Post War America/Roaring
20’s
Post War American
Post War America
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World War I left many Americans exhausted.
American soldiers came home to find no jobs or
started taking jobs away from women and
minorities.
The cost of living doubled.
Farmers and factory workers suffered as
wartime orders diminished.
The theory of nativism or prejudice against
foreign born people, swept the nation.
Americans believed in isolationism, the policy of
pulling away from involvement in world affairs.
Fear of Communism
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Communism: an economic and political system based on a
single party government ruled by a dictatorship.
In order to equalize wealth and power, Communists would
put an end to private property, substituting government
ownership of factories, railroads, and other businesses.
Red Scare: The panic began in America in 1919, when the
Russian government was overthrown. Americans feared the
spread of communism.
Vladimir Lenin and his followers, the Bolsheviks (“the
majority”) established a Communist state.
They wanted capitalism to be ended everywhere.
A Communist Party formed in the United States. 70,000
people joined.
Some of the members mailed bombs to government and
business leaders.
The public grew fearful that the Communists were taking over.
Palmer Raids
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U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer decided
to take raids against the Communist party
members.
In August 1919, Palmer appointed J. Edgar Hoover
as his special assistant.
They hunted down suspected Communists,
socialists, and anarchists.
They trampled people’s rights, invading private
homes and offices and jailing suspects without
allowing them legal counsel.
The raids failed to turn up evidence.
People thought that maybe he was looking for a
campaign issue for the presidential race, but
instead looked like a fool
Sacco and Vanzetti Trial
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The Red Scare and Nativism ruined the lives of many people, most
famously Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti; a shoe maker and a
fish peddler. They were both Italian immigrants and anarchists who
evaded the draft during WWI.
In May 1920 the pair were arrested and charged with robbery and
murder of a factory paymaster and his guard in South Braintree,
Massachusetts.
Witnesses claimed that the murders appeared to be Italian.
Provided alibis- evidence to prove they were somewhere else and the
evidence was circumstantial
The jury found them guilty and sentenced them to death.
People believed that they were mistreated because of their political
beliefs.
The two men were sent to the electric chair on August 23, 1927.
In 1961 new ballistic tests showed that the pistol found on Sacco was
the one that killed the guard, but there was no evidence to prove that
he pulled the trigger.
Limiting Immigration
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Many nativists believed that many of the immigrants coming over were
Communists.
Many immigrants would work for lower wages, and people felt that
they were stealing their jobs.
From 1919 to 1921 the number of immigrants grown by 600%, from
141,000 to 805,000 people.
Congress decided to limit immigration from certain countries.
(Southern and Eastern Europe)
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 set up a Quota System . The
system established the maximum number of people who could enter
the country from each foreign country.
◦ In 1927 the law reduced the total amount of people in any one year
to 150,000.
◦ It also prohibited the Japanese immigrants.
◦ It cause ill will between the two nations. Japan had been following
the Gentlemen’s Agreement formed by TR in 1907.
◦ The quota system did not apply to immigrants from the Western
Hemisphere. 500,000 Mexicans and 1 million Canadians crossed the
border
The Klan rises again
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The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was to devoted to 100% America.
They were against any group that will harm the United States.
The felt the Red Scare gave them the excuse to harass anyone
who was unlike themselves.
BY 1924 membership in KKK reached 4.5 million “white-male
persons, native born gentile citizens”.
The Klan also believed in keeping African Americans “in their
place”, destroying saloons, opposing unions, and driving Roman
Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born people out of the country.
Many of the members were policemen and state officials.
KKK members were paid to recruit new members into their
world of secret rituals and racial violence.
KKK had power in many different states by the end of the
decade its criminal activity led to a decrease in power.
Social Changes
Social Changes
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Urbanization: People began moving out of the farms and into the cities.
About 2 million people left the rural life for the city life each year between the
years of 1922-1929.
Cities were the place to be, and not to get away from.
Farm and rural life use to be small communities that were bound together by
their conservative ideals, but they could not compete with the city life.
At the beginning of the 1920’s NYC had the highest population with 5.6 million
(today 8 million), followed by Chicago 3 million (still 3), Philadelphia at 2 million
(same today).
