Transcript America in the Roaring Twenties

America in the Roaring Twenties
Palmer Raids, 1919
•Arrested 6000
radicals after
bombings in 8 cities
•Galleanists: “There
will have to be
murder; we will kill,
because it is
necessary”
•Palmer’s own home
in DC was damaged
by a bomb
•249 communists
and anarchists
deported to Russia,
1919
Attorney General of USA, A. Mitchell Palmer
•Exiled, imprisoned, escaped
•Promised “We will dynamite
you!” after passage of
Anarchist Act
•Published bomb-making
manual, The Health is In You!
Anarchist Luigi Galleani, deported to Italy 1919
Emma Goldman deported, 1919
J. Edgar Hoover led Department
of Investigation (later the FBI)
Subscription list of Mother Earth provided
gov’t with names during Red Scare
Alexander Berkman
Red Scare
•Anarchist Act, 1920
•State laws against
Criminal Syndicalism
•Prosecution of Industrial
Workers of the World
(“Wobblies”)
Sacco and Vanzetti
Case, 1927
•Charged with murder of
paymaster and security
guard in armed robbery
•Braintree, MA 1921
•Italian immigrants, draft
dodgers, anarchists
•Executed 1927 after highprofile trial
•Radicals claimed political
frame-up
American Legion
•Patriotism
•Veterans Rights
and Benefits,
especially the
“Bonus”
•Conservatism
•Law and Order
•Anti-radicalism
Revival of Ku Klux Klan
“Invisible Empire”
• Anti-foreign, anti-black,
anti-Catholic
• Strong in Midwest and
South
• 5 million dues-paying
members
• Powerful in Democrat Party
• Led parade of 40,000 in
Washington, DC 1925
Immigration Quota
Act, 1924
•New laws limited a
country’s immigration to
3% of the number who had
been in the US in 1910
•Intended to cut back on
those coming from Eastern
Europe
•Changed to 2% of those in
1890 census, 1924
•Total exclusion of
Japanese
•No quotas for Canadians
or Latin Americans
Prohibition: the
Noble Experiment
•Popular in South and
Midwest, not in big cities
•Difficult to enforce
•Corruption, bribery
•Bootleggers, smugglers,
moonshiners
•Gangsterism, organized
crime worth $12 billion
Al Capone aka
“Public Enemy
#1”
Scopes Monkey Trial
Dayton, TN 1925
•John Scopes was fired for
teaching evolution, illegal
in Tennessee
•Fundamentalists vs
Darwinists
•Wm J. Bryan vs Clarence
Darrow
•H.L. Mencken wrote about
the trial, ridiculing Bryan
and his followers
•Inherit the Wind is based
on this case
Economic
Prosperity
•Cheap fuel, coal and oil
•Electrification of cities
•Automobile
•Household appliances:
refrigerators, washers,
vacuums, radios
•Advertising
•Credit buying, installment
plan, “buy now, pay later”
•Mass entertainment:
spectator sports, movies
•High profits and wages
Auto Industry
•Assembly line, mass
production techniques
•Industry leaders: Ford,
Sloan, Olds
•Detroit became the
“Motor City”
•500,000 Model T’s by
1914
•Rubber, glass, fabric,
repair, gas stations, travel
industries grew rapidly
•Freedom, tourism, leisure
•Growth of suburbs
•6 million jobs by 1930
Henry Ford with “Tin Lizzie”
Charles Lindbergh & Spirit of St. Louis
Jazz Age
•Hollywood movie
industry: first “talkie” was
The Jazz Singer
•Jazz bands popular in New
Orleans, Chicago, New York
•Widespread popularity of
radio programs: news,
sports, music, drama,
religion
•Harlem Renaissance
displayed black musicians,
singers, dancers, artists,
writers
A typical
Flapper
Movie Stars
of the
1920s
Clara Bow
Charlie
Chaplin
Rudolph Valentino
George
Herman
“Babe”
Ruth
“The Bambino”
“The Sultan of
Swat”
New
York
Yankees
Louis Armstrong, “Satchmo”
Jazz Band, Harlem 1920s
Langston Hughes
The Weary
Blues
“The Negro
Speaks of
Rivers”
Marcus Garvey
•Jamaican immigrant
•Black Nationalist
•Favored black-owned
businesses, racial pride
and unity
•Universal Negro
Improvement Association
•Popular among workingclass blacks in Harlem
•“Back-to-Africa”
Movement
•Black Star Steamship Co.
•Convicted of fraud,
deported
The Lost Generation
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises
Cynicism, alienation, pessimism
H.L. Mencken
Baltimore Sun; American Mercury
Sinclair Lewis
Main Street; Babbitt; Elmer Gantry
The Politics of
Boom and Bust
The Politics of Boom
and Bust
Warren G. Harding
•Republican from Ohio
•“Back to Normalcy”
•Easygoing, amiable, intellectually
flabby
•“Not a bad man, just a slob”—
Alice Roosevelt
•Pro-business, anti-reform
•Appointed Taft as Chief Justice
•Pardoned Eugene Debs
•Poker-playing whiskey drinker
•Enjoyed socializing with his
cronies, the “Ohio Gang”
•Died of a stroke, 1923
Presidential Election of 1920
Eugene Debs
received pardon
from Harding,
left federal
prison
Harding’s Cabinet
Andrew Mellon,
Secretary of
Treasury
Charles Evans Hughes,
Secretary of State
Herbert Hoover,
Secretary of
Commerce
Albert Fall,
Secretary of
Interior
Republican Foreign Policy
•Isolationism—No membership in League of Nations
•Negotiations for oil drilling rights in Middle East
•No diplomatic relations with communist gov’t of Russia
•Disarmament Conference reduced size of naval fleets
•Kellogg-Briand Pact renounced war, declared it illegal
•Tariffs raised, reducing world trade, causing retaliation, hurting
Europe’s ability to repay debts from WW I
•Left problems such as Japan’s invasion of Manchuria to a weak
League of Nations
Teapot Dome scandal leads to bribery conviction of Albert Fall
Calvin Coolidge,
1923-1929
•Honest, frugal, hardworking, laconic; “Silent
Cal”
•Favored lower taxes,
reduction of public debt
•“The business of America
is business”
•Sworn in as president after
sudden death of Harding
•Conservative Republican
from Massachusetts
•Enforced Prohibition
•Kept Mellon as Sec of
Treasury
•Allowed loans to Germany,
which paid Br and Fr, who
repaid USA
Presidential Election, 1924
Herbert Hoover,
1929-1933
•Coolidge said “I do not
choose to run” in 1928
•Republicans nominated
Hoover, a Quaker engineer
from Iowa, former Sec of
Commerce and Food
Administrator in WW I
•“Rugged Individualism”
•Isolationism, small
government, low taxes,
free enterprise
•Signed Hawley-Smoot
Tariff, his worst mistake
Presidential Election of 1928
Stock Market Crash
October 1929
5000 Banks Failed
4 million unemployed in 1930
12 million unemployed in 1932
Soup Kitchens fed jobless men
“Hooverville”
Hoover’s Policies
•Gov’t loans to railroad, banks, rural credit
corporations: Reconstruction Finance
Corporation
•Public Works like Hoover Dam
•Encouragement of private charity and
local government to provide direct “relief ”
•Norris-LaGuardia Act to help labor
unions: no “yellow-dog” contracts, no
court injunctions against strikes and
boycotts
•Optimistic speeches: “Prosperity is just
around the corner”
•Hawley-Smoot tariff
“Bonus Army” veterans protest in Washington, 1932
Douglas
Macarthur led
troops to expel
Bonus Marchers
from DC, 1932