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JAZZ AGE
From the End of World War I to the Great Crash
Edited by
James Ciment
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age: from the end of World War I to the great crash / James Ciment, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7656-8078-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. United States—History—1919–1933—Encyclopedias. 2. Nineteen twenties—Encyclopedias.
I. Ciment, James.
E784.E53 2007
973.91'503—dc22
2007023928
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Stringer/Hulton Archive.
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ANSI Z 39.48.1984.
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Publisher: Myron E. Sharpe
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EN CY CLOPEDI A OF T H E J AZ Z AGE
T a ble of Cont e nt s
Introduction: The Jazz Age, 1918–1929
A-Z Entries
Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923)
Advertising
African Americans
Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929
Agriculture
Air-Conditioning
Algonquin Round Table
Alien Property Custodian Scandal
American Civil Liberties Union
American Farm Bureau Federation
American Federation of Labor
American Mercury
Americanization
Anarchism
Anderson, Sherwood (1876–1941)
Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Prohibition Movement
Anti-Saloon League
Anti-Semitism
Appliances, Household
Arbuckle (Fatty) Scandal
Architecture
Armstrong, Louis (1901–1971)
Art, Fine
Asian Americans
Atlas, Charles (1892–1972)
Automobile Industry
Automobiles and Automobile Culture
Aviation
Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1922)
Baker, Josephine (1906–1975)
Baldwin, Roger (1884–1981)
Baseball
Beauty Industry and Culture
Beiderbecke, Bix (1903–1931)
Berger, Victor (1860–1929)
Berlin, Irving (1888–1989)
Bernays, Edward L. (1891–1995)
Birth Control
Black Sox Scandal
Blues
Bohemianism
Borah, William (1865–1940)
Boston Police Strike of 1919
Bow, Clara (1905–1965)
Boxing
Brandeis, Louis (1856–1941)
Bureau of Investigation
Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1875–1950)
Business, Economics, and Labor
Byrd, Richard E. (1888–1957)
Canada
Capone, Al (1899–1947)
Catholics and Catholicism
Celebrity Culture
Chamber of Commerce, U.S.
Chaplin, Charlie (1889–1977)
Chicago Race Riot of 1919
Child Labor
Children and Child Rearing
China, Relations with
Cigarettes and Tobacco
Coal Industry
Coal Strike of 1919
Commerce Department, U.S.
Communist Party
Consumer and Popular Culture
Coolidge, Calvin (1872–1933)
Country Music
Credit and Debt, Consumer
Crime, Organized
Criminal Punishment
Cummings, E.E. (1894–1962)
Dance, Performance
Dance, Popular
Darrow, Clarence (1857–1938)
Daugherty, Harry M. (1860–1941)
Davis, John W. (1873–1955)
Dawes, Charles (1865–1951)
Dawes Plan (1924)
DeMille, Cecil B. (1881–1959)
Demobilization, Industrial
Democratic Party
Dempsey, Jack (1895–1983)
DePriest, Oscar (1871–1951)
Design, Industrial
Dewey, John (1859–1952)
Dominican Republic, Intervention in
Dos Passos, John (1896–1970)
Dreiser, Theodore (1871–1945)
Drugs, Illicit and Illegal
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1868–1963)
Economic Policy
Ederle, Gertrude (1906–2003)
Education, Elementary and Secondary
Education, Higher
Election of 1918
Election of 1920
Election of 1922
Election of 1924
Election of 1926
Election of 1928
Electricity Industry
Eliot, T.S. (1888–1965)
Eugenics
Europe, Relations with
Evangelicals and Evangelical Christianity
Fads and Stunts
Fairbanks, Douglas (1883–1939)
Family, Community, and Society
Farmer-Labor Party
Fashion, Men's
Fashion, Women's
Federal Highway Act of 1921
Federal Power Commission
Federal Radio Commission
Fiction
Film
Film Industry
Fisher, Carl (1874–1939)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896–1940), and Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)
Florida Land Boom
Flu Pandemic (1918)
Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley (1890–1964)
Food Administration, U.S.
Food and Diet
Football
Ford, Henry (1863–1947)
Ford Motor Company
Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922
Foreign Affairs
Fosdick, Harry Emerson (1878–1969)
Four-Power Treaty (1921)
Fourteen Points
Fundamentalism, Christian
Garvey, Marcus (1887–1940)
Gary, Elbert H. (1846–1927)
Gastonia Strike of 1929
General Electric
General Motors
Geneva Arms Convention of 1925
German Americans
Gershwin, George (1898–1937)
Gish, Lillian (1893–1993)
Gitlow v. New York (1925)
Golf
Grange, Red (1903–1991)
Haiti, Intervention in
Harding, Warren G. (1865–1923)
Harlem Renaissance
Havana Conference of 1928
Health and Medicine
Hearst, William Randolph (1863–1951)
Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961)
Hoboes
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1841–1935)
Homosexuals and Homosexuality
Hood, Raymond (1881–1934)
Hoover, Herbert (1874–1964)
Hoover, J. Edgar (1895–1972)
Housing
Hughes, Langston (1902–1967)
Immigration
Immigration Laws of 1921 and 1924
Industrial Workers of the World
Irish Americans
Italian Americans
Japan, Relations with
Jazz
Jewish Americans
Jones, Bobby (1902–1971)
Journalism
Keaton, Buster (1895–1966)
Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)
Kennedy, Joseph (1888–1969)
King Tut's Tomb
Ku Klux Klan
La Follette, Robert (1855–1925)
Labor Movement
Landis, Kenesaw Mountain (1866–1944)
Lasker, Albert (1880–1952)
Latin America, Relations with
Latinos and Latinas
Law and the Courts
Lawrence Textile Strike of 1919
League of Nations
League of Women Voters
Leisure and Recreation
Leopold and Loeb Case (1924)
Lewis, John L. (1880–1969)
Lewis, Sinclair (1885–1951)
Lindbergh Flight (1927)
Locarno Treaties (1925)
Locke, Alain (1885–1954)
Lost Generation
Luce, Henry (1898–1967)
Lynching
Marriage, Divorce, and Family
Mayer, Louis B. (1882–1957)
McAdoo, William G. (1863–1941)
McKay, Claude (1889–1948)
McPherson, Aimee Semple (1890–1944)
Mead, Margaret (1901–1978)
Mellon, Andrew (1855–1937)
Mencken, H.L. (1880–1956)
Mexico, Relations with
Migration, Great
Military Affairs
Mississippi Flood of 1927
Music, Classical
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association of Manufacturers