Most cities were industrial powerhouses and home to people of many different
nationalities. (Whites, African Americans, immigrant Poles, Irish, Russians,
Italians, Swedes, Arabs, French and Chinese.)
People were working during the day and going to the movie theatres and
vaudeville houses.
People who moved to the city felt tugged between the two worlds.
The safe, moral world of the farm life and the city life filled with crowds,
moneymakers, and pleasure seekers.
Prohibition Experiment
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The 18th Amendment went into effect. Prohibition which
made the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic
beverages illegal.
Reformers saw alcohol as the reason there was corruption in
the world.
Reformers believed that alcohol lead to crime, wife and child
abuse, accidents on the job, and other serious social
problems.
Majority of the supporters were from the rural south and
west who were dominantly Protestant.
Many saloons closed their doors but after WWI many people
were done making sacrifices.
Many immigrant groups saw drinking as a social gathering and
not a sin, and they resented the government for the enacting
prohibition.
Prohibition Experiment
The government did not have enough money to
enforce the law.
 The Volstead Act established a Prohibition Bureau
in the Treasury Department in 1919 to help
enforce the laws, but it was underfunded.
 The police and 1,500 poorly paid federal agents had
to patrol 18,700 miles of coastline as well as inland
borders, tracking down illegal stills (equipment for
distilling liquor), monitoring highways for
truckloads of illegal alcohol and overseeing all the
industries that legally used alcohol to be sure none
was shipped out for illegal purposes.
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Speakeasies and Bootleggers
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Most people went to speakeasies, hidden saloons and
nightclubs, where people would speak “easy” or quietly to
avoid detection.
Speakeasies were everywhere, in penthouses, cellars, office
buildings, rooming houses, tenements, hardware stores and
tearooms.
To be admitted to a speakeasy, one had to present a card or
use a password.
People began building their own stills and making their own
liquor.
Since alcohol was permitted for medicinal and religious
purposes, prescriptions for alcohol and sacramental wine
skyrocketed.
People also got alcohol from Bootleggers, people who
smuggled liquor in their boots.
Organized Crime
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Prohibition made people grew disrespect for the law and
organized crime grew.
Chicago was the home of Al Capone, a gangster whose
bootlegging empire netted over $60 million a year.
Capone was able to take control of the liquor business by
killing off his competitors.
Headlines reported 522 bloody gang killings and made
Capone became a huge name.
By the mid 1920’s, most American supported Prohibition, but
the rest wanted the amendment changed or repealed.
Many believed that Prohibition caused more issues than the
initial problem.
It was repealed in 1933 with the 21st amendment
Twenties Women
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Flappers: emancipated young woman who embraced the new
fashions and urban attitudes of the day.
They wore close-fitting hats, bright waist-less dresses an inch above
the knee, skin-toned silk stockings, sleek pumps, and strings of
beads. Hair was short, boyish bob.
This replaced the dark and prim ankle-length dresses, whalebone
corsets, and petticoats of Victorian days and long hair.
They wanted equal status. They began smoking cigarettes, drinking
in public, and talking openly about sex. These actions would have
ruined their reputations years earlier.
They danced the fox trot, camel walk, tango, Charleston, and
shimmy.
Many middle class men and women began to see marriage as more
of an equal partnership, but they both agreed that housework and
child-rearing remained a woman’s job.
Twenties Women
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After WWI casual dating became openly accepted.
Double standard: a set of principles granting greater sexual
freedom to men than to women, required women to
observe stricter standards of behavior than men did.
As a result, women were pulled back and forth between old
and new standards.
Work Opportunities: After WWI women continued to
look for employment.
Women college graduates went into “women’s professions”
which included teachers, nurses, secretaries, typists, filing
clerks, stenographers (court reporters) , office machine
operators and librarians.
Some women broke the mold and took jobs as flying
airplanes, driving taxis and drilling oil wells.
The Harlem Renaissance
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The move to Northern cities helped African Americans changed their
opinion about themselves.
Great Migration: the large scale movement of 100,000’s of Southern blacks
to cities to the North.
It occurred because of the Jim Crow Laws in the South.
African-American Goals:
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
was founded in 1909.
This group urged people to protest racial violence. W.E.B. Du Bois,
founding member of the NAACP, led a parade in NYC to protest the racial
violence.
