Post WWI and the 1920s
I. INTRO TO THE 1920s:
Reaction against idealism and reform–Arthur Link wrote in 1959–“What happened to the Progressive
Movement in the 1920s?” He described the 1920s as:
1. Big Business subverted the regulatory system returning to the 1870s status quo in which
special interest benefitted business, industry and finance.
2. Surging tide of nationalism and mass hatreds generated by WWI–communism, suppression of
civil liberties, nativism, antisemitism exemplified through KKK, the triumph of racism and prejudice in
immigrant legislation.
3. Ideals were replaced by “crass materialism and a scramble for wealth”
4.The Same question has been posed by women’s historians –What was the fate of women’s
groups after the passage of the 19th Amendment? The standard interpretation is that the 1920s was a
dismal period for women in which the gains were little other than Sheppard-Towner Maternity and
Infancy Act the first federal social welfare law passed in 1921.
5. Was the experience of black Americans following WWI one of declined political activism or
increasing racial consciousness, autonomy, and power?
II. A TIME OF PROSPERITY SIMILAR TO THE 1990s? For who?
A. Boom time?
1. economic expansion throughout the twenties
2. wartime profits lead to capital investment and increased mass production measures
3. scientific management–led to efficiency
4. increased consumerism
a. autos/airplanes
b. dupont and chemical
c. radio/ motion pictures
1. 1927–732 radio stations–5 mil sets
2. 1934 FCC
3. 100 mil/week
B. Corporate consolidation and Welfare Capitalism
1. corporate mergers
a. number of auto makers dropped from 108 to 44 but the big 3 prod. 83%
b. 1929 200 largest companies controlled half of non-banking corporate wealth
c. store chains like A&P Woolworth’s
2. Open shop –assault against labor
a. Welfare capitalism–benefits packages as an alternative to unions persuading
workers to rely on the corporation.
b. membership in unions fell from 5.1mil to 3.6mil by 1929.
c.conservative union leaders neglected ethnic and black workers in mass prod.
industries
d.increasing mech. led to stagnate wages and unemployment in 1921 reached
12%
eg. Ford made no wage hike after 1919–his workers would have needed a 65%
increase to recover their buying power of 1914.
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eg. US Steel reduced weekly wages even while profits doubled between 1923
and 1929.
e. rising national income largely reflected rising salaries and dividends and not
wages.
f. Unskilled and workers of color and women fairedt he worse:
eg. Male furniture assemblers earned 56 cents/hr and women 32 cents/hr
eg. Gap between rich and poor widened: 71% were below the poverty line
This maldistribution of income/wealth would eventually mean that Americans
would be unable to buy the products they made.
C. Sick instustries
1. Coal mining
2. Textile and garment manufacturing
3. Railroads
–excess capacity, shrinking demand, low returns, and management/labor conflicts
eg. Mining–capacity for 1bil but half that was needed because of other energy products
–the United Mine Workers union was crushed and wages slashed with
unemployment 30% by 1928 thousands of women and children were starving to death in Appalachia with
the remaining miners in industrial “slavery.”
eg. Textile–over capacity and declining demand shifted manufacturing to the South
which employed women and girls for 56hr days at 18 cents /hr.
eg. AG. 1921 depression–1919 Ag. income =16% of national income by 1929 it dropped
to half that amount.
–mechanization/pesticides etc. lead to increased productivity but foreign markets
dried up and domestic need for cotton declined.
–small farmers lost their land and became tenant farmers or farm hands by 1930
57% of farmers owned their land they farmed the lowest percentage ever.
–blacks/mexicans were trapped in grinding poverty–exploited by contract labor,
miserable living conditions and racism.
–by 1930 farmers average per capita income for people on the farm was one forth
of that of people off the far.
III. BIG BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT
A. The Harding and Republican economy
1. 1920 Control Congress with Harding in the White House
2. Shaped modern Presidency –Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 which gave Pres.
control over budget and created Budget Bureau and General Accounting Office
3. Appointed Herbert Hoover Sect. of Commerce who made the Commerce Dept. the
most dynamic gov. office. and Andrew Mellon Sect. Treasury
–Hoover tied it to leading sectors in the economy
–sought to expand prosperity through making business efficient, responsive, and
profitable.
–Mellon was the first to propose was has been popularly referred to in our day as
“trickle down economics.” in which Mellon sought to get tax reductions on businesses and the rich: he
argued that lower taxes would enable wealthy individuals and corporations to increase their capital
investments, thereby “trickling down” to create new jobs and general prosperity. Mellon’s scheme proved
to be unfounded as we’ve seen that the working class got not trickles–but Mellon succeeded in lowering
maximum tax rates and eliminating war-time excess-profits taxes in 1921.