National City Bank
Native Americans
Ness, Eliot (1903–1957)
New York Daily News
New Yorker, The
Nicaragua, Intervention in
Nonpartisan League
Normalcy
Norris, J. Frank (1877–1952)
Office Work
Oil and Oil Industry
O'Keeffe, Georgia (1887–1986)
Oliver, Joe “King” (1885–1938)
O'Neill, Eugene (1888–1953)
Osborn, Henry Fairfield (1857–1935)
Palmer, A. Mitchell (1872–1936)
Paris Peace Conference of 1919
Parker, Dorothy (1893–1967)
Passaic Textile Strike of 1926
Paul, Alice (1885–1977)
Pickford, Mary (1893–1979)
Poetry
Politics
Ponzi Schemes
Population and Demographics
Progressivism
Prohibition (1920–1933)
Prostitution
Protestantism, Mainstream
Psychology
Radio
Radio Corporation of America
Railroad Shopmen's Strike of 1922
Railroads and Railroad Industry
Railway Labor Act (1926)
Reader's Digest
Real Estate
Recession of 1921–1922
Red Scare of 1917–1920
Reparations and War Debts
Republican Party
Retail and Chain Stores
Rockne, Knute (1888–1931)
Rogers, Will (1879–1935)
Rosewood Massacre (1923)
Ross, Harold (1892–1951)
Ruth, Babe (1895–1948)
Sacco and Vanzetti Case (1920–1921)
Sanger, Margaret (1879–1966)
Sarnoff, David (1891–1971)
Schenck v. United States (1919)
Schultz, Dutch (1902–1935)
Science
Scopes Trial (1925)
Seattle General Strike of 1919
Sex and Sexuality
Sheppard-Towner Act (1921)
Siberian Intervention
Sinclair, Harry (1876–1956)
Sloan, Alfred P. (1875–1966)
Smith, Al (1873–1944)
Smith, Bessie (1894–1937)
Snyder Act (1921)
Social Gospel
Socialism and the Socialist Party of America
Speakeasies
Steel Strike of 1919–1920
Stein, Gertrude (1874–1946)
Stock Market
Strong, Benjamin, Jr. (1872–1928)
Suburbs
Swanson, Gloria (1898–1983)
Swope, Gerard (1872–1957)
Taft, William Howard (1857–1930)
Teapot Dome Scandal
Technology
Telephone and Telegraph
Tennis
Theater
Tilden, Bill (1893–1953)
Time
Travel and Tourism
Tulsa Race Riots of 1921
Universal Negro Improvement Association
Vaudeville
Versailles, Treaty of (1919)
Veterans
Volstead Act (1919)
Walker, Jimmy (1881–1946)
War Finance Corporation
Washington Naval Conference (1921–1922)
Wealth and Income
Weissmuller, Johnny (1904–1984)
Welfare Capitalism
Wheeler, Burton K. (1882–1975)
Wilson, Edith (1872–1961)
Wilson, Woodrow (1856–1924)
Women and Gender
Women's Movement
Young Plan (1929–1930)
Youth
Cultural Landmarks
Art and Architecture
Literature: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry
Performing Arts: Film, Theater, and Music
Master Bibliography
I nt roduc t ion
The Jazz Age was a decade of contrasts. While the popular image of the Roaring Twenties—one of a booming
economy and carefree cultural excess—captures the general spirit of the times, the reality was far more nuanced
and diverse.
Rarely had American big business done better than in the 1920s, with productivity and profits, not to mention
stock prices, rising to unprecedented levels. The decade also saw stagnating wages, a labor movement in retreat,
and persistent hard times on America's farms. The early part of the decade was marked by one of the most
corruption-ridden administrations in U.S. history—that of Warren G. Harding—while its middle years saw the White
House occupied by one of the most restrained and sober presidents of modern times—Calvin Coolidge.
New technology, most notably the automobile and the radio, united city and country as never before, forging a
truly national popular culture. Yet the 1920s also witnessed a new divisiveness. Native-born Americans erected
barriers against new immigrants, race relations deteriorated into rioting, and a mass exodus of blacks from the
segregated and oppressive South swelled the urban centers of the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
Women gained the right to vote, but the impact on electoral politics and government policy promised by many who
had fought for the Nineteenth Amendment went largely unrealized. An urban culture that celebrated, or at least
tolerated, the lawlessness surrounding Prohibition and a new openness toward sexuality helped spark a reaction
in rural and small-town America. And while writers and critics such as Sinclair Lewis and H.L. Mencken lambasted
the cultural pretensions of a middle-class “booboisie,” the 1920s were also a time of great artistic and literary
expression—be it the writings of the Lost Generation or the efflorescence of African American culture in the
Harlem Renaissance.
Few decades in American history are as clearly defined chronologically as the Jazz Age, which began on
November 11, 1918, with the armistice that ended World War I, and concluded on October 24, 1929, the first day
of the great stock market crash on Wall Street. In a sense, then, the 1920s are defined by what came before and
after.
The period's probusiness conservatism and foreign-policy isolationism represented a reaction to the crusading
spirit of the Progressive Era that had prevailed in the previous two decades and the Wilsonian idealism that had
helped draw America into World War I. By contrast, the Jazz Age's flamboyant embrace of materialism is
highlighted by the dark years of the Great Depression that followed. Indeed, the myth of Jazz Age abundance was
largely a creation of those bleak economic times, when Americans looked back fondly—and a bit unrealistically—
on a decade when their country seemed much more confident and hopeful.
If the Jazz Age represented a lighthearted hiatus between two more serious periods, the period also marked a
national beginning of sorts. Social and intellectual historians frequently cite the 1920s as the birth of the modern
era in America, emphasizing the growth of mass culture, public spectacle, and popular fads, as well as the more
lasting contributions of artists and literary figures who broke from traditional influences—both home-bred and
European—and forged a uniquely modern and American mode of expression. Indeed, the 1920s witnessed the full
flowering of the modernist movement in the arts and letters. Writers, musicians, and visual artists experimented
with new forms and content, attempting to capture the spirit of an age defined by the machine, the metropolis, and
the dislocations of modern society.