James Weldon Johnson, poet, lawyer and member of the NAACP fought for
legislation to protect African-American rights.
He mainly wanted to stop lynching. The number decreased but did not
stop.
Marcus Garvey believed that African Americans should build a separate
society. His different, more radical message of black pride aroused hope of
many. In 1919 he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association
(UNIA).
The Harlem Renaissance
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African-American Writers
The Harlem Renaissance was a literary movement led by
well-educated, middle class African-Americans.
The movement was to celebrate their heritage and wrote
about the trials of black people in the white world.
Langston Hughes: famous poet. His poems discuss the
difficult lives of the working class African Americans.
African-Americans and Jazz
Jazz was born in the early 20th century in New Orleans. It
was a mix of ragtime and blues.
1918 Joe “King” Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band traveled all
over.
The Harlem Renaissance
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In 1922 a young trumpet player, Louis Armstrong joined
the group. His talent rocketed him to stardom in the jazz
world. He became the most famous jazz player and one of
the most influential musicians in the history of Jazz.
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington: a jazz pianist and
composer. He led the ten piece orchestra at the Cotton
Club. He was known as America’s greatest composer.
Bessie Smith: a female blues singer. In 1927 she became the
highest paid black artist in the world.
Ellie Fitzgerald: The first lady of song, one of the most
famous jazz singers
Billie Holiday: famous jazz singer, she influence how music
would be recorded through her interpretation of music.
Heroes of the 1920’s
Babe Ruth: New York Yankees slugger had
the record of 60 homeruns in 1927.
 Amelia Earhart became famous for being a
pilot. She disappeared while trying to travel
around the world
 Charles Lindbergh: 1920’s America’s most
loved hero. He made first solo trip across
the Atlantic by airplane.
 Charlie Chaplin: silent film star
 Greta Garbo: great movie actress
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Writers of the 1920’s
Writers from this time period wrote about the
negative side of American culture and society.
 Sinclair Lewis: First to win a Nobel Prize in
Literature. He wrote to ridicule Americans for
their conformity and materialism.
 F. Scott Fitzgerald: Author who showed the
negative side of the 1920’s in the novels “This side
of Paradise” and “The Great Gatsby”.
 Ernest Hemingway: in his novels he criticized the
glorification of war. “The Sun Also Rises” and “A
Farewell to Arms”
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Science and Religion Clash
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During the 1920’s there was a Protestant movement that was
ground with a literal interpretation of the Bible known as
fundamentalism.
Fundamentalists were skeptical of the different scientific discovers
and theories.
They believed that all the knowledge anyone needed could be
found in the bible.
They believed that the bible was inspired by God, and therefore its
stories in all their details were true.
The group rejected the theory of evolution advanced by Charles
Darwin in the 19th century.
The theory stating that plant and animal species had developed and
changed over millions of years.
They could not believe that humans were descendants of apes.
They fully believed the creation story in which God made the
world and man in his image.
They started calling for laws to prohibit the teaching of evolution
The Scopes Trial
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In March 1925 Tennessee passed a law that made it a crime to teach
evolution.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) promised to defend any
teacher who would challenge the law.
John T. Scopes a young biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, accepted
the challenge.
ACLU hired Clarence Darrow, the most famous trial lawyer of the day,
to defend Scopes.
William Jennings Bryan, three time Democratic candidate for
president and a devout fundamentalist, served as a special prosecutor.
The Scopes trial was a fight over evolution and the role of science and
religion in public schools and in American society.
The trial opened on July 10, 1925.
Scopes was found guilty with $100 fine.
The Tennessee Supreme Court changed the verdict, but it was still
illegal to teach the theory of evolution.
Politics of 1920’s
Politics of the 1920’s
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Warren G. Harding became President in 1921.
Kellogg-Briand Pact: (1928) 15 countries signed that renouncing
war was a national policy.
◦ It was futile and provided no means of enforcement.
◦ After WWI England and France had to pay back the $10 million
they had to pay back to the USA. They could either could pay from
the reparations from Germany or selling their goods.
Fordney-McCumber Tariff: raised taxes on U.S. imports to 60% to
protect U.S. products.
