban Growth
• “Black metropolises” or cities within cities began to
emerge in American cities; Harlem, NYC
• Racial prejudice made it impossible for African
Americans to escape these new “ghettoes”
• Many white middle-class, white-collar workers began
moving to the suburbs made possible by streetcars
and the automobile
• City congestion remained a serious problem
• Federal Highway Act of 1916
• Traffic signals, traffic circles, divided dual highways,
cloverleaf interchanges all introduced during 1920s
Consumer Economy
Consumer Economy
• Henry Ford
– Introduced automated assembly line to cars in 1913; cut
production time from 12.5 hours to 1.5 hours per car
– He also cut prices six times between 1921 and 1925; a new
Model T only cost $290 in 1925
– To increase productivity, he introduced a minimum daily
wage of $5 and shortened the workday to 8 hours in 1914
– In 1926, he shortened the workweek to 5 days
– Logic of mass production: expanded production allows
manufacturers to reduce costs and therefore increase the
number of products sold, and higher wages allow workers
to buy more products
Consumer Economy
Consumer Economy
• Alfred Sloan, president of General Motors (1923-41)
– “The primary object of the corporation was to make
money, not just make cars.”
– Was convinced Americans were willing to pay extra for
luxury and prestige
– Advertised cars as symbols of wealth and status; introduced
yearly model change in 1927
– Developed a series of divisions that were differienteated by
status, price, and level of luxury: Chevrolet to Buick to
Cadillac
– Set up nation’s first national consumer credit agency, 1919
– Revealed the importance of merchandising in a modern
consumer economy
Consumer Economy
• Cars were the symbol of the new consumer
society:
– 1919, 6.7 million cars on American roads
– 1929, 27 million cars on American roads
– 60% purchased cars on credit with interest rates of
30% or more
• Cars revolutionized American way of life
– Promoted family togetherness?
– Created conflict between parents and teenagers?
– “portable bedrooms”?
Consumer Economy
• Automobiles also transformed American landscape
– Roads and highways doubled during 1920s
– Increased government spending; $2 billion/year
– Increased pollution; 30,000 annual traffic deaths
• Automobile industry stimulated national economy
– By 1929 produced 12.7 percent of manufacturing
output and employed 1 of every 12 workers
– Stimulated growth of steel, glass, rubber industries
and gasoline stations, motor lodges, campgrounds,
and hotdog stands
Consumer Economy
• Other emblems of the consumer economy
included the telephone and electricity;
electrical appliances became more common in
American homes (refrigerators, washing
machines, vacuum cleaners, toasters, etc.)
• “Labor-saving” appliances increased standards
of cleanliness and imposed new pressures on
housewives
• Ready-to-wear clothing was another important
innovation in the consumer economy; standard
sizes defined by government in World War I
Consumer Economy
Consumer Economy
• Eating habits also underwent a shift from
starches (bread and potatoes) to more fruit and
sugar
• More processed foods; canning and freezing
innovations during World War I – saved
homemakers enormous amounts of time
• To stimulate sales and increase profits,
businesses expanded advertising, offered
installment credit, and created the nation’s first
regional and national chains
Consumer Economy
Consumer Economy
• Advertising agencies hired psychologists
– Built up name-brand identification
– Created memorable slogans
– Manipulated endorsements by doctors or
celebrities
– Appealed to consumers’ desire for prestige and
status
– By 1929, American companies were spending $3
billion a year on advertising
– Uneeda Biscuits, first million-dollar advertising
campaign
Consumer Economy
Consumer Economy
• Use of installment credit soared during 1920s:
– Banks offered home mortgages for first time
– 60% of all furniture and 75% of all radios were
purchased on credit
– New consumer society emphasized spending and
borrowing over thrift and saving
• Nation’s families spent a declining proportion of
income on necessities, more on appliances, recreation
• Older industries (textiles, railroads, steel) declined
and newer industries (appliances, automobiles,
aviation, chemicals, entertainment, and processed
foods) surged ahead
Consumer Economy
• During the 1920s,
chain-store movement
revolutionized
retailing; Woolworth’s
• Interlocking networks
of banks and utility
companies played a
critical role in
promoting financial
speculation of the
1920s
Radio
• Radio was most significant appliance to
enter American homes in the 1920s;
Sales went from $60 million (1922) to
$426 million (1929)
• 1919, first commercial radio station; 500
by 1925 – news, musical variety shows,
advertisements, soap operas, and
comedies
• Blunted regional differences and
imposed similar tastes and lifestyles