None of this was entirely new, of course. Big business had begun to dominate the American economy at least a
half century earlier, in the decades following the Civil War. American politicians' deference to the masters of
finance and industry was hardly unique to the Jazz Age. Nor was the search for a uniquely American cultural
expressiveness invented by writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway or
modernist painters such as Joseph Stella and Georgia O'Keeffe. Nineteenth-century poets and novelists, including
Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Herman Melville, already had created masterpieces in that quest, as had the
visual artists of the nineteenth-century Hudson River and early twentieth-century Ashcan schools.
The great cultural divides of American life were nothing new either. No serious student of the country's history
would date the origins of America's ambivalence about immigration, race, or the role of women in society to the
decade that followed World War I. Indeed, the 1920s are remembered not so much as the beginning of the
modern age but as the decade that embraced and glorified the modern. Something about the Jazz Age makes it
seem more familiar to Americans of the early twenty-first century than any previous era in the nation's history.
For all the new technology, new media, modernist art, and power of big business, what makes the Jazz Age seem
so modern is the contrast that defined it—the tension between centralization and democratization. Never before
had so few dominated the lives of so many, whether it was the board members of major corporations determining
the economic fate of millions of workers and investors, the advertisers of Madison Avenue dictating the tastes of
consumers, or the producers of Hollywood movies and network radio programs purveying cultural offerings for
countless moviegoers and radio listeners.
Yet the centers of American power and influence did not wield control in the service of some totalitarian order, as
in the new Soviet Union or, during the following decade, in Nazi Germany. Far from it. In Jazz Age America,
power and influence were exercised in the name of a new kind of democracy—not of politics, but of the
pocketbook. Every successful entrepreneur, advertising executive, and purveyor of mass culture in the 1920s
understood—as their counterparts do today—that all the power and wealth they enjoyed rested with the individual
decisions of millions of consumers. Never before had so many had so many choices.
H ow t o U se t his Enc yc lope dia
The Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age is divided into three main sections. The first is a series of thematic essays on
politics, business, society and culture, and foreign affairs. This section is followed by the major body of the work, a
collection of more than 300 entries, organized alphabetically. These entries cover the important ideas, events,
trends, institutions, and people of the period. Several dozen of these articles are accompanied by a sidebar
feature that further explores a related theme or subject of interest.
The main A–Z section is followed by special material collected under the title “Cultural Landmarks” and divided
into the categories of art and architecture; fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; and film, theater, and music. “Cultural
Landmarks” provides descriptions of more than 100 of the most influential cultural offerings of the Jazz Age,
including brief commentary on their historical and cultural significance.
The primary means of finding a subject of interest appears at the front of each volume: the Table of Contents,
which is organized alphabetically, and the Topic Finder, which is organized by subject category. To help you
locate special features within the entries, a list of sidebars also is provided. All articles feature bibliographies, and
those in the A–Z section are cross-referenced to related entries. Also included in this work is a general
bibliography, listing more than 500 of the most important titles on the Jazz Age, as well as a general index.
James Ciment
Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1 9 2 3 )
In its landmark 1923 decision in Adkins v. Children's Hospital, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–3 that Congress
could not mandate a national minimum wage. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice George Sutherland held
that such laws violate the constitutional guarantee of life, liberty, and property, in that they infringe upon an
individual's right to make a contract of his or her choosing. The case has been viewed by historians as part of a
conservative, probusiness backlash to the liberalized labor laws of the Progressive Era before World War I.
The struggle over the government's right to establish working conditions was several decades old when the
Adkins case came before the nation's highest court. In its 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York, the Supreme
Court had ruled that a state could not set a maximum number of hours that employees—in this case, bakers—
could work each week. In 1908, however, the Court reversed itself, at least in part, ruling in Muller v. Oregon that
states are free to limit the number of working hours for female employees. Writing for the majority in that case,
Associate Justice David Josiah Brewer argued that the state has a special interest in protecting the health of
women, given their roles as child bearers and mothers. Nine years later, in Bunting v. Oregon (1917), the
Supreme Court extended the rule on maximum working hours to men; the Oregon statute under litigation was
declared constitutional because it regulated hours rather than wages.
In 1918, the U.S. Congress authorized the wartime National War Labor Board (NWLB) to set an appropriate
minimum wage for female employees in the District of Columbia, which Congress directly governed at the time.
Like the Supreme Court in Muller, Congress argued that women constitute a special class and therefore require
special protections. In this instance, it was argued, an adequate minimum wage was necessary for the “health
and morals of women.” That is, a woman worker who was not adequately paid might be led into a life of sin.
The Adkins case pitted the Children's Hospital of the District of Columbia against its many female employees
under contract; some of these women were being paid less than the minimum established by the NWLB. Hospital
officials appealed the board's decision, claiming that it violated their freedom to contract, and the case made its
way to the Supreme Court.
In the Adkins decision, the Court ruled that Congress could not mandate a minimum wage because to do so was
an unconstitutional infringement on the Fifth Amendment. Specifically, the Court held that individuals and
commercial firms have the right to contract for whatever pay both parties agree upon. To infringe on that right, the
justices held, is to deny individuals a constitutionally guaranteed freedom; as a denial of “life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law,” it was deemed a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Justice Sutherland also cited the
recently ratified Nineteenth Amendment (1920), which granted women the right to vote. With that measure, he
argued, women were clearly becoming more equal citizens and therefore no longer needed special protections
under the law.
The Adkins decision had broad implications for the country as a whole. Since the Fourteenth Amendment applied
the due process clause to the individual states, the ruling in Adkins extended beyond the District of Columbia and
Congress. Implicitly, the Supreme Court denied the right of any state to pass similar minimum wage laws.
The two main dissents in the case came from Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Associate Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes. Taft argued that Congress indeed has the right to regulate wages or other terms of employment
when health is at issue, and that the Bunting decision had upheld that right. According to Taft, Sutherland's
Nineteenth Amendment argument was irrelevant. Holmes argued that the Lochner decision, on which Sutherland
had based much of his decision, had been superseded by later Court decisions in Muller and Bunting.
