Download chapter24

Chapter 24
The 1920s
Prosperity
 Brief Post-World War I depression
 Remarkable period of growth began in 1922 and
lasted until 1929
 Shift from capital goods to consumer goods
production


Durables and perishables both
Led to complete transformation of American life
 Stock buying also gained in popularity
Prosperity (cont)
 Proliferation of consumer credit to facilitate
purchases
 Many poor excluded from consumer revolution
 Rise of advertising and mass marketing


To generate demand for products that could make a
product seem the answer to a consumer’s desires
Advertisers played upon people’s emotions and
vulnerabilities
Prosperity (cont)
 Changing attitudes toward marriage and sexuality
 Greater openness in attitudes toward sex
 Push for compatibility and companionship in marriage
 Flapper culture among young women
 Popularity of celebrities
 First appearance of large sporting events and
professional athletes
 Depended on journalists and radio promoters
Prosperity (cont)
 Celebrating American business
 Reverence for the corporation
 Rise of welfare capitalism among employers
 Position of industrial workers
 Aggregate demand for industrial labor slowed
 Dramatic increase in available workforce
 Became employer
 Unions lost ground, government hostile to labor
 Women workers
 Earned less than male workers, even for same jobs
 Drawn to white collar work for better opportunities


Concentrated in “female” professions
Female college enrollment increased 50 percent during
decade
Politics of Business
 Warren G. Harding in office
 Republican nominee because of his malleability
 Aware of own intellectual shortcomings
 Made some excellent cabinet appointments
 Others, though, were disastrous
 Plagued by scandals perpetuated by “Ohio Gang”
 Died in San Francisco mired in controversy
 Calvin Coolidge in office
 Untainted by Harding scandals
 Believed in minimalist government
 Worked especially to reduce government’s control over
the economy
 Revenue Act of 1926
 Twice vetoed McNary-Haugen Bill
Politics of Business (cont)
 Herbert Hoover
 Directed Food Administration during the war
 Hoover as commerce secretary for Harding and
Coolidge
 Saw government as dynamic, even progressive,
economic force



Associationalism
Shut out of key decisions by Secretary of State Charles
Evans Hughes
Brought different functional groups together to manage
economy
Politics of Business (cont)
 Washington Naval Conference, 1921–1922
 Five-Power Treaty
 Dawes Plan, 1924
 Reduced German economy
 U.S. aid to stabilize German economy
 Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928
 International compact outlawing war as a tool of
national policy
 Hands-on approach in Latin America
Farmers, Protestants, and Moral
Traditionalists
 Agricultural depression during 1920s
 Nonpartisan League of North Dakota publicized plight
 Farm Bureau also facing cultural crisis
 Farmers also facing cultural crisis
 1920 census reported U.S. as urban nation
 Economic and cultural vitality of nation shifted to the
cities
 Forced rural Americans toward efforts to protect their
way of life
Urbanization, 1920
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
Moral Traditionalists (cont)
 Prohibition
 Initially, broad support for Eighteenth Amendment
(1920)


Simply encouraged lawlessness and organized crime
Ruralites continued to support Prohibition regardless of
its defects
 Ku Klux Klan
 Added Jews and Catholics to original focus on blacks
 Preached message of “Anglo-Saxon” racial party,
Protestant superiority, and traditional morality
Moral Traditionalists (cont)
 Immigration restriction
 Johnson-Reed Immigration Restriction Act, 1924
 Imposed national quotas for immigrants from outside
Western Hemisphere
 Favored “old immigrants” over “new immigrants”
 Protestant fundamentalism
 Literal interpretation of the Bible
 Arose as reaction to liberal Protestantism and the
revelation of modern science
 Scopes Trial
 Became test case in struggle between fundamentalism
and science
 Symbolic victory for modernism
Ethnic and Racial Communities
 European Americans
 Concentrated in cities of Northeast and Midwest
 Flourishing of ethnic associations



Alfred E. Smith
Preservation of ethnic heritage and customs
Strong desire to become citizens
 African-Americans
 Continued migration from rural South to the urban North
Ethnic and Racial Communities


(cont)
Job and housing discrimination
Vigorous and productive cultural life




Jazz
Harlem Renaissance
Black literary and artistic awakening
Image of the “new Negro”
 Mexican Americans
 Chief source of immigrant labor after Johnson-Reed Act
 Agricultural jobs, construction, manufacturing
 Not generally interested in becoming citizens
The “Lost Generation”
and Disillusioned Intellectuals
 World War I created generation of disaffected,
alienated writers and artists


Lost Generation
Many settled in Paris
 Focused on psychological toll of living in postwar
period
 Many came to question democracy itself


Web
Spurred debate over proper role of government in
economy and life in general
John Dewey
Discussion Questions
 Examine the presidencies of Harding, Coolidge,
and Hoover. How effective were their
administrations? What good or ill did they do for
the United States?
 How did the role of women and minorities change
in the 1920s? Did their situation improve?
 What was the Harlem Renaissance? What was its
impact on American culture?
 Describe the situation of farmers in the 1920s.
Was this decade a good time, economically and
morally, for them?