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 1919—18 Amendment =Prohibition on alcohol
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1920—19 Amendment gave women the right to vote
1921—Warren Harding, President, 1921-1923
1922—Teapot Dome Scandal (government corruption)
1923—Calvin Coolidge, President, 1923-1929
1924—National Origins Act limits immigration to U.S.
1925—Scopes Trial in TN: Science and Religion
1927—The Jazz Singer, first talking movie
1929—Herbert Hoover enters the White House
Stock Market Crashes
Prosperity of the 1920s ends
 1. After WWI, the American economy grew rapidly.
 2. With mass production, workers produced more goods faster and
cheaper than ever before; they also began buying goods on credit.
 3. The economic boom of the 1920s changed the lives of millions of
people and helped create our modern consumer society of today.
What factors drove the economic boom of the 1920s?
 Two Major factors:
1. Europe had been devastated by war. The U.S. was the only healthy
industrial power in the world.
2. But the most important factor was new technology and inventions led
to industrial expansion to produce goods for the growing market
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1. Electric vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and freezers
2. Automatic washing machines
3. *** Radios
4. Scotch tape, Kleenex tissue paper, electric razor
5. Computers at MIT
6. Genetic Research
7. Faster Trains
8. Early stages of commercial aviation
*The Automobile was the most important new technological invention of the
1920s:
 Automobile industry drove the booming economy
 2. Autos led to the growth of other industries:
Steel, rubber, glass, gasoline, oil, road construction, housing construction
(suburbs), motels, restaurants, gas stations
Henry Ford was at the center of these great changes of the 1920s, and he wasn't
modest about his place in history. As he once said: "I invented the modern age."
Now that's pushing it. But this cranky cultural reactionary, who, at the height of
the Jazz Age, tried to revive square dancing and country fiddling, was one of the
greatest revolutionaries of the Industrial Age.
His Model T Ford began this country's love affair with the car and turned America
into an automobile civilization. But Ford's greatest innovation wasn't the Model T.
It was the system he developed for making it, and thousands of other products.
This was modern mass production, the single most important factor in making
America the economic and military powerhouse of the 20th century.
Ford's system of belt-driven assembly line production is arguably the most
important innovation of the Industrial Age. Ford, in fact, coined the word, "mass
production." Until he did, in 1926, it was called Fordism. All of us are products, in
one way or another, of Fordism.
Henry Ford was born on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan in l863, only a few weeks
after the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. As a boy, he loved to roam
in the woods and fields by the River Rouge, near his home, and he developed a
lifelong attachment to rural values of thrift, self-reliance, and simple living. But in
truth, he hated the isolation and boredom of farm life.
This was the Machine Age, and he was enthralled by modern machinery. At age
sixteen, he left home and walked to Detroit, where he found work in a machine
shop. His dream was the dream of countless other backyard mechanics of that
time with names like Dodge, Buick, and Olds. It was to build a horseless carriage, a
self-propelling road machine that ran, not on steam, but on the fuel of the coming
age, gasoline.
Ford spent his evenings after work in a small shed behind his house putting
together his first car. When he finished it on June 4th 1896, it was almost two in
the morning, but he was so excited he wanted to take it for a run. Then he realized
that the door of the shed wasn't wide enough to get his road machine through. So
he grabbed an axe, demolished the doorframe, and rode off into the night.
His wasn't the first car. Europeans like Karl Benz had been making cars for at least
a decade. But Ford's could go 20 miles per hour, a terrific speed back then; and it
was reliable and didn't cost that much. As he built more cars and formed his own
company with the backing of Detroit capitalists, Ford developed the idea that
would make him the most powerful industrialist in America.
Mass Production & the Assembly Line
In 1900, most cars were rich men's toys. Ford wanted to build an inexpensive car
for farmers like his Irish father. It would be rugged, reliable, and designed for
rough country roads; and it would liberate rural people from the isolation that had
nearly driven him crazy on his father's farm.