Given the increasingly conservative, probusiness climate of the day, the decision aroused little immediate
controversy. Moreover, with the urban economy booming from 1923 to 1929, the issue of wages was largely being
settled in workers' favor by low unemployment and market forces.
With the coming of the Great Depression in 1929, however, the political climate began to change. An increasingly
restive labor movement, public opinion, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide reelection in 1936 may
have had an impact on the Supreme Court's thinking. In West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937), the justices reversed
their decision in Adkins, ruling 5–4 that state minimum wage laws—in this case, for women workers—are indeed
constitutional. The Court agreed with the many labor advocates who contended that employees are at a
disadvantage in negotiating contracts with employers and not at liberty to set whatever terms they please.
In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting minimum wages and maximum hours for all
workers. The legislation was upheld by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941).
Scott Merriman and James Ciment
Se e a lso: Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1 9 2 2 ); H olm e s, Olive r We nde ll, J r.; La bor
M ove m e nt ; La w a nd t he Court s; T a ft , Willia m H ow a rd; Wom e n a nd Ge nde r.
Furt he r Re a ding
Arkes, Hadley. The Return of George Sutherland: Restoring a Jurisprudence of Natural Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
Burton, David Henry. Taft, Holmes, and the 1920s Court: An Appraisal. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1998.
White, G. Edward. Oliver Wendell Holmes: Sage of the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Adve rt ising
The advertising industry came of age during the Jazz Age. Total U.S. advertising expenditures, which were almost
$1.5 billion in 1918, increased to $2.82 billion in 1919, nearly $3.1 billion by 1925, and $4 billion by 1929. Gross
revenues from advertising in magazines, which stood at $58.5 million in 1918, reached $129.5 million by 1920 and
$196.3 million by the end of the decade. The Saturday Evening Post, one of the nation's most popular magazines,
nearly doubled in size after World War I, to approximately 200 pages, most of which were filled with
advertisements. But during the 1920s advertising was more than just big business; it was a glamorous, exciting,
and powerful social force that permanently altered popular consumption in the United States.
Among other things, American advertising during the Jazz Age became bolder, more colorful, and eye-catching,
appealing to an American public freed from Victorian modesty and eager to consume. Ad agencies took advantage
of new technology that enabled high-speed, four-color printing in magazines. Ad budgets grew, campaigns
became more elaborate, and new products were developed and brought to market in a fraction of the time it had
taken in the past.
Rise of t he Adve rt ising Profe ssiona l
Advertisers came to be praised as the geniuses of American popular culture. Magazines glorified the qualities of
good advertising. Social observers claimed that advertising was the foundation of any good newspaper or
magazine, and that much of the serious writing of the decade was being published in advertisements. A bestselling book, The Man Nobody Knows (1925), by ad executive Bruce Barton, went so far as to characterize Jesus
Christ as a business executive, salesman, and yes, adman.
Advertising methods became increasingly sophisticated. Ad agencies preyed on people's fears, their vanity, and
their need to be socially accepted. Ads encouraged consumers to keep up with their neighbors. Women were told
they could be as glamorous and beautiful as any Hollywood movie star, and men were told they could be as
successful and charismatic as any multimillionaire, if only they used the right products. Advertising copywriters
even invented new diseases or afflictions, which people could avoid if they bought the right product. In their quest
for increased profits, advertisers changed the thoughts and habits of many Americans.
Many of the products that are ubiquitous to modern consumers were first thrust onto the national market during
the 1920s, backed by full-scale advertising. Harvey Firestone embarked on a major campaign to sell pneumatic
truck tires after World War I. Robert B. Wheelan became the first entrepreneur to set an exercise routine to music,
record it, and market it to a mass audience. His “Daily Dozen” became an immediate success, and doing routine
calisthenics became known as doing one's daily dozen. The country's three largest tobacco producers spent
billions to recruit new smokers, and Camels, Chesterfields, and Lucky Strikes became American consumers'
favorite cigarettes. For the first time, tobacco producers appealed directly to women, marketing cigarettes as an
appetite suppressant and something that would help women preserve their newly acquired social freedom. By
1925, American Tobacco was selling 17.4 billion cigarettes each year, 13 billion of them Lucky Strikes; R.J.
Reynolds was selling 34 billion Camels, and Liggett & Myers was selling more than 20 billion Chesterfields. The
three major tobacco producers controlled over 82 percent of the U.S. cigarette market.
Soap was also successfully marketed during the 1920s. The B.J. Johnson Soap Company assured women that
they could “Keep that Schoolgirl Complexion” if they used Palmolive, which by 1927 had become the best-selling
soap in the world. Johnson soon expanded its offerings to include shampoo and shaving cream. Lux soap,
according to its ads, was used by nine out of ten movie stars to maintain their beautiful skin. Users of Lifebuoy
soap, it was said, could avoid a condition so horrifying that one needed to utter only two letters to identify it,
“B.O.” Women could use Odorono deodorant to avoid offending a prospective marriage partner.
Advertising also helped Jazz Age consumers find relief for aches, pains, and other personal health problems. In
1922, Gerard B. Lambert, a son of the creator of Listerine—a surgical antiseptic used by dentists—found himself
$700,000 in debt. He went to his four brothers, all vice presidents at the Lambert pharmaceutical company, and
demanded to be put on the payroll. When they made him general manager, one of his first tasks was to boost
sales of Listerine, which until 1914 had been sold only by prescription. By 1928, the company was spending $5
million a year on advertising its mouthwash and had the profits to show for it. Similarly, a product created by W.F.
Young, Inc., called Absorbine Jr. (originally intended for use on horses) found a vast new consumer market during
the 1920s when advertisers discovered that, in addition to treating sore muscles, sunburn, and insect bites,
Absorbine Jr. could be used to cure a condition that later became known as “athlete's foot.”
Testimonials were the ad of choice during the 1920s. Celebrities hawked everything from soaps, lotions, and hair
tonics to storage batteries, cars, motorcycles, and typewriters. Madison Avenue—the New York City street where
the leading agencies maintained their offices—had lists of opera stars, society figures, athletes, and movie stars
who, for $5,000, would endorse nearly any product. Although the validity of such testimonials was suspect—movie
idols who did not smoke, for example, might extol the virtues of their favorite brand of cigarettes—few Americans
seemed to mind. The Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau made passing attempts at
regulating testimonial advertising, but neither the industry nor the consuming public paid them much heed.
