The New Era
Study Guide
Directions: Read chapter 24 of your textbook and complete the questions below.
Part I: Identify and Define ( Make sure you explain the significance of each term and how it contributed
to life in the 1920’s)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
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21.
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24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
Welfare Capitalism
Pink Collar Jobs
Great Migration
A. Phillip Randolph and The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
Protecting the Open Shop
Mechanized Farming
Parity
McNary-Hangen Bill
The Man Nobody Knows
Mass Circulation Magazines
The Jazz Singer
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Companionate Marriage
Margaret Sanger
The Flapper
National Woman’s Party
League of Woman Voters
Sheppard- Towner Act
Charles Lindbergh
Lost Generation
Ernest Hemingway
H.L. Menken
The Great Gatsby
John Dewey
Charles and Mary Beard
The Harlem Renaissance
Prohibition
Al Capone
Rebirth of Ku Klux Klan
The Fundamentalists
Scopes Monkey Trial
Al Smith
Andrew Mellon
Part II: Critical Thinking (Evidence from the chapter must be used in order to properly answer these
questions)
1.
Why did contemporaries refer to the 1920s as the "New Era"? Explain whether that was an
appropriate label.
2.
Discuss the reasons for the industrial boom in the 1920s after the initial period of economic
readjustment following World War I.
3.
Many people gained from the boom of the New Era, and others fell through the economic cracks.
Who gained? Who did not?
4.
Analyze the forces that contributed to the emergence of a modern secular American culture in the
1920s.
5.
One of the questions that has troubled historians concerns the legacy of progressivism. Looking at
the 1920s, would you argue that progressive thought had died or triumphed? Why?
6.
How and why did the role of women change in American society during the 1920s?
7.
Impressions of the 1920s vary, according to which vision one accepts Briefly describe each of
those visions and tell how one or several capture the real significance of the decade.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
k.
Members of the ruling elite, such as Andrew Mellon and Herbert Hoover
Self-Made men, such as Charles Lindbergh
Disenchanted, such as H. L. Mencken and Ernest Hemingway
Provincial traditionalists, such as William Jennings Bryan
African Americans in the Harlem Renaissance
White Fugitives
Chinese immigrants
Japanese immigrants
Filipino immigrants
Mexican immigrants
Farmers.
8.
Discuss the growth of consumerism that took place in the 1920’s and its effect on American
society.
9.
Explain the role of advertising in a consumer society.
9.
Why was the "New Era" a Republican era in general and one in which Warren G. Harding and
Calvin Coolidge, in particular, were elected as presidents? Discuss the ways in which their
personalities and policies reflected the times.
10.
Why were the forces of prohibition, religious fundamentalism, and nativism so strong in the
1920s?
11.
How did the urban dance halls reflect challenges to the proprieties and inhibitions of traditional
public culture in America?
12.
Discuss the changes that took place in the “Youth Culture” of America.
13.
Discuss what they mean by the “Decline of the Self-Made Man”.
14. Discuss the significance of the Harlem Renaissance on American society and African Americans in
particular.