Ford was convinced there was only one way to make such a car. He'd fix on a
design, freeze it, and then work on ways to reproduce it year after year. As he said,
"The way to make cars is to make one automobile just like another automobile;
just as one pen is like another pen, or one match is like another match when it
comes from a match factory."
When Ford's chief financial backer kept pushing for big, fancy cars, Ford bought
him out in 1906, built a new production plant at Highland Park, north of Detroit,
and began work on the Model T with a team of dedicated mechanics. Here was
Ford, the backyard mechanic, in his glory, working day and night on his dream
product, tinkering, testing, playing with new ideas, working with men he
respected, all of them self-taught. And the car they produced was a beauty. It ran
like a dream, but at $825, the equivalent of a teacher's salary back then, it was still
too expensive for the common man.
The car would stay the same. What had to change was the way of making it. This is
where Ford would make his outstanding contribution to the machine age: as a
systems-builder, the creator of a gigantic technological system capable of
producing, well, almost anything.
To drive down the price of his car he'd have to make lots of them. The profits
would come from volume, not pricing. And that meant speeding up the work by
simplifying it. Adam Smith had called it the division of labor.
By 1914, Ford and his engineers had installed a belt-driven movable production
line that took the work to the worker, and then carried that man's work to
another worker, and so, until a shining Model T rolled off the line. It was
continuous flow production. No one had ever done this before.
Before Ford, the closest thing to continuous flow production was the dis-assembly
line of the Chicago meat packing plants, where animal carcasses hung on a rail and
moved from butcher to butcher. Ford claimed that this was the inspiration for his
own assembly line. Ford worked incessantly to simplify manufacturing until most
work was done automatically, without thought. The culmination was a system
where men and machines were merged into a single tremendous machine, a
megamachine, with the belt as the boss.
Before the assembly line, it took 13 hours to make a car. Soon it took less than an hour. By
saving time, Ford saved money and drove down the price of his car nearly every year. The last
Model T, built in 1927, cost a mere $290.
The Ford Assembly Line
 Mass production=production of goods in large numbers through the
use of machinery and assembly lines
 Assembly line=arrangement of equipment and workers in which work
passes from operation to operation in a direct line until the product is
assembled
 Scientific management=experts study ways to improve efficiency by
studying every step of the process
 Innovation =change in way of doing something
 Model T=Henry Ford’s car many Americans could afford
 Henry Ford= his assembly line revolutionized production, wages, and
working conditions, and daily life
 Labor Conditions
 While the car liberated the driver, it enchained the workers who made it.
It's ironic that the challenging, experimental enterprise that produced the
assembly line at Highland Park created a new kind of work devoid of
excitement and challenge. Here is the continuing dilemma of mass
production. Speed and specialization drives down prices. But in
democratizing consumption, it debases work.
 At Ford's plants, spotters and foreman enforced regulations that forbade
leaning against machines, sitting, talking, singing, even whistling and
smiling. Ford workers learned to communicate without moving their lips.
They called this "the Ford whisper." And men went crazy from the speedup
and the tedium of the work.
 The result was an enormous, hugely expensive labor turnover; almost 400%
in the first year the line was installed. Ford solved this problem with
another radical innovation: the five-dollar, eight hour day. This was when
the average work day was 9 hours and the average industrial wage, $2.45.
Workers all over the country poured into Detroit, and the press hailed Ford
as an enlightened employer. But Ford's fellow industrialists blasted him for
undermining the capitalist system.
 Ford, however, understood something most of them hadn't figured out yet:
that a mass production economy would grind to a halt unless workers were
paid back enough to buy back the products they made. When Ford's
advertising department brought him a slogan "Buy a Ford, Save the
Difference," he changed it to "Buy a Ford, Spend the Difference." The
advocate of rural thrift had certainly altered his tune. Still, Ford's passion
was production, not distribution. Yet this obsessive preoccupation with
production would soon undermine his dominance of the auto industry.
 In 1929, the nation produced 5.5 million cars and 5 of every 6 cars in the
world were owned by Americans.
