Download CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA

The Roaring 20’s
America in the 1920s
■America was changed by the
industrialism of the Gilded Age &
the economic boom of WWI
■During the 1920s:
–The USA was the richest & most
developed country in the world
–Wages rose, hours declined, &
Americans had access to new,
innovative consumer goods
The increase
national name
brands
The
SecondofIndustrial
Revolution
(rather than locally produced goods)
■From
1922
to 1929,
U.S.
linked
Americans
morethe
than
everhad
a 2nd industrial boom:
–Mostly in consumer durable
goods like appliances, cars,
radios, furniture, & clothing
–Electricity replaced steam power
–Corporations used salaried
executives, plant managers, &
engineers to increase efficiency
Henry Ford
revolutionized
the
assembly
line,
The consumer
goods
revolution
“The
work
moves
and
the “$5-day,”
&industry
advertising
was best new
seenmarketing
inthe
themen
autostand
still”
techniques, & annual model changes
Henry
Ford’s
River
Rouge plant
emphasized
The
auto
industry
stimulated
the steel,
sheet
uniformity,
speed,
precision,
& coordination
metal, rubber,
glass,
petroleum
industries
1920s consumerism led to luxury living:
New appliances like refrigerators,
washing machines, & vacuums
Glenwood
Stove Ad
1920s advertising
1920s consumerism led to luxury living:
Radios & movies boomed
100 million Americans went to the
firstnetwork
“talkie”
NBC was movies
the 1st successful
radio
in 1929 The
per
week
Economic Weaknesses
■The “Roaring 20s” was not as
prosperous as it appeared:
–RR, cotton textile, coal industries
suffered due to new competition
–Farmers boomed during WWI
but a decline in demand after the
war deflated farm prices
Farm per capita income was $273 per year vs.
the U.S. average of $681 per year
Economic Weaknesses
–Union membership dropped due
to improved conditions & links to
Debs’ “radical socialism”
–Northern migration of blacks
grew but workers gained menial
jobs & faced racism
–Growth in income was unequal
with middle-class managers,
bankers, engineers benefiting the
most from the new affluence
Social Changes in the
“Jazz Age”
Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party (NWP)
failed to pass an Equal Rights Amendment
Women and the Family
–“Flappers” rebelled against
Victorian customs
–Divorce rates doubled
But…most women looked forward
to lives
a mother
and
a wife of a
“Theascreation
and
fulfillment
successful home…compares favorably
with building a beautiful cathedral.”
—Ladies Home Journal
Women and the Family
■Change (& continuity) for women:
–Female workers after WWI were
limited to teachers, nurses, &
other low-paying jobs
–The 19th
Amendment
gave women the
right to vote but
few women
voted
Women and the Family
“I have been
kissed bysmaller
dozens ofdue
men.to I
■Families
became
suppose
I’ll
kiss
dozens
more.”
greater access to birth control
—character in F. Scott Fitzgerald novel
■Children were no longer need to
work to support their families
■Teens began to “discover” their
adolescence & revolt against their
parents by drinking, having
premarital sex, & searching for
new forms of excitement
The Flowering of the Arts
■The Harlem Renaissance
reflected the explosion of black
culture & the “New Negro”:
–Jazz & Blues expressed the
social realities of blacks; Louis
Armstrong became very popular
–Langston Hughes’ poetry,
novels, & plays promoted
equality, condemned racism, &
celebrated black culture
Josephine Baker,
internationally
renowned singer/dancer
“You could be black & proud, politically
assertive & economically independent,
creative & disciplined—or so it seemed”
The
Flowering
of theonArts
“The
Waste
Land” focused
a sterilegave
U.S. society
■The 1920s
rise to a new
Poetry
discussed
a “botched
wasteland”
class of
intellectuals
who
“Main
Street”–narrow-minded
small towns
condemned
the new American
“Great
Gatsby”—human
emptiness
industrial
society & materialism:
Romantic individualism
& violence
–Pessimistic
Literature:
TS Eliot,
Ezra Pound,
Lewis,
Plays ofSinclair
tragic pipedreams
F Scott Fitzgerald, Hemmingway
–Playwrights: Eugene O’Neill
–Music: Gershwin & Copland
Marcus Garvey
■Marcus Garvey was the
preeminent civil rights
activist of the 1920s
■Oppression in the U.S.