Radio
• Radio made Charles
Lindbergh an instant hero
when he became the first
person to fly solo across the
Atlantic in 1927
• “Amos ‘n’ Andy” debuted in
1926; spread racial
stereotypes; Italian gangster
and tightfisted Jew
Phonograph
• Phonograph sales surged from 190,000 in
1923 to 5 million in 1929; replaced piano in
many homes
• Fueled by popularity of jazz, blues, and
“hillbilly” music
• “Fiddlin’ John” Carson broke “hillbilly”
music into popular culture in 1923
• F. Scott Fitzgerald called the 1920s, the “Jazz
Age”
Jazz Age
Movies
• Single most significant instrument of mass
entertainment was the movies
• Movie attendance grew from 50 million
patrons a week in 1920 to 90 million a week
in 1920; Americans spent 83 cents of every
entertainment dollar at the movies and 75% of
the population went to a movie theater each
week
• By the 1920s, the film industry had relocated
to Hollywood; ideal climate and cheap labor
Movies
• Hollywood released 700 movies each year
and dominated worldwide film production
• A small group of companies controlled the
film industry: Paramount, 20th-Century Fox,
and MGM; kept actors, directors, and
screenwriters under contract
• Movies in the 1920s introduced the sex
appeal; Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino
• Hollywood also reinforced stereotypes
Movies
Spectator Sports
Low-Brow & Middle-Brow Culture
• Mah Jong and crossword puzzles
• Golf, tennis, and bowling
• Dance crazes: fox trot, Charleston,
jitterbug
• Egyptian fad in 1922
• Pole-sitting
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice
Burroughs
• Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
• “Confession magazines”
• Time, Reader’s Digest, New Yorker,
Vanity Fair
• Book-of-the-Month Club
Avant Garde
• Playwright Eugene O’Neill
• Writers William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe
published their first novels
• Poets Hart Crane, e.e. cummings, Countee
Cullen, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent
Millay, and Wallace Stevens
• Artists Charles Demuth, Georgia O’Keeffe,
and Joseph Stella pioneered
nonrepresentational and expressionist art
forms
Avant Garde
“The Figure 5 in Gold”
(1928)
Charles Demuth
Avant Garde
“My Egypt” (1927)
Charles Demuth
Avant Garde
“Brooklyn Bridge” (1919-20)
Joseph Stella
Avant Garde
“Radiator Building at
Night, New York” (1927)
Georgia O’Keeffe
Avant Garde
• The 1920s marked America’s entry into the
world of serious music:
– 50 symphony orchestras founded
– Julliard, Eastman, and Curtis music
conservatories founded
– Aaron Copeland and Charles Ives
– George Gershwin
Avant Garde
• World War I left many American intellectuals
and artists disillusioned and alienated; saw the
war as a senseless mistake
• T.S. Eliot called the United States a
“wasteland”
• Sinclair Lewis critized American middle class
in Main Street (1920) and Babbit (1922)
– Won Nobel Prize for Literature
• H. L. Mencken
“Lost Generation”
• Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald
• Existentialism – maintains that life has no
transcendent purpose and that each individual
must salvage personal meaning from the void
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–
–
–
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
“so we beat on, boats against the current, borne
back ceaselessly into the past.”
The Sex Debate
• “If all girls at the Yale prom were laid end to end…
I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Dorothy Parker
• Practically every newspaper featured articles on
prostitution, venereal disease, sex education, birth
control, and the rising divorce rate.
• City life nurtured new sexual attitudes; end of
courtships, rise of dating
• Sigmund Freud
• Increase in premarital sex after 1900; especially
generation that reached maturity in 1920s
• Margaret Sanger vs. Comstock Law (1873)
Margaret Sanger
Flapper
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•
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•
•
Bobbed her hair
Painted her lips
Raised her hemline
Danced the Charleston
Smoked and drank
alcohol publicly
• Openly talked about
sex
• Dated without
chaperones
• Wore high heels and
felt hats
In reality, womens’
sexual experiences
were typically limited
to one or two
partners, one of
whom she married.
This narrowed the
gap between men and
women and moved
society towards a
single standard of
morality.
The Clash of Cultures
The 1920s was a decade of intense cultural conflict,
the Protestant culture of rural America was being
undermined by the secular values of an urban society:
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–
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Country vs. City
Native vs. Immigrant
Protestant vs. Catholic and Jew
Fundamentalist vs. Liberal and Science
Conservative vs. Progressive
Wet vs. Dry
The chief battlegrounds in this “culture war” were
gender, immigration, prohibition, and evolution in
public schools.