Automobiles transformed American society:
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Drove the economy and promoted buying on credit
Social freedom, dating and privacy
Drinking alcohol
Cars were a status symbol
Americans were mobile and took vacations
Americans moved to the suburbs which transformed cities
Increased socialization, ended isolation
Gave rise to a youth culture
The 1920s was the first true “Age of the Consumer”
 Installment purchases =customers would make small down payment
on an item and pay the rest in monthly payments. Americans went
into debt to buy the consumer goods of the 1920s.
Movies of the 1920s
By this time, the auto-age city had become, as well, Tinsel Town, the capital of
American movie-making. That too happened in the 20s, when a sleepy little
retirement community called Hollywood became the home of the world's greatest
concentration of movie studios.
The movie industry grew up in New York City in the first two decades of the 20th
century, and many of the first movie houses and small studios were run by
immigrant Jews who got started in the garment industry, a business based, as
movies were, on changing styles.
These silent movies were universal entertainment. There were no language
barriers to overcome, so they became wildly popular in ethnic communities. The
New York Jews who created Hollywood were risktakers and dreamers. They
started small and became big: Samuel Goldwyn, William Fox, Adolph Zukor, Louis
B. Mayer, Marcus Loew, the Warner Brothers (Harry and Jack).
They came for the sunshine and the space. In that age of poor lighting, most
movies had to be made outdoors. California sunlight allowed producers to make
movies all year round. Land was also cheap and available in big parcels, giving
studios lots of room to expand as they moved to the production of biblical
extravaganzas with huge casts and sets.
Henry Ford hated movies. Even the religious epics were, he said, "all about sex
and sin." And they were made by Jews, who Ford blamed for everything, from jazz
("Jews ruled the music industry"), to short skirts ("Jews also controlled the
garment industry"). But even Ford used newsreel-type films to advertise his cars
to a country hooked on movies.
By the mid-'20s, 100 million people were going to movies every week. And films
about the rich and famous whetted the appetite of people for cars and other
expensive consumer goods.
Ford held his nose while his wallet expanded. Like most Americans, Ford looked to
a future of unstoppable economic growth. But just when people were thinking
that the prosperity wave would never break, it broke.
The Bull Market
 Bull Market=stock prices rose in the
1920s and more Americans began to
invest in stocks
Get rich quick!
 Buying on Margin=to pay for stocks,
many people bought stocks on
“credit” by only putting 10% down.
They believed they could pay the rest
of the cost with profits from the stock
market.
Cities, Suburbs and the
Country
 Cities and suburbs grew and more Americans moved to urban areas
for jobs and entertainment.
 More skyscrapers were built.
 Americans began to move to the suburbs (Cars made travel in and out
of the city possible.)
 Farmers were NOT prosperous.
Signs of the Booming Economy
of the 1920s:
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Wages rose from $36 billion to $51 billion
2. Gross National Product (GNP) jumped from $69 billion to $93 billion
3. Mass production led to lower prices for goods
4. US entered WWI a debtor nation and emerged the largest creditor
($12 billion) Compared to other nations, America was rich
 5. Advertising increased and Americans bought goods on credit
*In the 1920s, Americans had the highest per capita income in the world.
Republicans Dominate Politics of the 1920s
1. Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge and the government in
the 1920s supported business growth. Both believed in a smaller federal
government.
Republican Presidents of the 1920s
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1. Warren Harding, 1920
2. Calvin Coolidge, 1923
3. Herbert Hoover, 1928
Republicans controlled government for 12 years
WARREN HARDING (R), 1921-1923
 Elected because he promised a “Return to Normalcy.”
 Americans were tired of war and Progressive reform movements.
 Harding promised smaller government and lower taxes.
 “Ohio Gang” –Harding placed his friends in public office
Harding’s Cabinet Members
1. Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury
Wealthy banker
Lowered taxes
Few regulations on businesses
2. Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce
Promoted business
3. “Ohio Gang”-Harding’s corrupt and greedy friends who saw
government as a way to get rich. This leads several scandals in the
administration.
Teapot Dome Scandal
 Senator Albert Fall, Secretary of the Interior, took bribes to lease lands
with oil reserves for the navy to businessmen. He was convicted and
served a year in jail.