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—Tariff rates were increased on foreign goods such as Aluminum allowing
Mellon’s own Alcoa Alum. to raise prices by 40%. With higher tariffs it made it impossible for Europe to
repay war debt and buy American ag and raised consumer prices.
4. Anti union policies which involved using power of fed. to prevent labor unions from
destroying the open shop. eg. RR strike of 1922 Harding secured an injunction against the union.
5. Curtailed gov. regulation by placing big business on the FTC, Fed. Reserve Bd.
established earlier by Progressives. Harding made government a “collaborator rather than a regulator of
business.
6. Reshaped the Supreme Court to be a more aggressive champion of business–Taft as
Sup. Ct. Chief Justice and matched him with three other conservative justices sympathetic to business.
–the Harding Court struck down gov. economic reg. adopted during the Prog. era/
invalidated restraints on child labor and a minimum wage law for women, and adopted restrictions on
labor unions.
B. The Harding Scandals
1. Cronyism
—Att. Gen. Daugherty’s associates in the JD took bribes
–Head of the VA went to prison for embezzlement of $200 mil from disabled
Vets
2. Teapot Dome Scandal–named after a Wyoming oil reserve
—Albert Fall Sect. of Interior leased oil reserves set aside by Progressive
conservationists to oil companies in exchange for cash, bonds, and cattle for his NM ranch.
–became first cabinet member to go to jail
—Daugherty escaped a similar fate by pleading the fifth and shredding records
Harding died of a Heart Attack shortly after this in 1923.
C. Coolidge–everything as usual
–opposed the activist Presidency of the Prog. Era and was deliberately inactive accept
where business needed action. He raised the tariff 50% on pig iron thereby increasing manufacturing of
farm tool prices on the same day he veteoed assistance to farmers
1924 election Dems nominated the lackluster John W. Davis a Wall Street Lawyer. and
Robert La Follette ran on the Progressive Ticket. Half the electorate bothered to vote.
IV. CULTURE WARS
A. Nativism and Immigrant restriction
1. Literacy tests of 1917
2. Post war immigration raised concerns due to anti-immig. movement; propoganda of
the War; Red Scares
3. Immigrants depicted as radicals, racial inferiors, religious subversives or criminals
4. Emergency Quota act of 1921 reduced immigration by two thirds and established quota
based on numbers in US in 1910
–stringent quotas on Jews and Catholics from Eastern and Southern Europe
5. Racist rationale for the National Origins Act of 1924–meant to “maintain the basic
strain of out population.”
–2% from each nationality at 1890 census level
–yearly total to 150,000 with quotas nearly eliminating southern or eastern Europeans
–Excluded Japanese –targeted Japanese residents prohibiting land ownership or leasing as
well as possibility for citizenship. The Japanese community placed their hopes in the Nisei who were
American citizens by birth.
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–Filipino immigration was not placed on the National Origins Act and immigration from
the Philippines increased ninefold during the 1920s. It also did not apply to those from the Western
Hemisphere leading to increased Mexican immigration.
B. KKK
1. founded in GA. in 1915 and modeled on its Reconstruction predecessor.
2. New KKK was national movement and claimed several mil. by mid-1920s
3. Native born Protestants–grew due to modern movement techniques of
promotion/recruitment
4. Fraternal order that provided entertainment, assistance, and community
–picnics, parades, charity drives, family assistance and activities
5. Women of the KKK distinguished themselves as reformers and diff. themselves from
secretive KKK of Reconstruction and radical of later 20th c. Actively support immigration restriction and
prohibition
6. Campaigns of “Alien creeds”
–exploited racial, religious, ethnic prejudices.
–quasi church like rituals and programs
—extensive publishing arm; boycotts
–violence – led to public outcry and eventual collapse in 1930
eg. Anti-Catholicism and Semitism—not merely subversive religions but increasing
population that challenged Protestant hegemonic culture. They were anti-abortion, adultery and indecent
entertainment.
7. Attracted both urban and rural—Chicago had 50,000 members
C. Prohibition
1. Prohibition was seen as a reform that would reduce crime, family instability, and
improve social conditions.
2. 1920 Volstead Act –prohibiting the sale, manufacture or transport of liquor
–enforcement was inconsistent and evasion was easy
—Bootleggers ethics and business methods shocked Americans
--led to organized crime, violence, Chicago’s Al Capone army of a thousand and
killed hundreds. Corrupted police and urban politics
–many favored repeal by 1926 because of the profits and crime problem
associated with prohibition
—Others saw it as a cultural issue.
D. Scopes Trial
1. Tenn. vs. John Scopes a high school biology teacher in Dayton, TN
2. The ACLU responded to TN’s violation of the constitutional sep. of church and state.
3. Riveted national attention when William J. Bryan agreed to assist in the prosecution
and Clarence Darrow agreed to defend Scopes. Darrow was a famous Chicago Lawyer, prominent atheist.
