*
* Bloodied by war and
disillusioned by peace,
Americans turned inward in
the 1920’s. The boom of the
20’s had many benefits on
Americans. Incomes and the
living standard rose for many,
but there seemed something
incredible about all of it.
* New technologies, new
consumer products and new
forms of leisure and
entertainment made the 20’s
roar.
*
* Fears of a red Russia
continued to color
American thinking for
several years after the
Communists came into
power in the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917. The
big red scare of 19191920 resulted in a nationwide crusade against leftwingers whose
Americanism was suspect.
* General A. Mitchell Palmer
who saw red too easily,
and earned the title of
Fighting Quaker, rounded
up around 6000 suspects.
*
* Anti-redism and anti-foreign were reflected in a notorious
case regarded by liberals as judicial lynching. Nicola Sacco a
shoe factory worker and Bartolommeo Vanzetti a fish peddler
were convicted in 1921 of the murder of a Massachusetts
paymaster and his guard. The judge and jury were
prejudice in some degree against the defendants because
they were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers.
* Liberals and radicals the world over rallied to the defense of
these two people and the case will go on for over 6 years.
Communists and other radicals were thus presented with 2
martyrs in the class struggle. The evidence against them had
some serious weaknesses, but the trial was filled with antiredism, and the outcome might have been only a prison
term.
*
* A new KKK spawned by the postwar reaction came out in the
early 1920’s. Their group consisted of antiforeigner, antiCatholics, Anti-Black, anti-Jewish, anti-communists, antirevolutionists, antigambling and anti-bootlegger. The Klan
beckoned an extreme ultraconservative uprising against
many of the forces of diversity and modernity that were
transforming American culture.
* The Klan spread especially in the Midwest and the Bible belt
south were the Protestant Fundamentalism thrived. Their
chief warning was the blazing cross, and their weapon of
choice was the bloodiest lash supplemented by tar and
feathers. This reign of hooded horror, so repulsive to the
best American ideals, collapsed rather suddenly in the late
1920’s.
*
* The KKK was an alarming
manifestation of the
intolerance and prejudice
plaguing people anxious
about the dizzying pace of
social change in the 1920’s
Despite the Klan’s decline,
civil rights activists fought
in vain for legislation
making lynching a federal
crime, as lawmakers
feared alienating southern
white voters.
*
*
*
One of the last peculiar spasms of
the progressive reform movement
was prohibition that was loudly
supported by crusading churches
and by many women. In 1919 by
the 18th amendment was
implemented by the Volstead Act
passed by Congress later that year.
The legal abolition of alcohol was
especially popular in the South and
West. Southerners were happy to
keep the stimulants out of the hands
of blacks. Despite the
overwhelming ratification of the dry
amendment, there was strong
opposition persisted in the largest of
cities. Yet most Americans now
assumed that prohibition had come
to stay.
*
* But prohibitionists were naïve in the extreme.
They
overlooked the tenacious American tradition of strong drink
and of weak control by the central government especially
over private lives.
* A majority of people enforced the law and small minorities of
people were hostile to it. They ignored the fact that one
cannot make a crime overnight more of something that
millions of people have never regarded as a crime.
Lawmakers could not legislate away a thirst.
* Prohibition might have started off on a better foot if there
had been a larger army of enforcement officials. But at the
same time there were not enough state and federal officials
to help with these problems.
*
* Prohibition spawned shocking
*
crimes. The profits of illegal
alcohol led to bribery of the
police, many of whom were
induced to see and smell no evil.
Many wars broke out between
large cities over the rich market
of booze.
In the gang wars of the 1920’s in
Chicago about five hundred
mobsters were murdered. Arrests
were few and convictions were
even fewer, as the gangsters
covered for one another with the
underworld’s code of silence.
*
* In 1925, Al Capone a murderous booze distributor
began six years of gang warfare that netted him
millions of blood-spattered dollars. He zoomed
through the streets in an armor plated car with
bulletproof windows.
* Gangsters rapidly moved into other profitable and
illicit activities: prostitution, gambling, and
narcotics. Those who were honest were forced to
pay for protection money. Organized crime had
come to be one of the nation’s most gigantic
businesses. By the 1930’s someone’s take would be
between 12-18 billion, more than the federal
government even has.
*
*
*
*
Education in the 1920’s continued to
make giant boot strides. More and more
states were requiring young people to
remain in school until age 16 or 18 or until
graduation from high school.
Science also scored wondrous advances in
these years. A massive public health
program was launched in the South in
1909. They were seeking for better
nutrition and health care helped to
increase the life expectancy of a newborn
infant from 50 years to 59 years in 1929.
