Transcript Document 7290398

POSTWAR SOCIETY AND CULTURE:
CHANGE AND
ADJUSTMENT
• Closing the Gates to New Immigrants
– xenophobia did not cease with the passing of
the Red Scare
– as millions of Europeans attempted to flee their
continent’s devastation, Congress acted to bar
their entry into the United States
– bowing to nativist pressures, especially against
southern and eastern Europeans, Congress
established entry quotas based on national
origin
– Congress restricted overall immigration to a
maximum of 150,000 in 1929
– dislike of the new immigrants, many of whom
were Jewish, was related to a general growth of
anti-Semitism
• New Urban Social Patterns
– the 1920 census revealed, for the first time, that
urban Americans (defined as those living in a
community of 2,500 or more) outnumbered
rural Americans
– city life affected family structure, employment,
and educational and cultural opportunities
– ethnic background, socioeconomic status, and
family size played significant roles in
determining whether women worked outside
the home and, if they did work, women's work
patterns
– compulsory education laws and child labor
legislation limited the number of children
working
– new ideas about family life, such as
companionate marriage, contraception,
scientific child rearing, and more easily
obtainable divorces, gained currency
– the impersonality of large cities loosened
constraints on sexuality
– homosexuals developed a distinct culture
• The Younger Generation
– the failure to achieve the idealistic goals of
America’s entry into World War I created a
feeling of alienation among young adults
– however, popular notions of the Jazz Age only
superficially reflected reality
– young people behaved in unconventional ways
because they were adjusting to more rapid
changes than previous generations
– trends barely perceptible during the Progressive
Era reached avalanche proportions
– patterns of courtship changed; respectable
women smoked cigarettes in public; women
cast off corsets, wore lipstick, shortened their
hair, and shortened their skirts
– parents worried about the breakdown of all
moral standards, but many facets of the youth
rebellion reflected a conformity to peer pressure
– young people’s new ways of relating to each
other were not mere fads and were not confined
to people under thirty
• The “New” Woman
– Margaret Sanger, a political radical concerned
about poor women who lacked knowledge of
contraception, led the battle for birth control
– Sanger encountered legal, religious, and
societal barriers but helped win wide
acceptance for birth control
– other gender-based restrictions slowly broke
down
– many states modified divorce laws to protect
women’s rights
– more women attended college and worked, but
women earned less than men and were
excluded from many management positions
– radical feminists realized that voting did not
guarantee equality; they founded the Women’s
Party and campaigned for an equal rights
amendment
– less radical women founded the League of
Women Voters and campaigned for broad social
reforms
• Popular Culture: Movies and Radio
– popular culture changed dramatically as
moving pictures grew in sophistication and
appeal
– the introduction of sound in 1927 brought a
new level of technological maturity
– filmmakers like D. W. Griffith created an
entirely new art. Radio exerted an even greater
impact
– radio soon brought a wide variety of public
events into American homes
– by using radio to spread its messages, the
advertising industry subsidized the nascent
medium
– because advertisers sought mass markets,
however, they preferred uncontroversial,
intellectually light programs
• The Golden Age of Sports
– prosperity, increased leisure time, radio, and
advertising dollars all promoted the
extraordinary popularity of sports in the 1920s
– sports heroes such as Harold “Red” Grange,
Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden, and Babe Ruth
enthralled the American public
– new stadiums filled with capacity crowds; radio
brought the action into living rooms of millions
– football became the dominant college sport, and
tens of thousands of Americans took up
participatory sports such as tennis, golf, and
water sports
• Urban-Rural Conflicts: Fundamentalism
– rural America viewed cities as hotbeds of
decadence, sin, and overt materialism
– religious fundamentalism emerged as a reaction
of rural conservatives toward the perceived
excesses of urban culture
– the Scopes “Monkey Trial” typified the conflict
between fundamentalism and modernism
– John T. Scopes, a biology teacher, in
cooperation with the American Civil Liberties
Union, defied a Tennessee law banning the
teaching of evolution in public schools
– Clarence Darrow represented Scopes, while
William Jennings Bryan represented the state
(and, in a larger sense, rural, fundamentalist
America)
– although Scopes was convicted, the trial
exposed the ignorance and danger of the
fundamentalist position
• Urban-Rural Conflicts: Prohibition
– ratification of 18th Amendment (1919), which
prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and
sale of alcoholic beverages, signaled a great
victory for the forces of rural conservatism
– alcohol abuse declined during the “noble
experiment”; however, the illegal trade in
“booze” spawned corruption
– by the end of the decade, it was readily
apparent that prohibition had failed, but
powerful moral and political forces prevented
modification or repeal
• The Ku Klux Klan
– the new Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1915 by
William J. Simmons, achieved a peak
membership of five million in 1923
– its targets included immigrants, Jews, and
