• Turn in your
1920s political
cartoon
• Read this
document
and write
down your
thoughts on its
relationship to
the clash of
values
Bell ringer
Give an example of each
Fear of others
• Racism
• Ethnic Prejudice
• Nativism
Clash of values
• New Morality
• Fundamentalism
• Social Issues (decline)
Politics & Government
• Weak government scarred with political scandal &
unreliable leadership.
3 republican presidents of the 1920s
o Scandal
o Disconnected from average American
o Favored business over citizens
Ohio Gang
“Harding’s Old Poker Buddies”
Harding
29th President
“Return to
Normalcy”
Albert Fall
Andrew Mellon
Harry Daugherty
Charles Forbes
Sec. of Interior
Sec. of Treasury
Attorney General
Veterans Bureau
Warren Harding
• Promoted ISOLATIONISM
after WWI
• “Return to Normalcy”
o Back to NORMAL life before
the war.
• Cabinet filled with
corruption
• One of the worst
presidents in history
• Americans distrust
elected officials
Teapot Dome Scandal

Albert Fall
◦ Sec. Interior
◦ Secretly (illegally)
leased land to
private companies
◦ Lands were oil
reserves for US Navy
 Teapot Dome, WY
 Elk Hills, CA
◦ 1st Pres. Cabinet
member to go to
Prison
Andrew Mellon-Sec of Treasury
“government should be run like a business”
• Believed high taxes were
bad because they limited
money for individual
o Spending
o Investment
o Savings
• Huge tax cuts for
Balance
the
budget
Reduce
government
spending
o Wealthiest Americans
o Corporations
• Tax burden placed on
middle class
• Business could invest tax
cuts to promote business
• Supply Side Economics 
business
Cut taxes
More Harding Scandal
• Charles Forbes
o Head of Veterans
Bureau
o Had illegal contracts
and sold
• government
property
• hospital medication
• Kept money
o BUSTED
• Committed Suicide
• Henry
Daugherty
• Attorney General
• Used pvt Ohio banks
to launder money.
• Took bribes
• Used power of
immunity to keep from
going to jail…
Bottom Line….Americans start to distrust elected
officials
• Became President when
Harding suffered a heart
attack.
• “Business of America is
Business.”
• 1924 Election
o “Keep it Cool with Coolidge”
o No war, reform or scandal
o Few issues during good economy
and no war.
• Deregulation =
o Business & Wall Street
can do whatever they
want.
Calvin
Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
• Sec. of Commerce
o Promoted
• Economic stability
• Trade associations
amongst businesses
o Disconnected from average
Americans
o Disconnected about the
realities of the Crash
• To be continued ……
Economics
• Economic prosperity which promoted overproduction of
goods, overspending, & incurring debt
o
o
o
o
After WWI – economy not good.
New Products & process helped spur economy
Business deregulation---- Business producing
People grow over confident because of jobs
Growing Economy
• Mass Production
o
o
o
o
Large scale production
Created Supply
Reduced costs
Machine manufactured
• Assembly line
o Divided operations into
simple tasks
• Model T
o Tin Lizzie
• Henry Ford
o
o
o
o
Shortened Work Week
Paid Vacations
Increased worker wages
8 hour shifts
o Business Philosophy
• Lower cost of
car=sale more cars.
• 1908 = $850
• 1924 = $295
Growing Economy
• High Sales = Imitators
o Chrysler
o General Motors
• Spurred growth for
other industries
o Glass
o Rubber
o Petroleum
• Created new
business
o Mechanic Garages
o Gas Stations
Growing economy
• Airplanes
o US Post office
• Airmail
o Lindbergh
• Trans-Atlantic flight
o Spirit of St. Louis
o Commercial Airlines
• Radio
o NBC
o CBS
• News
• Sports
• Entertainment
• Advertising
o Mass Standardization of
culture. More people liked the
same things
Consumer Credit
• Over confidence in US
economy led
purchasing on credit.
• Credit- buy now, pay
later.
• Big Purchases on
credit
o Car
o Radio
o Appliances
• Electricity in homes
boosted WANTS.
o
o
o
o
o
Electric razors
Toasters
Washing machines
Radios
Vacuum cleaners
problems
WhyThe
over
confident ?
Americans find
are
employed
themselves&in
severemoney
debt
making
Over confidence
Businesses
hire more
means Americans
workers to make
are spending not
more products
Protective
tariffs
Foreign markets
ensure
placeAmericans
tariffs on
don’t
buy
Americanforeign
goods
goods
Strong
Economy
saving
Expensive
Stocks rise
causing
So Businesses are
Americans to
making
profits
grow
overconfident in
the stock market
Americans are
purchases
spending
done on
money
on goods
CREDIT..