The New Woman
• After Nineteenth
Amendment, male
politicians passed laws
guaranteeing women’s
rights to serve on
juries and hold public
office
• Set up a national
system of women’s
and infant’s health
care clinics
The New Woman
• Women’s movement divided in the 1920s over
the Equal Rights Amendment
– Pitted professional women against working-class
women
• Women’s movement also faced opposition
from federal government; “Spider Web” chart
• Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923)
• Women did not win new opportunities in the
workplace; confined to traditional “female
jobs” and professionals consistently received
less pay than their male counterparts
Prohibition
• Initial compliance had more to do with
supply and demand than respect for the
law; private enterprise filled the void
• Smugglers, bootleggers, and moonshiners
• Neither federal nor state authorities had
enough funds to enforce prohibition
• Lax enforcement and huge profits enticed
organized crime to enter bootlegging; by
late 1920s, liquor sales generated $2
billion annually – Al Capone
Prohibition
Prohibition
• In large cities, people openly defied the
law; 17 convictions of 7,000 arrests in
New York City; President Harding
• In 1923, New York became the first state
to repeal its enforcement law; by 1930 six
more states had followed suit
• Congress repealed Prohibition in 1933
with the 21st Amendment
• National Anti-Cigarette League, 1903; by
1923, 14 states had outlawed cigarettes
Fundamentalism
• Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
caused a split in American Protestantism:
Fundamentalists vs. Liberals
• Rise of Pentecostalism in early 1900s;
The Fundamentals (1910-1915)
• Religious revivals in West, South
– Billy Sunday
– Aimee Semple McPherson
Fundamentalism
Scopes Trial
Scopes Trial
Xenophobia
• Emergency Quota Act, 1921
• National Origins Act of 1924
• Sacco & Vanzetti Case, 1921
Ku Klux Klan
• The KKK experienced a rebirth in the 1920s under the
leadership of Col. William Joseph Simmons; “ 100
percent pure Americanism”
• Hired advertising agency to boost membership; 5
million members by 1925
• Powerful political force; influenced governors and
state legislatures
• Continued to intimidate African Americans,
immigrants, Catholics, Jews and others who violated
moral standards (wife-beaters, drunkards, bootleggers,
gamblers, etc.)
• A series of sex scandals and increasing violence
decreased power of the Klan by late 1920s
Ku Klux Klan
African American Protests
• After facing discrimination and segregation in
World War I and race riots in 1919-1920,
African Americans were more determined to
fight discrimination
• National Urban League, 1911 – focused on
economic issues (Washington)
• NAACP, 1909 – focused on civil rights and
legal action (Du Bois)
African American Protests
• Supreme Court ruled against “grandfather
clause” (1915) and segregation ordinances
(1917)
• NAACP also fought against school segregation
in North and for federal anti-lynching bill
under James Weldon Johnson
• A. Philip Randolph – “New Negro”
• Marcus Garvey – Universal Negro
Improvement Association, 1917
African American Protests
Harlem Renaissance
Black Belt (1934) by Archibald Motley, Jr.
Harlem Renaissance
• Increasing interest in African American History
and Culture; W. E. B. Du Bois
• Fisk University Jubilee Singers
• American Negro Academy, 1897
• Negro dolls and all-Negro towns
• African Americans newspapers and magazines
appeared in 1910s
• Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History – Carter Woodson, 1919
Harlem Renaissance
• Harlem became the center of African American
cultural expression
• Poets Countee Cullen, Claude McKay and
Langston Hughes
• Novelist Zora Neale Hurston
• Performer Paul Robeson
• “If we must die—oh let us nobly die . . . dying,
but fighting back!”
Warren G. Harding
(1921-1923)
Return to “Normalcy”
• Americans wanted a partnership between government
and industry, instead of trustbusting in the 1920s;
Republicans offered the conservative choice
• Supreme Court, under Chief Justice William Howard
Taft, outlawed picketing, overturned national child
labor laws, and abolished minimum wage laws for
women; states were responsible for protecting
individual citizens
• Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover proposed to
eliminate competition and waste in the economy
through “associationism”; 2000 trade associations by
1929
Return to “Normalcy”
• Charles Evan Hughes and Andrew Mellon were
other capable members of Harding’s cabinet;
“Ohio Gang”
Return to “Normalcy”
• Teapot Dome Scandal – Secretary of Interior
Albert B. Fall was convicted of taking bribes
• Attorney General Harry Daughtry
• Warren G. Harding died on 2 August 1923
Election of 1924
Calvin Coolidge
(1923-1929)
Twilight of Progressivism
• Coolidge had no desire to be a strong president and
believed that government should do everything in its
power to promote business interests; “the business of
America is business”
• The government’s tilt toward business signaled a
retreat from progressivism
• Robert La Follette (WI) and George Norris (NB) tried
to keep progressivism alive in Congress; had better
luck at state and local level
• By 1930, 43 states had passed laws providing
assistance to women with dependent children and 34
states had workers’ compensation laws; NY Governor
Alfred E. Smith
Election of 1928
Herbert Hoover
Alfred E. Smith
Election of 1928