Yet both science and progressive
education in the 1920’s were subjected
to unfriendly fire from the organized
Fundamentalists. The fundamentalist
believed that by teaching Darwin’s
theories that it would ruin the students
faith in God and in the Bible. Many laws
were put into place to prohibit many of
these schools from teaching Darwin’s
theory.
*
* The stage was set for the memorable Monkey Trial in eastern
Tennessee in 1925. A high school biology teacher name John
T. Scoopes was indicted for teaching evolution. Many
newspaper reporters armed with notebooks and cameras.
* Scoopes was defended by nationally known attorneys, while
former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan who
joined the prosecution and taking a stand as an expert on the
Bible. Taking the stand Bryan was made to appear foolish by
the famed criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. Five days later
the trial was over, Bryan died of a stroke and it was no doubt
that it was brought on by the heat and the witness strain.
* This clash found Scoopes guilty and fined 100 dollars. But
the fine was set aside on a technicality. Yet even though
there were an increasing number of Christians were coming
into the picture and the growing churches of Christ were
being organized in 1906.
*
* The economy kicked off its war harness, faltering a
few steps then finally it sprinted off for nearly
seven years of prosperity. Great new industries
transpired during this time. Supplying electrical
power for the humming new machines became a
giant business in the 1920’s.
* Above all the automobile once the horseless chariot
of the rich and by 1930’s Americans owned almost
30 million cars. There was a complete love affair
with the automobile and it was a momentous shift
in the character of the economy. Manufacturers
worked out the kinks and now it was just about
consumption.
*
* Responding to this need was now commerce came into being:
*
*
advertising. However they were going to get people to buy they
would do it. Bruce Barton was the founder of this new profession and
in 1925 he published a best seller, called the Man Nobody Knows. He
believed that everyone should study the teaching of Jesus, because
he was the best seller.
Sports also became very popular, and images such as Babe Ruth
brought fans to the ballparks and Yankee Stadium became Ruth’s
hometown park. Also in 1921, heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey
knocked out French light weight Georges Carpentier. Just in
attendance, they made over a million dollars.
Buying on credit was also another feature of the postwar economy.
Puritans who were once frugal; now they were getting into deeper
and deeper in debt as they were buying on credit. Also new
inventions were being made as well; refrigerators, vacuum
cleaners, cars, and radios.
*
* A new industrial revolution slipped into high gear in America
in the 1920’s. Steel was changing the daily life of the
people in many ways, and the automobile was its principle
prophet.
* Out of all of the inventions during this time, the automobile
was the most amazing new industrial invention. The
automobile produced new assembly-line methods and mass
production techniques. American inventors Henry Ford and
Ransom E. Olds were developing an annual production of
181,000 units.
* Many of the cars up to this point were not reliable and many
of them were told to get a horse from those that had passed
them on their way. Fredrick Taylor a prominent engineer
and inventor invented Scientific Management. He sought to
eliminate waste motion which his innovations in industrial
engineering, particularly in time and motion studies, paid off
in dramatic improvements in productivity.
*
* Henry Ford put America on rubber tires and the
Model T was invented, it was cheap, rugged and
reasonably reliable. He was ill-educated but
somehow he grasped the technique of the moving
assembly line-Fordism. This meant that Fords could
be in any color of your choosing and they were
selling for 260$. Before too long Fords were being
sold everywhere in America.
* By 1930 20 million Fords had been sold, which were
enough to circle the Globe. By 1929, 26 million
vehicles were registered in the United States.
*
* A new industry was now emerging, which now will employ 6
million people by 1930. New industries boomed dramatically,
while other ones grew sickly. The petroleum business
experienced an explosive development. Hundreds of oil
derricks shot up in Oklahoma, Texas, and California. The
railroad was hit hard by the competition of passenger cars,
buses, and trucks.
* Other effects were widely felt. Marketing of foodstuffs,
such as fresh fruits, was accelerated. For the first time
farms could provide people with produce at attractive
prices. Lured by advertising and encouraged by tempting
installment plan buying countless Americans with shallow
purses and riding on the habit as they paid.
*
* Other products of the automobile were visible.
Autobuses made possible the consolidation of
schools and to some extent of churches. As a
result, the suburbs spread out farther from the
urban core, as Americans became a nation of
commuters.
* In 1951, Americans were looking at another
statistic which was one million Americans had died
in the motor vehicle accidents. Yet at the same
time, Americans would plead for a return of the old
horse and buggy. But the automobile brought in
more people’s lives than almost any other single
invention.