Catholics, as well as blacks
– using appeals to patriotism, nativism, morality,
and traditional Americanism, the Klan found
supporters primarily in middle-sized cities,
small towns, and villages in the middle western
and western states
– factionalism and misconduct by leaders
weakened the Klan
– by the late twenties, it was in decline; in 1930,
it had only nine thousand members
• Sacco and Vanzetti
– in 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
were convicted of murdering a paymaster and a
guard during a holdup in Massachusetts
– two men were Italian immigrants and anarchists
– irrespective of their guilt or innocence, their
trial was a travesty of justice
– after years of appeals, two men were executed
– the case contributed to the disillusion and
alienation of many intellectuals
• Literary Trends
– the horrors of World War I combined with the
antics of fundamentalists and red baiters led
intellectuals to abandon the hopeful
experimentation of the prewar period
– intellectuals became critics of society
– out of this alienation came a major literary
flowering
– F. Scott Fitzgerald symbolized this “lost
generation” and captured its spirit in his novels,
This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby
– some writers and artists became expatriates
– the most talented of this group, Ernest
Hemingway, became the symbol of the
expatriate American intellectual
– The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms
revealed a sense of outrage at life’s
meaninglessness
– even more than Hemingway’s ideas, his sparse
literary style accounts for his towering
reputation
– Edith Wharton wrote about New York’s
nineteenth century elite in a traditional style
reminiscent of Henry James
– H. L. Mencken reflected the distaste of
intellectuals for the climate of the times
– most popular writer of 1920s, Sinclair Lewis,
portrayed the smug ignorance and bigotry of
the American small town in Main Street
– in Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry,
Lewis presented scathing indictments of
business, the medical profession, and religion
– along with new literary styles, the twenties
witnessed innovations in the distribution of
literature, most notably founding of the Bookof-the-Month Club
• The “New Negro”
– southern blacks continued to migrate to North
– while blacks in northern cities had always
tended to live together, the tendency toward
concentration continued and produced ghettos
– disappointment of their wartime expectations
led to a new militancy among blacks
– W. E. B. Du Bois vacillated between integration
and black nationalism
– Marcus Garvey had no such ambivalence; his
Universal Negro Improvement Association
stressed black pride and a return to Africa
– black leaders like Du Bois considered Garvey a
charlatan
– Garvey was convicted of defrauding thousands
of his supporters when his steamship line went
bankrupt
– the northern ghettos produced some
compensating advantages
– concentrations of black populations enabled
them to elect representatives to state
legislatures and to Congress
– Harlem became a cultural center for writers,
musicians, and artists
– within the ghetto existed a world with
economic, political, and social opportunities for
black men and women that did not exist in the
South
• Economic Expansion
– despite the turmoil of the period and the
dissatisfaction of intellectuals, the 1920s was an
exceptionally prosperous era in America
– business boomed, real wages rose, and
unemployment declined
– perhaps as much as 40 percent of the world’s
wealth lay in American hands
– government policy, pent-up demand from the
war, and the continuing mechanization and
rationalization of industry fueled economic
growth
– assembly lines and time and motion
engineering helped increase productivity and
profits
• The Age of the Consumer
– increases in productivity and prosperity brought
a new era of consumerism
– producers tailored their goods to meet
consumer demand, and the advertising industry
ensured that the demand existed
– consumer durables led the economic surge
– the automotive industry in particular exerted a
powerful multiplier force on the economy
– by 1929, Americans drove some 29 million
privately owned automobiles
– the car changed family life and recreational
patterns
– it made a mobile people more mobile and
became a symbol of American freedom,
prosperity, and individualism
• Henry Ford
– Henry Ford, the man most responsible for the
growth of the automotive industry, was not a
great inventor
– his genius lay in the areas of production,
personnel, and business management
techniques
– cost-efficient assembly lines allowed mass
production of inexpensive cars
– Ford realized that high wages not only ensured
retention of his trained work force but also
stimulated consumer spending
– the Ford Motor Company’s “Model T,” a lowcost, well-constructed auto, dominated the
market for many years
– Ford’s unwillingness to cater to consumer
demand, however, enabled other manufacturers
to cut into Ford's share of the market
• The Airplane
– internal combustion gasoline engines made
motorized flight possible
– World War I speeded the advance of airplane
technology, and most planes built in the 1920s
were intended for military use
– in the postwar years, wing walkers,
parachutists, and other “barnstormers”
expanded the public’s fascination with the
airplane
– commercial air service developed slowly; the
first regularly scheduled passenger and mail
service began in 1927
– Charles A. “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh captured
the world's imagination with his nonstop New
York to Paris flight in May 1927