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Chapter 31: The Roaring 20s
America After War
- shunned diplomatic commitments to foreign
countries
- denounced foreign ideals
- condemned un-american lifestyles
- discontinued tolerance of immigrants
- sealed off economy
.
- relied on ‘homegrown prosperity’
- average income and living standards rose
- new technologies, products, forms of
entertainment
.
Seeing Red
- began to fear Red Russia
- feared nation itself
- feared result of Bolshevik
Revolution (1917)
- didn’t want it giving Americans idea of revolution
- spawned communist party in America
- strike in Seattle (1919)
interference to prevent .
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- small and orderly
- mayor still requested military
Russian result
- red scare resulted in crusade against left wingers
- Attorney General A. Mitchell = “Fighting Quaker”
- extra enthusiastic about finding and arresting suspects anti-americanism
Seeing Red (cont.)
- 1919-1920, legislatures passed criminal syndicalism
laws
- advocacy of violence to ensure social change became illegal
- freedom of speech was limited, sometimes taken completely
- conservatives used red scare to break labor unions
- dubbed unions as “soviets in disguise” to get rid of them
- judicial lynching case (1921)
- Sacco (shoe factory worker)
- Vanzetti (fish peddler)
- two were convicted of murder of a Mass. paymaster and his guard
- liberals and radicals rallied against ruling
- found guilty and electrocuted (1927), became martyrs
KKK
- resembled anti-foreign nativism of 1850s
- groups they hated
- foreigners
- catholics
- blacks
- jews
- pacifists
- communists
- internationalists
- evolutionists
- bootleggers
- gamblers
- adulterers
- those who used birth-control
- groups they liked
- anglo-saxons (W.A.S.P.’s)
- “native americans” (not indians)
- protestants
KKK (cont.)
- their ideas spread quickly
- especially in the Midwest and the “Bible Belt” South
- peaked in 1920s
- reached 5 million members
- Knights of Invisible Empire
- used flag bearing parades and burning crosses to intimidate
- collapsed in late 1920s
- many people recoiled from them because of fear
- embezzling by Klan officials launched investigation
- made whole organization collapse
Stemming Foreign Flood
- 800,000 immigrants from 1920-1921
- two thirds from Southern and Eastern Europe
- Congress plugged breach with Emergency Quota Act
- 1921
- number of newcomers allowed in based on quota
- quota = 3% nationality who were US Citizens in 1910
- favored S/E Europeans because a lot of them already arrived
- replaced by Immigration Act (1924)
- quotas were cut to 2%
- no Japanese (led to ‘hate America’ rallies in Japan)
- Canadians and Latin Americans were exempt from rule
- they were easier to send back
Stemming Foreign Flood (cont.)
- 1931, immigration dwindled to a trickle
- quotas = sacrificing of tradition of freedom and opportunity
- immigrant tide left ethnic communities in America
- separated from each other and larger society
- separated by language, religion, customs
- labor unions were founded based on ethnic diversity
- uncommon languages created problem for effectiveness
- employers used ethnic rivalries to their advantage to stamp out unions
- cultural pluralists’ argument
- let more immigrants in, ‘melting pot’ would eliminate cultural differences
- Horace Kallen (philosopher) and Randolph Bourne (critic)
- defended newcomers’ right to practice their own customs
- advocated cross-breeding
Stemming Foreign Flood (cont. again)
- hoped America would be considered protector of foreign rights
- we’d be liked, involved, powerful
Prohibition Experiment
- supported by churches and women
- 18th amendment (1919) = dry amendment
- implemented by Volstead Act
- made world safe for hypocrisy
- popular in South and WEst
- South supported it because they didn’t want their black citizens drinking
- feared they’d burst out of their place
- West appreciated attack on
- public drunkenness
- prostitution
- corruption
- crime
Prohibition Experiment (cont.)
- opposed by East
- their society was built around beer
- gov. rarely enforced laws opposed by the people
- wets = those opposed to dry law
- believed repeal came when you violated the unwanted law
- jazz age youth began bootlegging (illegally selling alcohol)
- feds were understaffed and underpaid
- easily bribed by bootleggers
- people began making their own
- home brew and bathroom gin
- very dangerous
Prohibition Experiment (cont. again)
- prohibition = noble experiment
- bank savings rose
- absenteeism lowered (everyone’s sober)
Gangsterism
- prohibition spawned crimes
- profits of illegal alcohol were used to bribe police
- wars between rival gangs
- usually in immigrant neighborhoods
- arrests and convictions were few
- all gangsters covered for each other
- Chicago was the worst
- ‘Scarface’ Al Capone = booze distributor (1925)
- prostitution, gambling, narcotics
- honest merchants were forced to pay thugs to keep themselves safe
- 1930- $ brought in by organized crime = $12-18 billion
- 1932- kidnapping for ransom of Charles Lindbergh’s son
Gangsterism (cont.)