*
* Gasoline engines also provide the power that enables humans
to spread their wings. The Wright Brothers, Orville, and
Wilbur performed a miracle at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
On that historic day, that plane stayed in the air for 12
seconds and 120 feet off the air. Now with aviation, the
world shrank.
* In 1927, Charles Lindbergh electrified the world with the first
solo west to east conquest of the Atlantic. This single engine
plane traveled from New York to Paris for 39 hours and 39
minutes. This impact of the airship was tremendous.
* It provided the restless American spirit with yet another
dimension. Yet this also gave birth to a new giant. By the
1930’s and 1940’s travel by air on regularly scheduled
airlines was significantly safer than on many overcrowded
highways.
*
* Guglielmo Marconi an Italian invented a wireless
telegraphy in the 1890’s, and his brainchild was
used for long range communication during WWI.
* Educationally and culturally the radio made a
significant contribution. Sports were further
stimulated. Politicians had to adjust their speaking
techniques to the new medium, and millions heard
promises and pleas. Finally, the music of famous
artists and symphony orchestras was beamed in to
countless homes.
*
* Thomas Edison as early the 1890’s invented this novel
contraption and attained some popularity in the naughty
peep-show penny arcades. But the real birth of the movie
was in 1903 when the first story sequence reached the
screen. The Great Train Robbery was featured in the 5 cent
theaters that were called nickelodeons.
* A fascinating industry was thus launched. Hollywood, in
southern California, quickly became the movie capital of the
world. Movies in the beginning offended the public and
forced them to enforce a rigorous code of censorship.
* A new era began in 1927 with the success of the first talkieThe Jazz Singer-, and the age of silent was ushered out as
theatres everywhere were wired for sound. At about the
same time, reasonably satisfactory color films were being
produced. Many actors and actresses were far more widely
known than the nation’s political leaders.
*
* Far reaching changes in lifestyles and values
paralleled the dramatic upsurge of the economy.
The 1920’s revealed that for the first time most
Americans no longer lived in the countryside but in
urban areas.
* Women will continue to find opportunities for
employment, and they classified it into women’s
work. An organized birth control movement, and to
some defenders of traditional ways, it seemed that
the world had suddenly gone mad.
*
* Churches were affected because Fundamentalists were
losing ground and Modernists who liked to think that God was
a good guy, and the universe was a great place to be. Once
modest women now proclaimed their new freedom as
flappers in bobbed tresses and dresses. Young women
appeared with hemlines elevated, stockings rolled, cheeks
rouged, and red lips that held a cigarette. American women
were more adventurous and shocked their elders when they
sported the new one-piece bathing suit.
* If the flapper was the goddess of the era of wonderful
nonsense, jazz was it sacred music. Jazz moved up from
New Orleans along with the migrating blacks during WWI. A
new racial pride also was blossoming in the black
communities that came after the war. Harlem in New York
City, counting some 100,000 African Americans residents in
the 1920’s was one of the largest black communities in the
world.
*
* The stock exchange provided even greater sensations.
Speculations ran wild, and a boom or bust trading pushed
the market up to dizzy peaks. Wall Street bulls gored one
another and fleeced greedy lambs. The stock market became
a veritable gambling den.
* In the 1920’s everybody was buying stocks on margin-that
is, with a small down payment. Little was done by
Washington to curb money-mad speculators. In the wartime
days of Wilson, the national debt had rocketed from the 1914
figures to: 1,188,235,400 to 1921’s figures: 23,976,250.
* In 1921, Republican Congress created the Bureau of the
Budget. The director was to assist the president in preparing
careful estimates of receipts and expenditures for submission
to Congress as the annual budget. This reform was to help
prevent extravagant appropriations.
*
* Treasury Mellon inherited some burdensome taxes from the
war. Their theory was that such high levies forced the rich to
invest in tax exempt securities rather than in the factories
that provided prosperous payrolls.
* Seeking to help the poor, Mellon helped engineer a series of
tax reductions from 1921 to 1926. In 1921, a wealthy person
with an income tax of 1 million had to pay 663,000 in income
taxes, and Mellon wanted to switch much of the tax burden
from the wealthy to the middle class income groups.
* Mellon remains a controversial figure reduced the national
debt by 10 billion. He was accused of indirectly encouraging
the bull market. If he had absorbed more of the national
income in taxes, there would have been less money left for
frenzied speculation. Mellon dominated the political scene
throughout the postwar decade.
*