necessitated strict
segregation & black
nationalism
“Theformed
most dangerous
enemy
■He
the United
of the
Negro race”
Negro
Improvement
—W.E.B. DuBois
Assoc & advocated a
return to Africa
The Rural
Counterattack
The shift in focus from the countryside revealed
Life
in thetraditional
Jazz Ageties of
that urban City
life was
different;
home,
church,
schools
were
absent
■The 1920 census revealed for the
1st time that more Americans lived
in cities than the countryside
The New York City skyline in 1930: Skyscrapers
gave cities a unique architectural style
The Rural Counterattack
■Rural Americans identified cities
with saloons, whorehouses,
communist cells, & immorality
■The 1920s saw an attempt to
restore a “Protestant” culture in
America & an attack on any
“un-American” behavior like
drinking, illiteracy, & immigration
Prohibition
■In Jan 1920, Congress passed
the Volstead Act to enforce the
18th Amendment (1919)
■26 states had already banned
alcohol but the real conflict came
when prohibition was applied to
urban ethnic groups
■Rural America became dry &
A rural, Protestant attack on the
urban
consumption
dropped
but
“social disease of drunkenness”
was severely resisted
Per capita consumption of alcohol (1910-1929)
The 1st KKK
disbanded when
Reconstruction
ended in the
1870s, but the 2nd
KKK formed in
1915 to protect
rural, Christian
values
The Ku Klux Klan
■The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in
1915 (Stone Mtn, GA) was aimed
at blacks, immigrants, Jews,
Catholics, & prostitutes
■The “Invisible Empire” sought to
ease rural anxieties in the face of
changing cultural attitudes
■Used violence, kidnapping,
murder, & politics to affect change
The KKK provided a sense of identity to its
members: Women’s Order, Junior Order for
boys, Tri-K Klub for girls, Krusaders for
assimilated immigrants
Klan violence met resistance &
membership declined by 1925
D.W. Griffith’s The
Birth of a Nation
(1915) was one of the
most controversial
films in movie
history. Set during &
after the Civil War,
the film glorifies
white supremacy &
the KKK
The Fear of Radicalism
Including
the bombing
of Attorney
■The
most dramatic
rural
reaction
Palmer’s
in 1919
wasGeneral
the Red
Scarehouse
(1919-1920):
–A general workers strike in
Seattle, police strike in Boston,
& series of mail bombs led to
fears of anarchy & socialism
–Deportation without due
process, searches without
warrants, & imprisonment of
innocent people was initially
backed by the American people
Palmer’s
“Soviet Ark”
The solution is simple:
“S.O.S.—ship or shoot”
“Place the Bolsheviks on ships
of stone with sails of lead”
“Stand them up before the firing
squad and save space on our ships”
Italian
immigrants
Nicola Sacco &
Bartolomeo
Vanzetti were
The judge in the case even
executed for referred to Sacco & Vanzetti
armed robbery as “those anarchist bastards”
& murder
without
evidence
Immigration
Restriction
This act still
allowed over 500,000
immigrants
mostlyfeared
from South
& East
Europe
■Many
mass
immigration
to
the U.S. among Europeans
escaping post-war rebuilding:
–The
Immigration
Act (unlike
(1921)the
Immigration
restrictions
placed
a Prohibition,
cap on European
Red
Scare,
or the KKK)
lasted
beyond the
1960s)
immigration
to 1920s
3% of(into
each
ethnic group’s U.S. population
–The National Origins Quota Act
(1924) limited U.S. immigration
to 150,000 total; Allocated most
spots to British, Irish, Germans
The
Fundamentalist
Challenge
Pentecostals, Church of Christ, Jehovah’s
■The
most long-lasting
reaction of
Witnesses
all grew in membership
rural America was a retreat to
Christian beliefs
–Aggressive fundamentalist
churches provided a haven for
rural American values
–The Scopes “Monkey Trial”
revealed the rural attack on
evolution in schools
Conclusions
■Urban America came to define all
of the United States in the 1920s:
–Radio, movies, advertising
reflected urban culture
–Consumer goods were made in
American cities
–Small-town whites, blacks, &
immigrants moved to cities
■But, conservative rural Americans
(religious fundamentalists & KKK)
attacked these new, urban ideas