Soa ring Consum pt ion
Consumer purchasing soared during the 1920s largely because advertisers, manufacturers, and retailers promoted
installment purchases. The earlier reluctance of the American people to accumulate debt disappeared almost
completely during the 1910s, when auto manufacturers began selling cars on the installment plan. After World
War I, installment selling expanded beyond cars and houses to include every new appliance and electronic gadget
coming to market. By 1927, Americans possessed more than $4 billion in unpaid merchandise. Washing
machines, electric refrigerators, pianos, sewing machines, and radios were just some of products bought on credit
during the 1920s. Increasing debt put a strain on many American households during the Jazz Age. Perhaps more
important, it placed increasing pressure on consumers' future earning potential.
In October 1929, consumption came to a grinding halt for the millions of Americans who lost their jobs, farms,
homes, or life savings with the collapse of the stock market and the onset of the Great Depression. During the
Roaring Twenties, however, advertising had reigned supreme, ushering in the conspicuous consumption of
modern American society.
Michael A. Rembis
Se e a lso: Be a ut y I ndust ry a nd Cult ure ; Be rna ys, Edw a rd L.; Ciga re t t e s a nd T oba c c o; Cre dit
a nd De bt , Consum e r; La sk e r, Albe rt ; Ra dio; Re t a il a nd Cha in St ore s; Sa rnoff, Da vid.
Furt he r Re a ding
Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: Basic
Books, 2001.
Turner, E.S. The Shocking History of Advertising! New York: E.P. Dutton, 1953.
Wood, James P. The Story of Advertising. New York: Ronald, 1958.
Afric a n Am e ric a ns
For many African Americans, the 1920s were a time of rising aspirations. The vast migration of black people out
of the rural South and into urban areas, especially in the North, continued a trend which had begun in the early
twentieth century, and offered an escape from the worst abuses of segregation and the abject poverty of tenant
farming. The new urban setting not only presented economic opportunities in the form of factory work, it also
created communities where African American culture could flourish.
African American soldiers hoped that wartime service would win them respect and equality upon returning home
from World War I. Instead, they would be met by continued discrimination and even violence. Here, members of
the celebrated 369th Colored Infantry, known as the Harlem Hellfighters, arrive in New York City in 1919. (Paul
Thompson/Stringer/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
The decade brought modest improvements in the lives of rural black Southerners; Jim Crow remained firmly
entrenched, but extralegal violence against blacks in the form of lynchings declined. In urban areas, however, the
vast influx of blacks resulted in a series of deadly attacks by white mobs. Between 1917 and 1921, major riots
occurred in East St. Louis, Chicago, and Tulsa, while lesser outbreaks took place in other locales.
Despite serious challenges, it was clear as early as 1918 that a “New Negro” had emerged in the United States.
African Americans of the 1920s were willing to leave the oppressive living conditions of the rural South and fight to
make a better life for themselves and for future generations.
Gre a t M igra t ion
Approximately one-fifth of America's nearly 12 million African Americans, or 2.4 million people, left the rural South
between 1910 and the end of the Jazz Age, in what is called the Great Migration. In 1935, the U.S. Census
Bureau issued a special report that documented the historic demographic shift in the black population during the
preceding two decades. Whereas earlier over 90 percent of African Americans had lived in the rural South,
between 1910 and 1920 the figure dropped to 85 percent, and by 1930 it fell to 78.5 percent. While more than
three-quarters of African Americans still lived in the rural South in 1930, barely making a living as sharecroppers
and tenant farmers, many African Americans were on the move geographically, socially, politically, and
economically.
Most blacks left the rural South in search of better-paying jobs and relief from Jim Crow discrimination. Since the
end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, Southern blacks had faced an increasingly oppressive system of
institutionalized segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement, as well as mounting white hostility and
violence. Southern blacks were forced into displays of humiliating deference to whites. This social oppression was
made worse by deteriorating economic conditions. The cotton crop, the mainstay of Southern farmers, was
destroyed by a boll weevil infestation in 1915, followed by declining cotton prices during the 1920s. These
conditions added to African Americans' plight and compelled many of them to abandon the fields for city life. New
job opportunities created by a shortage of workers during World War I and a prospering manufacturing sector after
the 1921–1922 recession provided African Americans with means to escape the oppressive living conditions in the
South.
Most of the migrants settled in the industrial states of the North. Lured by jobs at Henry Ford's River Rouge plant
in Detroit, as well as those of other automakers, nearly 170,000 African Americans flocked to Michigan in the
1920s. The African American populations of New York and Wisconsin more than doubled, while Illinois, New
Jersey, and Ohio had a combined total of 360,000 black residents by 1930. In absolute numbers, New York
showed the largest increase in African American residents, with a gain of nearly 215,000. Pennsylvania, which
had a long history of taking in blacks from the South, had more than 430,000 black residents according to the
1930 census, more than any other Northern state.
In 1920, more than 3.5 million African Americans lived in urban areas (defined by the U.S. Census as places with
a population of 2,500 persons or more). By 1930, the figure had risen to 5.2 million, or 43.7 percent of the
country's black population.
The majority of black urbanites lived in cities with more than 25,000 residents. New York City's black population
more than doubled from 1920 (152,467) to 1930 (327,706). In the process, the Harlem section of Manhattan
became the center of African American cultural expression and civil rights activity during the 1920s, attracting
black migrants from all over the South. Chicago's black population also more than doubled between 1920 and
1930 (to 233,903), making it the second largest black community in the United States.
African Americans also moved to urban centers in the South and West. Houston's black population almost
doubled in size during the 1920s, while the Memphis African American community increased to 96,550. Baltimore
reached a total of 142,106 black residents by 1930, an increase of 31.2 percent for the decade. Washington, D.C.,
New Orleans, Birmingham, Memphis, St. Louis, and Atlanta also experienced dramatic rises in their black
populations during the course of the decade. Los Angeles's black population more than doubled, to 38,894.
