American Life in
the “Roaring
Twenties”
AP U.S. History
Chapter 32
Seeing Red
• "Red Scare“
• strikes
– 1919 – 4 million
– Boston Police
– Steel and Mine
• bombings
• Communist parties
• Palmer Raids
– Uncovered/arrested??
• Attorney General - A. Mitchell Palmer
• Teachers
• Sacco and
Vanzetti
– Death/electric chair
Ku Klux Klan
• 1915 – William Simmons
– Inspired by Birth of a Nation
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4 – 5 million members
Anti-everything
Pro-WASP
End?
Stemming the
Foreign Flood
• Nativism
• 1921 – 800,000
• 1921 Immigration Act
– 3% /1910
• 1924 National Origins Act
(Immigration Act of 1924)
– 2%/1890
• Reduced ???
• Asians
• Canadians and Latin Americans exempt
The Prohibition
“Experiment”
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18th Amendment – Jan. 1920
Volstead Act
Supported where?
Opposed where?
Problems with enforcement
– People hostile/ignored
– Lack of enforcement officials (1,500)
– Made in small amounts almost anywhere
Age of
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Gangsterism
"bootlegging”
Al Capone
Gov’t officials bribed/no enforcement
Honest merchants - "protection
money”
• By 1930, annual "take" of underworld
estimated at $12 to $18 billion.
End of
Prohibition
• Crime
• Too many people
breaking the law
– Speakeasies
• Can’t enforce – not
enough $
• Repealed with 21st - $$$
Scopes Trial
• Fundamentalists
• Evolution laws
• "Monkey
Trial" - 1925 in
Dayton, Tennessee
• John Scopes
• Clarence Darrow
• William Jennings
Bryan
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Fundamentalism on trial
Bryan - witness stand
John Scopes - guilty
Fundamentalism??
Mass Consumption
Economy
• U.S. came out of WWI the world’s largest
creditor nation.
• Brief recession 1919-1921
• Bruce Barton – The Man Nobody Knows
• Buying on credit
• Industrial productivity up
• Electricity – 1930 – 70%
• New industries
• Auto industry – king
– Led to??
• Construction
Advertising
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Young, white college grads
Men outnumbered women 10:1
persuasion, allure
Sports – became famous – Babe Ruth – “the
house that Ruth built”
• GM – 1926 – annual model
Scientific Management:
Frederick W. Taylor
More efficient working methods to increase
productivity
Increased wages - increased profits
Auto industry accepted it right away
Henry Ford and the
assembly line
• Detroit
• By 1910 - annual production - 181,000
• Ford – workers were consumers
– salaries
– benefits
• assembly line
• 1.5 hours
• Model-T
By 1930 –
30 million cars
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Automobile’s
impact
Replaced steel
6 million people
Supporting industries
Speedy transportation – hurt RR
network of highways
Leisure time
Buses
suburbs
car accidents
youth
Crime
Airplane
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Dec. 17, 1903 - Wright Bros.
WWI
Airmail
1930s and 40s - travel
1927 - Charles Lindbergh
Railroads
WWII
The Radio
Revolution
• KDKA
• National Broadcasting Co. (1926)
and Columbia Broadcasting Co. (1927)
Impact of
the radio
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Leisure hours
Families
Nation closely-knit
Advertising
Sports
Politicians
Newscasts
Music
Hollywood
• The Great Train Robbery
• Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Cecil B. de Mille –
Paramount Pictures - 1914
• The Jazz Singer
Impact of movies
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Eclipsed all other new forms of amusement.
Weekly admissions
Money spent
Employed
Tabloids /cheap movie magazines
The Dynamic
Decade
• Sexual revolution
– Dr. Sigmund Freud - not pleasure but health
• The "flaming youth" of the "Jazz Age”
• Flapper
• Birth control - Margaret Sanger
"Jazz"
• New Orleans Dixieland Jazz
• Louis Armstrong
• Great Migration
• Chicago
• New York
African Americans
in the 20’s
• After WWI –
expected?
• NAACP membership
• Urban race riots
– Close neighborhoods
– July 1919 – Chicago
• Turned to Marcus
Garvey…
Harlem Renaissance
• African American poetry, literature, art, music
• Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale
Hurston
• Jazz: Duke Ellington (1899-1974), Louis
Armstrong
• Marcus Garvey - Leader of the United Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA)
– “Back to Africa Movement“
– Racial Pride/“Black
– Buy from Black
Nationalism”
"You are all a Lost
Generation”
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Writers - resentment of ideals betrayed by society.
Gertrude Stein – name
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Theodore Dreiser
Ernest Hemingway
Sinclair Lewis
William Faulkner
T.S. Eliot