- congress passed Lindbergh law making interstate abduction a death-penalty offense
Monkey Business in TN
- more states were requiring education till
16/18/graduation
- 1 in 4 17-year-olds graduated high school
- professor John Dewey (Colombia U 1904-1930)
- formed foundation of progressive education
- learning by doing
- public health program
- launched by Rockefeller Foundation in South (1909)
- wiped out hookworm in 1920s
- better nutrition and health care = greater life expectancy
- fundamentalists presented a problem
- religionists charged with teaching Darwinian evolution
- goal = destroy faith in God and Bible
Monkey Business in TN (cont.)
- many attempts at passing laws prohibiting teaching of evolution
- TN = heart of the Bible Belt South
- monkey trial (East TN, 1925)
- biology teacher, John Scopes, indicted for teaching evolution
- defended by nationally known attorneys
- William Jennings Bryan = Presbyterian Fundamentalist = prosecutor
- Clarence Darrow (Scopes attorney) = embarrassed Bryan
- Scopes was still found guilty and fined $100
- set aside fine on a “technicality”
- hollow fundamentalist victory
- caused ridicule on their cause
- still remained strong in Baptist Church and Churches of Christ (1906)
*for more, watch Drunk History Episode
Mass-Consumption Economy
- economic prosperity after WWI kicked off Roarin’ 20s
- Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon
- created tax policies that favored expansion of capital investment after war
- machines powered by cheap energy
- newly tapped oil fields
- increased productivity of laborer
- assembly line perfected by Henry Ford = automobiles!!
- electricity industry
- machines needed power
- especially cars
- Americans owned 30 million cars by 1930
- production problems solved = consumers addressed
- advertising became huge industry
Mass-Consumption Economy (cont. again)
- founder of industry = Bruce Barton (Madison Avenue Firm)
-The Man Nobody Knows
- written by Barton
- set forth idea that Jesus = best adman ever
- sports became a big business
- thanks to advertising, sports were more frequently viewed than state matters
- buying on credit
- “possess today and pay tomorrow”
- many dug themselves into deeper debt buying new marvels
- refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, cars, radios
Putting America on Rubber Tires
- automobile heralded new industrial system
- based on assembly line and mass-production techniques
- Americans adapted gasoline engine based on European design
- 1910- 69 car companies rolled out 181,000 cars per year
- Detroit became motor car capital of America
- Frederick W. Taylor
- father of scientific management
- sought to eliminate wasted motion saving money and time
- Henry Ford
- Model-T = cheap, rugged, reliable
- came up with concept of assembly line and standardization (Fordism)
- people’s choice for presidential nomination in 1924
- 1 vehicle for every 4.9 Americans by 1929
Advent of Gasoline Age
- new era employed 6 million people by 19 30
- industries strengthened by automobile age
- rubber industry
- glass
- fabrics
- steel
- gas
- petroleum development
- oil derricks shot up in CA, TX, OK
- railroad octopus was being hard hit by competition
Advent of Gas Age (cont.)
- perishable foodstuffs industry grew
- enriched outlying farms who provided for city dwellers
- new roads built to accommodate new transportation
- often paid for by taxes on gas
- cars went from luxury to necessity and badge of
freedom
- autobuses consolidated schools and churches
- suburbs spread further
- led to nation of commuters
- became a bunch of speed demons
- 1951- more Americans were killed in car accidents than in all America’s wars up to date
- Indiana juvenile court judge labeled cars as ‘houses of prostitution’
- gangsters could now make quick getaways
Humans Develop Wings
- Wright brothers flew in 1903
- martyrs of the air = stunt fliers
- “flying coffins” used in WWI
- private companies began operating passenger lines
- NY to San Francisco (1920) = first transcontinental airmail route
- Charles Lindbergh
- first to fly over Atlantic, west to east, alone
- gave birth to new industry
- by 1930s and 40s, travel by air was significantly safer than highways
Radio Revolution
- Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy in
1890s
- used for long-range communications during WWI
- 1920- KDKA (Pittsburgh radio station)
- broadcasted
news of Harding Landslide
- led to phonographs
radiotelephones
television
- advertising over radio (commercials)
- another vehicle for American free enterprise
- stimulated and affected many other industries
- sports
Radio Revolution (cont.)