Whether they remained in the South or moved to the West or North, African Americans continued to face hostility,
violence, segregation, and discrimination during the 1920s. Job opportunities and living conditions were much
better in the West and the North than they were in the South, but even in those areas, African Americans
encountered a host of obstacles. Fearing unrest from hostile white workers, or acting on prejudices of their own,
factory owners typically put blacks in menial janitorial or maintenance positions, rather than in higher-paying
assembly-line jobs. Nor could black workers turn to unions for help, as union membership was only open to skilled
craft workers. As a result, black workers faced a kind of double discrimination—because of their skin color and
because of their unskilled status.
Like foreign immigrants, African Americans often moved into neighborhoods where they had friends and family and
could find goods and services that appealed to their culture. As blacks poured into the cities, they competed for
limited housing, or they moved in with family or friends. Landlords took advantage of de facto segregation by
charging higher rents to blacks, while often failing to maintain their buildings. White hostility kept many African
Americans confined to overcrowded and rundown slums. Often there was no way out. Even those who had the
financial resources to leave the ghetto were prevented from doing so by realtors who would not sell to them or by
hostile whites who used intimidation, terror, and even violence to prevent black families from relocating to white
neighborhoods.
I nst it ut ions of Com m unit y
Despite the obstacles and limitations, segments of the African American community managed to thrive during the
1920s. The most important institution in the black community had always been the church, and church
membership continued to grow during the Jazz Age.
A 1926 census of religious institutions in the United States counted twenty-four different African American
denominations. African Americans owned or leased 37,790 church buildings, with a combined membership of
more than 5 million. Women outnumbered men in church membership by more than two to one. The various
Baptist denominations together accounted for approximately 60 percent of all black church members. Four
Methodist denominations accounted for another 30 percent of parishioners in 1926. Although 90 percent of black
churches were located in the South during the 1920s, church membership expanded wherever African Americans
settled. Cleveland's forty-four black churches grew to over 149 by 1933. One Alabama church moved its entire
congregation to Cleveland during the 1920s.
African Americans created business districts that provided goods and services, stabilized black communities, and
formed the foundation for an expanding black middle class. They established their own insurance companies,
banks, real estate companies, funeral parlors, and other enterprises during the Jazz Age, many of these
businesses made possible by the growing urban black communities. Black-owned grocery stores, pharmacies,
barbershops, and other services catered to an all-black clientele.
Perhaps the best-known African American entrepreneur was Madame C.J. Walker, who sold beauty products to
the black community. Born Sarah Breedlove to Louisiana tenant farmer parents in 1867, Walker got her start as a
washerwoman in St. Louis, where she developed a hair treatment involving hot combs and ointments. By 1910,
she had established her own company, Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, in Indianapolis. Throughout
the 1920s, her company generated millions in revenues, employing thousands of salespeople, mostly women.
Despite such successes, most black businesses remained marginal in the overall American economy, and when
the country sank into the Great Depression during the early 1930s, only the strongest ones survived.
Civil Right s
As African Americans built their own institutions and communities during the 1920s, they also continued their
struggle for civil rights. Northern black communities established branches of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which fought against lynching, disenfranchisement, segregation, racism
in the criminal justice system, and economic inequality. By 1920, the NAACP had an all-black national leadership
and was the most influential civil rights group in America. The organization's most prominent leader was W.E.B.
Du Bois, the founding editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis. During the 1920s, Du Bois became one of the
most influential black intellectuals and civil rights leaders in America, and The Crisis became a well-respected,
widely read outlet for black art and literature and social and political commentary. NAACP leaders James Weldon
Johnson and Walter White fought throughout the 1920s to end lynching and to get an anti-lynching bill through
Congress. Although Congress never passed federal legislation, the work of the NAACP and other civil rights
groups, including the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, helped raise public awareness and
ultimately reduced the number of lynchings in the United States.
To further promote African American civil rights worldwide, Du Bois organized four pan-African conferences.
Delegates from around the world met in Paris in 1919; London, Paris, and Brussels in 1921; London and Lisbon in
1923; and New York in 1927. Although there had been earlier meetings (the first in 1905), the conferences of the
1920s were more ambitious in their goals and received better press coverage, especially in the European press.
Delegates from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States issued a powerful manifesto to the world,
demanding an end to colonialism, as well as a declaration against the exploitation of African labor and natural
resources.
At home, meanwhile, African Americans won an important political victory in 1928, when Chicago's black
community elected Oscar DePriest, a longtime community activist, to the U.S. Congress. For the first time since
1900, an African American sat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
One prominent trend in black activism during the 1920s eschewed electoral politics. Founded by Jamaican-born
black nationalist Marcus Garvey, the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), based in Harlem, attracted
thousands of supporters by calling on black people to reject white society and to build a separate economic and
social existence outside of it. Garvey argued that African Americans had to focus on their own institutions rather
than worry about their rights as whites defined them. Garvey encouraged black Americans to think of themselves
as part of the wider African diaspora and to fight for the liberation of all Africans. Garvey created the Black Star
Shipping Line in 1919, in part to provide African Americans with a means of returning to Africa. When it became
known that Garvey did not actually own the ships he claimed to, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail
fraud and spent two years in prison. President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence in 1927, but Garvey was
deported to Jamaica and his movement went into steep decline.
Other groups, such as the Urban League, helped African Americans make gains in employment by providing
social services to as many as 40,000 African Americans annually during the 1920s. Wealthy whites contributed
most of the money to the Urban League, which had branches in Northern cities. The organization helped Northern
black migrants acquire job skills and find work in an era when there were virtually no laws prohibiting employment
discrimination. Urban League volunteers trained migrants for industrial jobs, ran adult education courses for
various trades, promoted health education and child welfare, and engaged in social work.
Black women only partially shared in the contemporaneous gains of their gender. While women had technically
won the right to vote, African American women were prevented from doing so by antiblack voting laws in the
South. Thus, African American women pressed the recently formed National Women's Party to join the fight for
African American civil and voting rights. Black women, such as longtime activist Ida B. Wells, and the National
Association of Colored Women's Clubs also played a critical role in pressing Congress to pass anti-lynching
legislation. Women organized fund-raising events, contributed money, and distributed literature for the NAACP and
other civil rights groups. Throughout the 1920s, black women such as educator Mary McLeod Bethune also fought
to promote schooling—at both the secondary and college levels—for young black women.