 Warren Harding died of a heart attack.
 Calvin Coolidge became president.
“Silent Cal”-Calvin Coolidge, 1923-29
1. Time of prosperity
2. Reduced the federal budget
3. Lowered taxes
4. Gave incentives to businesses
5. Believed in small government
League of Nations
To prevent war and settle disputes between nations
W. Wilson wanted to join. U.S. Senate rejected membership
Kellogg-Briand Pact
To “outlaw war….as an instrument of national policy.”
U.S. and other nations agreed
Modernism-a growing trend that emphasized science and secular values over
traditional ideas and religious beliefs.
Religious fundamentalism-belief in strict interpretation of the Bible and that
there are “fundamental” truths based on scripture
Nativism-fear, suspicion, or resentment of foreigners
Three Examples of the conflicts created by cultural change in the 1920s:
 1. Debate over prohibition
 2. The rise of nativism and the New Ku Klux Klan
 3. Religious fundamentalism vs. modern religion The Scopes Trial
Prohibition: “Drys” vs the “Wets”
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 18 Amendment to the Constitution-(1919) prohibited the
distribution, sale, or manufacture of alcohol.
 Volstead Act (1920) law to officially enforce the amendment.
 Alcohol consumption did drop for a short period, but the law did not stop
Americans from drinking.
 Speakeasies were illegal bars for drinking “hooch” or white lightning
 An illegal trade in bootleg alcohol led to a rise in organized crime and violence.
 The most famous organized crime boss was Al Capone.
 Bootleggers produced, transported and sold alcohol.
 The issue of Prohibition divided America: Drys vs. Wets
 Nativism, resentment of foreigners, increased in the 1920s.
 Americans argued they took jobs and threatened the nation’s political,
religious, and cultural traditions.
 Two laws were passed that limited immigration:
Quota System
1. Emergency Quota Act (1921)
2. National Origins Act (1924)
 Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti (Italian Immigrants) were
convicted of murder based on little evidence.
 Scopes Trial, Science teacher in Dayton, TN who was charged with violating
a TN law that banned the teaching of evolution in schools. He was tried
and found guilt.
 The trial was a part of the debate between modernism and fundamentalism in
American Society
The Harlem Renaissance
 Renaissance-an explosion of African American culture during the 1920s
in the New York neighborhood of Harlem of black writers, poets, artists
and musicians.
 JAZZ-a style of music where musicians creatively combine different
forms of music often including blues and ragtime.
 Improvisation-create music as you play
 Jazz originated in New Orleans and moved North with the migration.
 JAZZ GREATS:
1. Louis Armstrong
Trumpet Player (soloist)
“Satchmo”
2. Duke Ellington made his debut at the Cotton Club in 1927
African American Writers:
 Claude McKay-writer who wrote about ordinary African Americans
struggling for dignity and advancement in the face of discrimination.
 Langston Hughes-the most powerful literary voice of his time. He
celebrated African culture and life.
 Zora Neale Hurston –in her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she
talked about the independence women were seeking in society.
N.A.A.C.P.-National Association for the Advancement of Colored People founded
in 1920
Women in the 1920s
 Young women were more independent
 Voted, some went to college
 Had more free time thanks to new technology-vacuum cleaners,
washing machines,…
 Many young women worked: secretaries, teachers, nurses
 Became major consumers
 “Flappers” –loose dresses, shorter dresses, bobbed hair, smoking,
consuming alcohol
Important Americans of 1920s
 Charles Lindbergh—(1927) first nonstop flight from New York to Paris in
the Spirit of St. Louis
 Babe Ruth—Baseball great
 F. Scott Fitzgerald –writer--coined the phrase “Jazz Age”, criticized the
excesses of the 1920s in The Great Gatsby
 Earnest Hemingway—writer— A Farewell to Arms
 Marcus Garvey --Black activist who promoted black pride and a back to
Africa movement
 Harlem Renaissance writers and artists: Langston Hughes, Claude
McKay, Zora Neal Hurston
 Musicians of the 1920s: Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong,
Paul Robeson