- politics
- news
- music
Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies
- 1903- first movie sequence reached screen
- was “The Great Train Robbery”
- shown in five cent theaters = nickelodeons
- D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”
- 1915
- glorified KKK of Reconstruction era
- defamed blacks and northern carpetbaggers
- Hollywood became movie capital of the world
- movies started out very inappropriate and nude
- public demanded some form of censorship
- used to showcase anti-German propaganda during WWI
Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies (cont.)
- “The Jazz Singer” = first movie with sound (talkies)
- industry was universally entertaining
- broke down some cultural barriers between immigrants and “natives”
The Dynamic Decade
- 1920 census revealed more Americans lived in urban
areas
- Women continued to find employment in cities
- tended to cluster in low-paying jobs
- retail clerking/office typing
- Margaret Sanger led birth-control movement
- Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party
- began in 1923
- led campaign for equal rights amendment in Constitution
- Fundamentalists lost ground to Modernists
- churches tried fighting joyriding automobiles
- tried to reach young people through religious movies
Dynamic Decade (cont.)
- America’s clock struck “sex o’clock”
- advertisers used sex appeal
- modest maidens are now “flappers”
- Dr. Sigmund Freud
- argued that sexual repression was responsible for various ills
- pleasure and health demanded sexual gratification’
- jazz migrated north from New Orleans, became our
anthem
- Blacks migrated with it
- Handy Morton and Joseph King Oliver birthed the genre
- white man adopted it
- broke some cultural differences
Dynamic Decade (cont. again)
- new racial pride blossomed in black community
- Harlem in NYC held largest black population
- from it came Langston Hughes (poet who wrote “The Weary Blues”)
- Marcus Garvey = politician (founded United Negro Improvement Association)
- sponsored black stores to keep black $ in black pockets
- Garvey was convicted of mail fraud (1927)
Cultural Liberation
- new generation of writers emerged
- new ethnic and regional backgrounds
- exhibited energy of youth, ambition of outsiders, resentment toward “betrayers”
- H. L. Mencken = “Bad Boy of Baltimore”
- wrote monthly “American Mercury” in which he assailed
- marriage, patriotism, democracy, prohibition, Rotarians, Puritans
- war made writers step out of norm
- new codes, morals, forms of expression, writing styles
- F. Scott Fitzgerald- “The Other Side of Paradise” (1920)
- became a Bible for the young
- then “The Great Gatsby”
- commentary on ideal of self-made man
Cultural Liberation (cont.)
- Theodore Dreiser- “An American Tragedy”
- explored pitfalls of social striving
- Ernest Hemingway, most affected by war
- “Sun Also Rises” (1926)- disillusioned, spiritually numb American expatriates in Europe
- “A Farewell to Arms” (1929)
- committed suicide in 1961
- Sherwood Anderson- “Winesburg, Ohio” (1919)
- Sinclair Lewis- “Main Street” (1920) and “Babbitt” (1922)
- William Faulkner “The Sound and the Fury” (1929), “As I Lay Dying”(1930)
and “Absalom, Absalom!”(1936)
- notable poets
- Ezra Pound
- T. S. Eliot
Cultural Liberation (cont. again)
- Robert Frost
- E. E. Cummings
- notable playwrights
- Eugene O'Neill
- won Nobel Prize in 1936
- cultural renaissance after war
- ushered in by Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston,
Louis Armstrong, Eubie Blake
- architecture was affected, too
- gave rise to Empire State Building
- no longer based on Greek inspiration
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Big Bull Market
- economic joyride will end in crash
- real estate speculation- Florida Boom (1925)
- underwater lots were sold for ridiculous prices
- all collapsed after West Indian Hurricane
- stock exchange
- became gambling den
- Washington did nothing to curb money-mad speculators
- conservative money management suggested diversion of funds reduce debt
- 1921-Republican Congress created Bureau of the Budget
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- director of bureau was to assist president in preparing estimates of receipts and expenditures
for submission as annual budget
- designed to prevent extravagant appropriators
Big Bull Market (cont.)
- Secretary of Treasury Mellon
- though high levies forced rich to invest in tax exempt securities instead of in
factories that paid people
- high taxes discouraged businesses and brought smaller returns
- Mellon’s tax reductions (1924-1926)
- congress repealed excess profit tax, gift tax
- congress reduced excise tax, surtax, income tax, estate taxes
- Mellon shifted tax burden from wealthy to middle-class
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