• 635-640
- Compare and contrast President Harding
and Coolidge using two secondary sources.
- Describe the relationship between business
and government during the 1920s.
Comparing Presidents of the 1920s
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
President Harding
► Federal Government advanced
business interests:
 Budget and Accounting Act (1921)
 Secretary of Commerce Hoover goal
to expand business prosperity.
 Treasury Secretary Mellon pushed to
reduce taxes on businesses/wealthy
 Raised tariffs in 1922
 Attorney-General Daugherty
supported the “open shop”.
 Appointed advocates of business to
Federal Trade Commission and
Federal Reserve Board
 Nominated William Taft as Chief
Justice of Supreme Court
Scandal and Corruption!
Head of Veterans Bureau was
accused of fraud
Teapot Dome Scandal
Interior Secretary Albert Fall
leased Wyoming’s Teapot
Dome region to an oil
company for a bribe.
President Harding
Coolidge Prosperity
►
President Coolidge (“Cool
Cal”, “Silent Cal”) supported a “laissez-faire” type
economy and supported
Harding’s policies.
• Coolidge easily won reelection in 1924 due to the
prosperous economy
President Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), fishing on the
Brule River in northern Wisconsin
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

Protectionism – higher tariffs on
imports to guard US businesses &
jobs against foreign competition.
i.
Trickle-down theory – lowering taxes
on high incomes/businesses to
stimulate investment & create jobs.
President Coolidge
“The chief business
of the
American people is
business.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

Social reform efforts are LIMITED
with only a few exceptions:
 Endorsed many of the goals put
forth the League of Women
Voters such as allowing women to
serve on juries, equal pay laws
and Wisconsin’s “Equal Rights”
law.
 Congress passed the SheppardTowner Maternity and Infancy Act
 … very little else…
President Coolidge
“The chief business
of the
American people is
business.”
Cultural Changes of the 1920s
• Cities expanded
• 1920 census showed for the first time more
Americans lived in cities than in rural areas.
• The Great Black Migration
• Many moved from the South looking for
better opportunities in Northern cities.
• Black race-consciousness and power grew:
• Universal Negro Improvement
Association.
• Rejected integration.
• Organized the Black Star Line
• Back to Africa Movement
"Up! You mighty
race, you can
accomplish what
you will."
--Marcus Garvey
Cultural Changes of the 1920s
• The Harlem Renaissance was a
movement in New York’s
Harlem that attracted talented
black writers, poets, and
musicians in the 1920s.
• Poet Langston Hughes.
• Writer Claude McKay.
• Activists Marcus Garvey
and W.E.B. DuBois.
• Musician Louis Armstrong
and Duke Ellington.
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was born
in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902.
He travelled throughout the
world but, his heart and
home were in Harlem where
he lived for many years.
Cultural Changes of the 1920s
• Cities expanded
• The Great Black Migration
• Hispanic migrants began to settle in their own
communities called “barrios”.
• “Mutualistias”
• “The Order of the Sons of America”
• “The League of United Latin American Citizens”