—First trial ever broadcast over radio
—The Judge a fundamentalist sat under a sign: “Read your Bible Daily” He ruled that
scientists could not testify in support of evolution because they were not at Creation, their testimony
would be “hearsay.” He did allow Darrow to put Bryan on the stand as a Bible expert. Darrow got Bryan
to testify that he believed in the literal truth of every story in the Bible, allowing Darrow to ridicule his
ideas and forced him to construe that some biblical passages had to be read symbolically.
—the jury took eight minutes to convict Scopes
––Fundamentalists suffered from public ridicule from reporters like H.L. Mencken who
sneered at the “hillbillies and yokels of Dayton.” However, the fundamentalists got the last word.
Mencken would be amazed at the persistence of fundamentalism today. Fundamentalism is a live and well
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if only we need to look at its massive publishing and media have made the front page of Time, garnered
sales in the millions, and have crossed over into the mainstream.
V. Consumer Culture
A. Consumer society
1. Advertising shaped the 1920s with new and fancier marketing appeals
2. Creation of mass media: newspapers, billboards, junk mail, radio, film, and even
skywriting.
3. Sought to create a single market–everyone consumed brand-names
4. Advertising appealed to psychology of self-fulfillment, self-help, or status appeal
5. Advertisers sought to redefine domesticity as a consumer function
6. Consumerism replaced virtues of thrift, prudence, and avoidance of debt
B. Leisure and Entertainment
1. Theaters were like palaces suggesting their social importance
2. Movies helped to spread common values
3. Radios molded national popular culture–NBC formed in 1926 charged $10,000 to
broadcast commercials to a national market. Standardized entertainment.
4. Jazz Age
5. Sports
–Baseball Babe Ruth; Boxing between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney; College
Football became important part of college life as universities built huge football stadiums.
6. Cult of celebrity—Charles Lingbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis
VI. After Suffrage–the Fate of Women’s Reform Culture
A. Kristi Andersen in After Suffrage asks the question of what happened to women after the
passage of 19th Amendment.
She sees the 1920's as a "critical period in the transformation of the relationship between
gender and citizenship." --and a bridge between Progressivism and the New Deal. --and
as a solidifying factor in shifting politics from the partisan mode of the 19th to the
candidate centered and interest group politics of the 20th.
What implications did the newly negotiated boundary have for American politics?
[The boundary was that women were allowed into politics but circumscribed within the previously male
domain] In what ways did suffrage make a difference?
B.. Women's suffrage eroded the association of manhood with politics.
--merely by changing the voting place
----from bars to schools and churches
--changed behavior
----from rowdy behavior to dignity
--changed meaning attached to voting
----from questionable and corrupt to wholesome community events
C. Women moved into government jobs after suffrage.
--Women appointed to office increased
--!0-18% of the county postmasters by 1930
D. The boundary of what distinguished appropriate male and female behavior in public life came
into question. It laid the gound work for women like Eleanor Roosevelt, Molly Dewson, Frances Perkins
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etc "who balance disinterestedness with a tougher and more pragmatic outlook."(147)
E. Suffrage and the women's network and their reliance on lobbying strategies contributed to the
decline of party politics and the rise of interest group politics.
Anderson contends that rather than looking at whether suffrage did what suffragists claimed it would, she
asks what if women had not gotten the vote--what changes then? [like looking at the glass as half empty
or half full]
F. Suffrage carried the elements of Progressivism and the women's agenda into the reactionary,
conservative, red baiting 1920's all the way to the New Deal.
--success of women in 1920's is often overlooked
--Cable Act, Shepherd Towner, Child Labor Amendment, 436 state and local laws dealing with
child welfare, removing limitations on women's rights, social hygiene, education, efficiency in gov. and
many others.(154-55)
G. Women had political resources before the 19th Amendment but those resources potentially
increased even if they were'nt exercised after the 19th Amendment and now had to be taken into account.
VII. Black Migration and Raising of Black Political Power
A. Migration
1. 1.5mil left south
2. Black ghettos emerged because of Northern prejudice
3. Housing shortages–earned less but paid 50% more for housing under poor sanitary
conditions
B. Political consciousness
1. 1928 Chicago blacks voted their first congressman
2. Mutual aid societies and fraternal orders flourished and churches
3. UNIA organized by Marcus Gavey–a Jamaican immigrant to NYC
–rejected the integrationist ideas of NAACP and espoused black pride and black
nationalism urging blacks to return to Africa
–in the meantime support black businesses–UNIA created businesses including Black
Starship line
–attracted half mil. members
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