Unit 8: The Twenties
Chapter 26
UNDERSTANDING POST -WAR
TENSIONS
Sacco and Vanzetti
 Sacco and Vanzetti Trial
 Italian Immigrants convicted
of double murder and
robbery

Was the trial fair?
 Clemency- lessening of
their penalty
Demobilization = Unemployment
 Demobilization- transition from wartime
to peacetime

High Unemployment
 American’s spending saved money

Inflation (rising prices)
 High Unemployment + high inflation=
RECESSION (decline of economic activity)
Businesses Return to Prewar Labor Practices
 Struggle between businesses and labor over WAGES and
WORKING CONDITIONS resumed. (during war they
agreed to settle with no striking)
UNIONS
 AFL- American Federation of Labor
 Skilled and unskilled workers, bread and
butter unionism
 IWW- Industrial Workers of the World
 Wobblies- radical industrial workers who
wanted socialism
 General Strike
 35,000 Seattle shipyard workers walk off job
 100,000 joined in a general strike across
industries
Unions Lose Support
 Boston Police Force Strike (1919) Chaos erupted, Governer Coolidge called the national guard and
fired all policemen
 Problems with Unions
 Public hostility, failure to achieve goals, and exclusive politics
 Supreme Court Weakens Unions
 Restricted boycotting, rejected a child labor law and a law that
raised wages for women
 Union power diminishing
Fear of Radicals
 Bomb Scare
 Bombs delivered to politicians,
people assumed by radicals
 Radicalism- extreme change
(sparked by Russian Revolution)
 Socialists- public (government)
ownership of means of production
(factories and land)
 Communists- more extreme
socialism, classless society
 Anarchists- oppose all systems of
government
Red Scare
 Red Scare- postwar fear of radicalism
 Palmer Raids
 Attorney General Mitchell Palmer was a
target of a bomb, so he along with his
assistant J. Edgar Hoover, launched a
campaign against subversives known as the
Palmer Raids
Raided buildings and seized records without
warrants, arrested 6,000 suspected radicals,
and foreign-born radicals were deported
without a trial
 Civil Liberties (basic rights) were denied

Immigration and Closing the door
 Immigration increased
 Quota System
 Nativism revived
 Emergency Immigration Act
of 1921

375,000 people (3%)
 Immigrant Act of 1924

164,000 people (2%)
Revival of the Ku Klux Klan
 Ku Klux Klan- anti immigrant feelings
 Leo Frank- Jewish factory manager convicted of killing a young girl
Mary Phagan
 The Klan broke him out of jail and hanged him.
 Southern Revival (control of policics)
Early 1920s numbers range 3-4 million
ACLU
 American Civil Liberties Union- created to protect
freedom of speech
 Defending the Unpopular

Radicals, union workers, and Wobblies
Asian and African Discrimination
 Asian Discrimination
 Citizenship and Marriage banned
 African Discrimination
 Race Riots 1919, segregated society
 Back to Africa Movement
 Marcus Garvey- 2 million followers
Jews and Catholics Battle Religious Prejudice
 Anti-Semitism- prejudice against Jews
 Anti-Defamation League (ADL)- stop
the false accusation of Jewish people
 Anti-Catholic

New York Gov. Al Smith
Chapter 27
THE POLITICS OF NORMALCY
Harding’s Return to Normalcy
 Normalcy- Harding's belief that
life would return as it was
prewar
 Warren G Harding: Republican
president 1920-23 from Ohio


Free enterprise system
Cut Taxes and Spending
Prices and Unemployment dropped
 Economy looked good

Ohio Gang
 Ohio Gang- Harding filled his
government positions to loyal friends
from Ohio
 Gang Betrayal


Attorney General: Harry Daugherty took
bribes from criminals
Secretary of Interior: Albert B Fall was
responsible for the Teapot Dome Scandal

Oil Rich lands set aside for the US Navy in
Wyoming. Fall secretly leased the land to
private oil companies and received more that
$400,000.
Coolidge then Hoover
 Harding dies of a heart
attack and VP Calvin
Coolidge “silent Cal” takes
office

Coolidge Cuts TAXES- income,
corporate, and inheritance
 Herbert Hoover elected in
1928

Believed in big business and
“associationalism”- bringing
businesses together to improve
economic efficiency
Isolationism
 Avoiding Europe involvement

Distrust in the League of Nations
 Disarmament

Washington Naval Conference- limit the size of navies
 Diplomacy

Kellogg-Briand Pact- Agreement to outlaw war
 War Debts

Dawes PlanUS loaned Germany money
 Germany paid Britain and France reparations
 Britain and France paid the US
 Germany then owed the US even more money which causes
problems later

 Less Latin America

Nonintervention, rejected the Roosevelt Corollary
FORD
 Henry Ford

Mass Production (assembly line) = Lower Prices
 Innovation= New Industries

Automobiles
Steel, Construction, Oil, Highways
 Restaurants, hotels, gas stations, and repair shops


Airplanes

US postal service
 Big Business


Consolidation- merging of 2 businesses
Holding Companies- Corporations controlled by their stock
 Speculators