Buy
&
services
now, pay later
So what happens?????
Economy
starts to
slow
Unemployed
workers are no
longer buying
goods
To maintain
profits employers
cut wages or fire
workers
To maintain
profits
employers
cut wages or
fire workers
Unemployed
workers are no
longer buying
goods
Meaning,
businesses
are selling
less
products
Workers are not only broke but in severe debt….Bank
doesn't care that you were FIRED….Pay your bills or lose
your home!
Stock Market
• Stock = shares
“ownership in a
company”
• Gamble
BUY LOW + SELL HIGH =
Make A Lot of Money
Stock Market
• Bull Market = Long
period of rising stock
prices
• Belief: Prices will
continue to go up…
• Problem: Creates
overconfidence in the
market
(SPECULATION)
• Mistake: People buy
stocks on Credit
(MARGIN)…
Margin Call=
borrowers had
to repay loan at
once
Stock market crash of 1929
• Dates: October 29,
1929
• Also Known As: The
Great Wall Street Crash
of 1929; Black Tuesday
What caused the Crash?
Over Production of
Goods
Decline of
agricultural
prices.
Mistakes by the
federal reserve
Crash
Low Wages
reduce
consumer buying
power
High tariffs restrict
foreign demands for
American goods
Over
Production
of Goods
Low Demand
for goods
Cycle gets
worse &
worse
No
spending
money
Workers
fired or
reduced
wages
More job
opportunities
Better educational
opportunities
Escape Jim Crow
laws in the south
HARLEM, NEW YORK
 Harlem, NY became the largest
black urban community
 Harlem suffered from
overcrowding, unemployment and
poverty
 However, in the 1920s it was
home to a literary and artistic revival
known as the Harlem Renaissance
HARLEM, NEW YORK
All owned by African
Americans
Businesses
Restaurants
Apartment Buildings
Safety
Racial Pride
Voting
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
 Explosion of
Culture
Artist
Jazz Music
Cotton Club
Literature
Migration of the Negro
by Jacob Lawrence
 Missouri-born Langston
Hughes was the
movement’s best known
poet
 Many of his poems
described the difficult
lives of working-class
blacks
 Some of his poems
were put to music,
especially jazz and blues
LANGSTON
HUGHES
What happens to a dream
deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten
meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
 Jazz was born in the early
20th century
 In 1922, a young trumpet
player named Louis Armstrong
joined the Creole Jazz Band
 Later he joined Fletcher
Henderson’s band in NYC
 Armstrong is considered the
most important and influential
musician in the history of jazz
EDWARD KENNEDY “DUKE” ELLINGTON
 In the late 1920s,
Duke Ellington, a jazz
pianist and composer,
led his ten-piece
orchestra at the famous
Cotton Club
 Ellington won renown
as one of America’s
greatest composers
EXPANDING NEWS
COVERAGE
Radio- brought news,
sports, entertainment into
American homes.
News Paper-y As literacy
increased, newspaper
circulation rose and masscirculation magazines
flourished
Mass Standardization
Americans were hearing &
believing the same things
across the country.
Pilot Charles Lindbergh
 Lindbergh made the first
nonstop solo trans-atlantic flight
 He took off from NYC in the
Spirit of St. Louis and arrived in
Paris 33 hours later to a hero’s
welcome
Showed U.S. technological
superiority and ingenuity.
LINDBERGH’S
FLIGHT
WRITERS OF
THE 1920s
 Writer F. Scott
Fitzgerald coined the
phrase “Jazz Age” to
describe the 1920s
 Fitzgerald wrote This
Side of Paradise and The
Great Gatsby
 The Great Gatsby
reflected the emptiness
of New York elite society
WRITERS OF
THE 1920
Hemingway - 1929
 Ernest Hemingway, wounded
in World War I, became one of
the best-known authors of the
era
 In his novels, The Sun Also
Rises and A Farewell to Arms,
he criticized the glorification of
war
 His simple, straightforward
style of writing set the literary
standard
AMERICAN HEROES OF THE 20s
Good Economy led to disposable
income. Entertainment
Babe Ruth was a larger than life
American hero who played for Yankees
Great Bambino
Sultan of Swat
Red Grange- All American football
player “the Galloping Ghost”
Jack Dempsey- Heavyweight champion
of the world
Tunney-Dempsey 1st fight broadcast over
the radio
ENTERTAINMENT AND ARTS
 Even before sound, movies
offered a means of escape
through romance and comedy
 First sound movies: Jazz
Singer (1927)
 First animated with sound:
Steamboat Willie (1928)
 By 1930 millions of
Americans went to the movies
each week