Cult ure
In its new urban setting, African American cultural expression blossomed during the 1920s with musicians, artists,
and writers finding a growing audience for their work. In New York City, the artistic movement called the Harlem
Renaissance found creative writers and artists in all fields sharing the African American historical experience,
celebrating the Great Migration, and grappling with the many legacies of slavery.
For the most part, the emergence of a new generation of black artists during the 1920s was a spontaneous
organic process, but black civil rights leaders and white benefactors recognized the power of artists to shape
public perceptions of African Americans and possibly break down long-standing racial barriers. These groups and
individuals quickly became involved in the movement as patrons and by providing places for black artists to exhibit
their work. The NAACP provided black writers, poets, and artists with a forum in its journal The Crisis. The Urban
League provided a similar outlet for artists in its journal Opportunity. White benefactors included William E.
Harmon, who provided black painters and sculptors an opportunity to present their work and to win acclaim and
awards through the William E. Harmon Foundation.
While black writers, painters, sculptors, and actors played a critical role in shaping the culture of the 1920s, it was
a black musical form that defined the era. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby (1925) and other
modern classics, referred to the 1920s as the “Jazz Age.” Jazz music, which emerged out of black New Orleans
around the turn of the twentieth century, had become an international phenomenon by the 1920s. Black and white
audiences and performers flocked to bars, cabarets, juke joints, saloons, and dance halls to hear live jazz
performances. The blues, a product of the Mississippi Delta, also became highly popular during the 1920s and
influenced the emergence of rock and roll thirty years later.
African American creativity influenced all art forms during the Jazz Age. Black artists painted and sculpted, made
movies, transformed the Broadway musical, and created serious dramatic roles on stage and film. They wrote
some of the most engaging prose and poetry and composed timeless blues and jazz classics, as well as spirituals
and gospel music. As cultural critic Alain Locke and other figures in the black community claimed, a “New Negro”
had indeed emerged in Jazz Age America.
Michael A. Rembis
Se e a lso: Blue s; Chic a go Ra c e Riot of 1 9 1 9 ; De Prie st , Osc a r; Du Bois, W.E.B.; Ga rve y,
M a rc us; H a rle m Re na issa nc e ; J a zz; K u K lux K la n; Loc k e , Ala in; Lync hing; M igra t ion,
Gre a t ; N a t iona l Assoc ia t ion for t he Adva nc e m e nt of Colore d Pe ople ; Rose w ood M a ssa c re
(1 9 2 3 ); T ulsa Ra c e Riot s of 1 9 2 1 ; U nive rsa l N e gro I m prove m e nt Assoc ia t ion.
Furt he r Re a ding
Arnesen, Eric. Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's,
2003.
Berg, Manfred. The Ticket to Freedom: The NAACP and the Struggle for Black Political Integration. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2005.
Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World
War II. New York: Doubleday, 2008.
Corbould, Clare. Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919–1939. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2009.
Cronon, E. David. Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. 2nd ed.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.
Schneider, Mark Robert. African Americans in the Jazz Age: A Decade of Struggle and Promise. Lanham, MD: Rowman
and Littlefield, 2006.
Sullivan, Patricia. Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: New Press,
2009.
Trotter, William, Jr., ed. The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Waldrep, Christopher. African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance from the Civil War to the Civil Rights
Era. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
Wintz, Cary D. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance. Houston, TX: Rice University Press, 1988.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. New York: Random House,
2010.
Agric ult ura l M a rk e t ing Ac t of 1 9 2 9
In the aftermath of World War I, American farmers faced significant difficulties. With the return of peace in Europe,
demand fell, and inevitably prices tumbled. As service personnel were demobilized, the armed forces no longer
needed as much food, and Americans did not rapidly return to their prewar diets, heavy with meats and breads. In
addition, Europe recovered quickly from the war and thus was less reliant on American foodstuffs than had been
expected. Indeed, Europeans produced more food for themselves and their livestock in 1919 than they had in
1913 (the last full harvest before the outbreak of war).
Smaller markets were but one factor; production contributed to the chronically low prices as well. Throughout the
war years, farmers had plowed up orchards, pastures, and farmyards to produce food and fodder. They also
listened to their county agents on methods of improving poultry production and butterfat content, raising meaty
swine, and growing better strains of corn and healthier fruit trees, enhancing productivity every step of the way.
A further contribution to agricultural production came in the form of mechanization: the gasoline-powered tractor.
Throughout the 1920s, farmers retired an average of about 500,000 horses and mules annually for the noisy
demands of a Case, John Deere, Allis-Chalmers, or Farmall tractor. Not only did the tractors enable farmers to
tend their fields more rapidly, but gasoline replaced the need for homegrown oats and fodder, making more
acreage available for crops. It has been estimated that the retirement of each draft animal opened up an
additional five acres.
As farmers struggled to keep up with mortgage payments, foreclosures became commonplace and tenancy
increased. The situation was hardly brightened by years of dry weather, particularly in the Midwest and Great
Plains. Adding insult to injury, young people abandoned farms to make their living in urban areas. With skills
gained in military service, former soldiers left the farm in droves to serve as mechanics, electricians, and factory
workers or as entry-level, white-collar workers.
Those who remained on the farm attempted a variety of solutions to their woes. Cooperative buying and selling
became popular, as did reducing overhead by keeping strict account of livestock and crop productivity, and using
only the best seed and livestock. Spurred by the farm bloc, Congress enacted legislation to prohibit monopoly and
restraint of trade in the slaughterhouses, to exempt farmers' cooperatives from antitrust laws, and to provide
cheaper credit. Still the farm crisis continued.
Farmers, desperate for relief, sought help through a subsidized export corporation operated by the federal
government. Named after its sponsors, Senator Charles McNary (R-OR) and Representative Gilbert Haugen (RIA), the exceedingly complex proposal—the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill—passed Congress three times
(1924, 1926, 1928), only to be vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge. In his veto, Coolidge had the support of
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who held fast to his belief that farm conditions would improve when
farmers operated cooperatively from informed positions.