Florida Land Boom- real estate developers sold land to speculators
(get rich quick) and prices plummeted after a hurricane
Dow Jones Industrial Average
 Stock Market- road to riches
 DJIA- Dow Jones Industrial Average- measure of stock prices
still used today
 GNP Gross National Product
 Up 40%
Hard Times
 Farmers- crop prices plummeted
 Mexican, Mexican American, Asian, and Asian
Americans had low pay and harsh working
conditions
 Unskilled workers struggled
 Coal Miners
 African Americans- paid less and barred from most
unions
Chapter 28
POPULAR CULTURE IN THE
ROARING TWENTIES
Roaring Twenties
 Roaring Twenties-
decade of prosperity,
technological advances,
and cultural boom
 Charleston- African
American folk dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNAOHtmy4
j0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72oC9_PTiQo&p=2B37A9FB286951FA&i
ndex=10&feature=BF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPW1bBlzBb0&feature=fvw
Material World
 Consumer Culture-
consumption of large
quantities of goods as
beneficial to the economy
and personal happiness

Inventions- promise to make life
easier
 Advertising builds consumer
demand


Bruce Barton
The Man Nobody Knows
Buy Now, Pay Later
 Credit- buy with borrowed
money, pay off the loan
overtime with interest
 Installment Buying-down
payment to the seller and
pay for the good overtime
in installments
 Sound Familiar???
To the Air and Roads
 Airplanes
 Charles Lindbergh- 1st solo flight NY to Paris
 Amelia Earhart- Solo flight from Cali to Hawaii
 Automobiles
 Henry Ford

Cars and a new sense of freedom
Mass Media
 Popular Culture- culture of ordinary people
including music, art literature, and
entertainment
 Print Media

Explosion of magazines: Time, Readers Digest
 Radio
 KDKA- 1920 presidential election results
 David Sarnoff- titanic survivors
 Motion Pictures
 Charlie Chaplin- silent film actor
 The Jazz Singer- talkie
Women and Equality
 Grassroots Organization (run by its members)
 The League of Women Voters

Carrie Chapman Catt
 Failure of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
 Alice Paul
 National Women’s Party
 New Opportunities
 Margaret Sanger- fist family planning clinic

Planned Parenthood
The Jazz Age
 Jazz Age
 Louis Armstrong- trumpet soloist
 Bessie Smith- empress of the blues
 Improvisation- make it up as
you go
 Night Clubs and Radio

America’s Music

Young people- the Charleston (wild
and reckless)
Writers and Artists
 Harlem Renaissance-
outpouring of creativity
among African American
writers, artists, and
musicians who gathered in
Harlem during the 1920’s

Langston Hughes

He attempted to explain and
illuminate the Negro Condition in
America
 Literature and Art

Lost Generation- sickened by the
slaughter of war and critical of
American Ideals and values
E.E. Cummings
 Ernest Hemingway
 F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sports
 Spectator Sports- large
number of fans who attend


Baseball and Football
Boxing and Wrestling
 National Celebrities
 Jack Dempsey
 Babe Ruth
 Jim Thorpe
 Gertrude Ederle
Chapter 29
THE CLASH BETWEEN
TRADITIONALISM AND MODERNSIM
Traditionalists vs. Modernists
 Traditionalists- people who had a deep respect for long-
held cultural and religious cultures
 Modernists- people who embraced new ideas, styles, and
social trends
Urban and Rural Areas
 Consumer Price Index
 Average household income rose 37%
 Rural Problems
 WWI- demand up, after the war
demand and prices fell, farmers lost
their farms
 Pro-farmer legislation vetoed by
Coolidge twice
Changing Values
 Fundamentalism- idea that religious texts and beliefs
should be taken literally

Billy Sunday- fundamentalist preacher
The Youth of a Nation
 Old ways are Repressive: Courting vs dating
 Fads- flagpole sitting, marathon dancing,
and crossword puzzles
 “Flappers”- daring young women with short
colored hair, make up and dresses just
below the knees
Adult Perspective
 Young people have lost there way
 Wreckless and immoral
 Censorship of movies and books
 “two feet on the floor”- bedroom scenes
 Laws- police with yard sticks
patrolled the length of young
women's skirts
Prohibition
 The “Dry” Perspective


Traditionalists victory
18th Amendment- BANNING of
ALCOHOL
 The “Wet” Perspective


Modernist fight
Restricts freedom and breeds
crime
 Speakeasies- secret
drinking clubs
 Bootlegging- production,
transport, and sale of
illegal alcohol
(multibillion dollar
business)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g59y65aE
W_I
Evolution
 The Modernist Perspective
 The Traditionalist Perspective
 Theory of Evolution: Darwin
 Creationism


Life evolved from simpler
forms
Natural Selection

God Created the Univerise
 Fear of Eugenics

Super breeding
Scopes Trial
 “The Monkey Trial”
 John T Scopes: violated
Tennessee Law which banned
teaching of evolution in public
schools





Clarence Darrow vs William
Jennings Bryan
“Scopes isn’t on trial, Civilization is
on trial”
“If Evolution wins, Christianity
goes”
Scopes was found guilty and fined
$100
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/
08/2/l_082_01.html
Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design
 Supreme Court Bans Creationism
 Lemon Test (Lemon v. Kurtzman)
 3 rules
1.
Have a secular, or nonreligious, purpose
2.
Neither help nor hurt religion
3.
Not result in an “excessive entanglement” of government and
religion
 Intelligent Design- argues that some features of the
natural world are too complex to have evolved by means
of natural selection, they must have been developed by
an intelligent agent