THE “ROARING” TWENTIES
Return to Normalcy?
Traditional versus Modern
• Aftermath of The Great War
– Labor Issues
– Prohibition
– Roles of Women
– Laissez-Faire Politics
– Organized Crime
– The “Lost Generation” and the Harlem
Renaissance
– Nativism
– Consumer innovation
Politics in the 1920s
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Laissez-faire politics
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End of progressivism
“Return to Normalcy”
Adkins vs. Children’s Hospital
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“Best loved president?”
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Amendment
Teapot Dome Scandal and others
Albert Fall
Col. Forbes
Daughterty
Fordney-McCumber Tariff
Conservative Coolidge (“Silent Cal”)
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Ohio Gang
18th
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Overturns Muller v. Oregon
Harding at the helm
“Weaned on a pickle”
Secretary of Treasury, Andrew Mellon
Veto McNary-Haugen Bill
Helpless Hoover
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“Happy” Al Smith
Crash ’29
“Rugged individualism”
Labor in the 1920s
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Retooling to consumer goods
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War bred new innovation
Henry Ford’s assembly line model
Scientific method, Frederick Taylor, “Principle of Scientific Management”
Returning WWI veterans
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No jobs
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Time for retooling
No veterans benefits
Racial tension
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Nativism
Immigration Act, 1921
National Origins Act, 1924
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Asians banned completely
Strikes
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Seattle General Strike, 1919
Boston Police Strike, 1919
Steel Strike, 1919
United Mine Workers, 1919
“Welfare Capitalism” – An American Plan of Business
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Unions could not complete, AFL
Society in the 1920s
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“Americanism”
– Red Scare
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Bolshevik Revolution, 1917
Labor Unrest
Billy Sunday
Palmer Raids
– Sacco and Vanzetti, 1921
• Anarchists
• Nativism
– Ku Klux Klan
• Not just the south
• David Stephenson
– Immigration
• Quota system
– Scopes Trial
• Darrow versus Bryan
• Fundamentalism
– Prohibition
• 18th Amendment
• Organized Crime
• Volstead Act
Mass Consumption Economy
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Glorification of Business
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“The man who builds a factory…” Coolidge
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Advertising as an industry
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Brief depression
“Trickle down” tax policy
Laissez-faire politics
“The Man Nobody Knows,” Bruce Barton
New Innovations
Sexual allure
Boom economy
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Buying on installment plan
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Stock Market
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“Buying on Margin”
Corporate revolution
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Consumer credit
“White collar” workers
Expansion of female jobs
“Welfare capitalism”
More leisure time!
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Sports
Movies
Speakeasies
Radio programs
Crash of 1929
• Over production, under consumption, and
unsound banking practices (gee, what else is
new?)
– No corporate oversight for reporting on the stock
market - speculation
– Buying on credit, margin
– Hoover tries to help
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Hawley-Smoot Tariff
Federal Farm Board (Agricultural Marketing Act)
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
Too little, too late!