◦ It made it impossible for France and England to pay back their debt.
◦ The two countries looked to Germany for the money, who couldn’t
pay because of inflation. To avoid war, Charles G. Dawes devised the
Dawes Plan, which loaned Germany $2.5 billion to pay back England
and France.
◦ England and France were mad at U.S. who they felt couldn’t pay
their share of the war debt.
◦ U.S. was mad at England and France for not being responsible with
their money.
Politics of the 1920’s
Ohio Gang: Harding’s cabinet, who was also his poker playing
buddies.
 It caused a great deal of embarrassment.
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◦ Charles Evan Hughes- Secretary of State
◦ Herbert Hoover- Secretary of Commerce
◦ Andrew Mellon- Secretary of the Treasury
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The Teapot Dome Scandal
◦ The government set aside oil rich public land at Teapot Dome,
Wyoming and Elk Hills, California for the use by the U.S. Navy.
◦ Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall was able to transfer the land
to the Interior Department.
◦ Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall lease the land to two private
business and ended by making $400,000 in the deal.
◦ He was later found guilty of bribery and became the first
American to be convicted of a felony while in a cabinet post.
Innovation and Big Business
The Car
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The automobile changed America
◦ Construction of paved roads. Highways were built, with new towns
being designed throughout the mid-west Route 66.
◦ Most houses now came with a garage, carport and driveway, which
turned all front lawns smaller
◦ Construction of gas stations, repair shops, public garages, motels,
tourist camps and shopping centers.
◦ The first automatic traffic signals were installed in Detroit in the
early 1920’s.
◦ The Holland Tunnel, underwater tunnel designed specifically for
motor vehicles, opened in 1927 to connect NYC to Jersey City.
Benefits
◦ It allowed people to travel for long distances.
◦ It allowed women and young people new freedom.
◦ It allowed workers to travel miles to their jobs, resulting in the
urban sprawl as cities spread in all directions and Families also had
the opportunity to travel and go on vacation.
The Automobile
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The automobile industry provided economic base for cities
in Akron, Ohio, Detroit, Dearborn, Flint, and Pontiac in
Michigan.
The automobile also became a status symbol- both for
individual families and for the world.
The auto industry symbolized the success of the free
enterprise system and the Coolidge era.
Nowhere else in the world could people with little money
could afford a car.
Henry Ford and the Assembly Line.
The assembly line was developed by the Ford Motor
Company between 1908 and 1915.
He developed the moving assembly line, which revolutionized
the way they make cars.
Ford installed a moving belt in his factory, and his employees
built one piece at a time, instead of one car at a time.
It made cars cheaper so everyone could afford them.
America’s Standard of Living
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America’s Standard of Living Soars
The 1920 to 1929 were very prosperous years to the United
States.
America owned 40% of the world’s wealth.
The average annual income rose more than 35% during that time
period, from $522 to $705.
Electrical Conveniences
Gasoline powered much of the economic boom of the 1920’s, but
electricity also transformed the nation.
American factories used electricity to run their machines.
The development of an alternating current made it possible to
distribute electric power efficiently over longer distance.
Now electricity can be powered to the suburbs instead of just the
city. More houses were now powered by electricity.
Houses now had electric irons, electric refrigerators, cooking
ranges, and toasters
Modern Advertising
Advertising agents not only wanted to
inform the American population about their
product, but hired psychologists to study
what appealed to different people.
 The appeals were people’s desires for
youthfulness, beauty, health and wealth.
 Brand names became familiar from coast to
coast, and luxury items now seemed like
necessities.
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False Prosperity
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Superficial Prosperity
In the 1920’s people believed the prosperity would go on forever.
Factory workers were producing 50% more at the end of the decade
than at its start.
The national income grew from $64 million to $83 million in 8 years.
There were a number of mergers of companies that manufactured
automobiles, steel and electrical equipment, as well as mergers of
companies that provided public utilities.
Buying Goods on Credit
Easy credit or the installment plan was produced were people could
buy goods over an extended period of time without having to put
down much money at the time of the purchase.
Banks provided the money at low interest rates.
Some people felt the easy credit was going to get out of hand, and
would end in fundamental weaknesses behind a superficial economic
prosperity.