Conditions did not improve, and by the election of 1928, the “farm problem” seemed to be on everyone's mind. In
fact, presidential hopeful Herbert Hoover promised that, if elected, he would call a special session of Congress to
tackle the issue. As president, he supported, and Congress passed, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929. The
measure authorized the federal government to create a revolving fund of $500 million to lend to agricultural
cooperatives. Cooperatives could then purchase price-depressing surpluses, keeping them off the market until
prices improved. With orderly marketing and an increasing demand, cooperatives could then sell their surplus
products, return a profit to the nation's farmers, and commence the organization of orderly marketing associations.
Within the Agricultural Marketing Act, Congress included language to establish the Federal Farm Board, which
was to institute a number of agricultural stabilization corporations for grains and cotton. The stabilization
corporations also held authorization to purchase excess commodities, withhold them from the marketplace, and
release them only with improved prices. Some surpluses found their way to relief lines, distributed as charity.
As the depression, both agricultural and general, worsened, it became clear that a single organization, regardless
of its backing, could not return prosperity to the farms of America. By 1932, the Federal Farm Board had not
proven itself up to the task and stood some $184 million in debt. Despite the efforts and expenditures, farm
conditions had actually worsened during its brief existence.
Regardless of its failure, the Agricultural Marketing Act and the accompanying Federal Farm Board did mark the
onset of closer relations between farmers and the government, ultimately setting the stage for the revolutionary
agricultural measures of the New Deal.
Kimberly K. Porter
Se e a lso: Agric ult ure ; Am e ric a n Fa rm Bure a u Fe de ra t ion.
Furt he r Re a ding
Benedict, Murray R. Farm Policies of the United States, 1790–1950: A Study in Their Origins and Development. New
York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1953.
Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Ames: Iowa State University, 1994.
Shideler, James H. Farm Crisis, 1919–1923. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
Agric ult ure
The 1920s were a difficult period economically for America's farmers. During this time, the prosperity generated
during World War I gave way to crop surpluses, falling crop prices, rising farm debt, and widespread poverty in
agricultural regions, particularly the South.
Paradoxically, the motion pictures, music, and popular literature of the time extolled the farmer as the backbone of
America, offering up idealized images of farm life for the consumption of newly expanding urban audiences.
Although farmers were sometimes portrayed as hayseeds, they also were seen as a font of homespun wisdom,
unsullied by the worldliness of cosmopolitan cities. Writers and moviemakers depicted the innocent pride and
competition of farmers showing off the best of their livestock and crops at state fairs. Magazines, ignoring the
labor that farming involved, portrayed the countryside as a clean, unpolluted place and farmers as healthy, applecheeked citizens.
Fa rm Work
Work on America's farms was heavy indeed, for agricultural mechanization was still in the pioneering stages by
the 1920s. For most farmers, life followed the ancient biblical injunction about earning one's bread by the sweat of
one's brow. In 1919, most tractors were ten-ton behemoths, practical only on the largest spreads. Or they might
be shared power sources for a threshing machine that was owned by a number of neighboring farmers and
moved from field to field. The few small gasoline tractors that were available often proved inadequately powered,
breaking down under the challenges of farm work. In 1917, when Henry Ford, a farmer's son, entered the market
with his small but rugged Fordson—the first mass-produced farm tractor—he joked that his only competition was
the horse.
Although the Fordson had serious problems, including a dangerous tendency to tip over backward and crush its
driver, it was successful enough that other companies had to produce small tractors or get out of the business.
International Harvester, the descendant of Cyrus McCormick's reaper company, in 1924 introduced the Farmall, a
nimble little red tractor whose very name proclaimed its suitability for a diversity of farm chores. Even so, tractors
were still rare on American farms. As late as 1928, there were just 800,000 tractors—versus about 20 million
mules and horses—on America's roughly 8 million farms. Many farmers could not afford to switch from fourlegged to mechanized power.
During and immediately after World War I, agriculture had enjoyed a brief era of prosperity because of the need
for food for soldiers, federal price supports, and the demand from war-torn Europe. After the war, however, prices
for grain and other farm products steadily declined, while the prices farmers paid for manufactured goods
remained the same or rose.
Between 1918 and the depths of the 1921–1922 recession, wheat prices fell by 40 percent, corn by a third, and
hogs by roughly half. Farmers had barely recovered lost ground when the Depression hit in 1930. From 1919 to
1930, farm income fell from 16 percent of the national income to 8.8 percent. The situation was made even worse
by the fact that many farmers had borrowed money to make capital investments during the period of prosperity,
believing that the tractor and other mechanical innovations would soon pay for themselves in increased
productivity.
Boll We e vil
In the early twentieth century, agriculture in the southern United States remained concentrated on a
small number of cash crops. Most farms, in fact, focused on a single crop as a source of income: cotton.
First cultivated in the British American colonies along the southern coast, cotton spread westward into the
Mississippi River valley and beyond during the early nineteenth century. It remained the dominant cash
crop in most of the South until 1918, when a number of factors began to force southern agriculture to
abandon its traditional one-crop economy and move toward diversification and mechanization. Among
these factors was the boll weevil.
Approximately a quarter inch in length, the boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) is a beetlelike insect that
damages cotton crops by depositing its eggs in the square, or boll, of the cotton plant—the pod that
yields cotton as the plant matures. The weevil hibernates in the ground during the winter, emerging in
the spring to lay its eggs in the bolls, causing them to rot before the cotton can mature. Boll weevils also
feed on the bolls, resulting in additional injury to the plant.
The boll weevil migrated into the southern United States from Mexico in 1892. By the middle of the first
decade of the twentieth century, it had reached the cotton fields of Louisiana and Mississippi; by the
early 1920s, it had infested all cotton-producing regions of the South.
Cotton production declined sharply during this period—in some regions by as much as 50 to 75 percent.
Production began to recover in the years immediately preceding the Great Depression as farmers
modified their planting schedules to allow the cotton to mature early, and the locus of cotton production
shifted northward and westward to the drier and more fertile lands of West Texas, Arkansas, and the
Mississippi Delta.
The boll weevil created an acute economic crisis for landowners, tenant farmers, and farm laborers in
cotton-producing regions. Poor farm laborers, for whom mechanization had already reduced employment
opportunities, were particularly hurt by the devastation the insect brought to the cotton crops.
This situation contributed significantly to the mass migrations of African Americans and poor whites to
urban areas in the East, Midwest, and West. African Americans who left the South during the Great