The Jazz Age
A Clash of Values
Nativism resurges – After World War I there was:
• Economic recession
• Influx of immigrants
• Racial and cultural tensions
• All created an atmosphere of disillusionment and
intolerance. Fear and prejudice towards Germans
and Communists expanded to include all
immigrants.
• During WWI immigration to the US dropped sharply
but by 1921 it had returned to prewar levels, with a
majority of immigrants coming from southern and
eastern Europe.
• These immigrants posed a threat to America’s
stability and order. They also posed a threat to the
4 million service men returning to the workforce.
Sacco-Vanzetti Case –
• Two men shot and killed two employees of a shoe
company in Massachusetts and stole its $15,000.00
payroll.
• Police arrested Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The newspapers revealed that
the two were anarchists (people who oppose all
forms of government) and this created a furor.
• Sacco owned the same type of gun used in the
robbery and it was said that the bullets matched
those used in the murders.
• With this limited evidence the two men were tried
and sentenced to death.
• Over the next six years, lawyers filed numerous
appeals but all failed.
• Aug. 23, 1927 Sacco and Vanzetti were executed,
proclaiming their innocence all the while.
• Pseudo-Scientific Racism – some Americans
believed in Eugenics – a psuedo-science (or
false science) that deals with improving
hereditary traits. It emphasized that human
inequalities were inherited and warned
against breeding the “unfit” or “inferior.”
• Eugenics fueled the nativists’ argument for
the superiority of the “original” American stock
– white protestants of northern Europe
descent.
Return of KKK – the Ku Klux Klan was at the forefront
of the movement to restrict immigration. The new
Klan had new targets that included Catholics, Jews,
immigrants, and other groups believed to represent
“un-American” values.
• William J. Simmons founded the new KKK in
Atlanta, GA in 1915. A former Methodist preacher,
he pledged to preserve America’s white, Protestant
civilization. In the 20’s, the Klan publicly claimed
that the organization was fighting for “Americanism”
• They had trouble getting new members until they
hired public relations entrepreneurs who were paid
$8 for every $10 initiation fee for a new Klan recruit
• The Klan began to decline with scandals and power
struggles among the leaders. But not before it
reached 4 million members in 1924.
Controlling Immigration
• “Keep America American” became the new plea of
America after the war
• Even the big businesses that needed cheap labor
feared the new immigrants as radicals
• 1921 President Warren G. Harding signed the
Emergency Quota Act, which established a
temporary quota system, limiting immigration. Only
3% of the total number of people in any ethnic
group already living in the US as indicated in the
1910 census, could be admitted in a single year.
This discriminated against people from southern
and eastern Europe because they were relatively
new immigrants and there weren’t many in the US
at 1910.
Controlling Immigration
• So now Ethnic identity and national origin
determined admission to the United States.
• National Origins Act of 1924 – made
immigrant restriction a permanent policy and
set the quota to 2% of each national group
residing in the country in 1890.
Controlling Immigration
• A second part of this act also replaced the 1924
quota with a limit of 150,000 immigrants admitted
per year.
• The immigration acts of 1921 and 1924 reduced
the available labor pool in the US. Employers
desperately needed workers for agriculture, mining,
and railroad work. The National Origins Act of
1924 exempted natives of the Western Hemisphere
from the quota system so as the demand for cheap
farm labor in California and the Southwest steadily
increased, Mexican immigrants crossed the border
in record numbers.
The New Morality
• Many groups that wanted to limit immigration also
wanted to preserve traditional values, they feared
that a “new morality” was taking over the nation.
• New Morality – ideals of the loving family and
personal satisfaction – views popularized in
magazines and other media – influenced popular
views on relationships. Ideas of romance, pleasure,
and friendship became linked to successful
marriages.
• Many single, working-class women held jobs simply
because they needed the wages for themselves or
for their families
The New Morality
• Women attended college and found support
for their emerging sense of independence.
• The automobile played a role in encouraging
the new morality as the nation’s youth loved
cars and the freedom it gave them. Now
instead of socializing at home with the family,
they could use cars to seek new forms of
entertainment with their friends.
Women in the 1920s
• Women bobbed their hair
• Wore flesh-colored silk stockings
• Were called “flapper” as a young, dramatic, stylish,
and unconventional woman that personified
women’s changing behavior in the 1920s.
• Some Flappers pursued social freedoms, others
sought financial independence by entering the
workforce, many as salesclerks, secretaries, or
telephone operators.
• A few made contributions in science, medicine, law
or literature. Florence Sabin’s research led to a
dramatic drop in death rates form TB. Edith
Wharton received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel
The Age of Innocence. Margaret Sanger founded
the American Birth Control League in 1921, which
became Planned Parenthood in 1940.
The Fundamentalist Movement
• Millions of Americans feared that the country was
losing its traditional values. Many of these people,
especially those in small rural towns, responded by
joining a religious movement known as
Fundamentalism
• Fundamentalists believed that the Bible was literally
true and without error. They defended the
Protestant faith against those who believed that
their moral behavior was derived from society and
nature, not God. They rejected Charles Darwin’s
theory of evolution.
• Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson, two
popular evangelical preachers, stirred
Fundamentalists’ passions by preaching traditional
religious and moral values in very nontraditional
ways.
The Fundamentalist Movement
• Billy Sunday drew huge crowds with his
rapid-fire sermons and on-stage
showmanship.
• McPherson conducted her revivals and faith
healings in LA
The Scopes Trial –
• 1925 Tennessee passed the Butler Act, which outlawed any
teaching that denied “the story of the Divine Creation of man
as taught in the Bible.”
• The ACLU advertised for a teacher who would be willing to
be arrested for teaching evolution. John T. Scopes
volunteered to teach evolution and be put on trial.
• 1925 trial – William Jennings Bryan was the prosecutor,
representing the creationists. Clarence Darrow defended
Scopes. Called the “Monkey Trial.”
• Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, although his
conviction was later overturned.
• Parts of the trial were publicized on radio and did little for the
Fundamentalists cause. Increasingly they found themselves
isolated from mainstream Protestantism and their
commitment to political activism declined.
Prohibition
• The movement to ban alcohol had been
building since the late 1800s. By the late
1900s many progressives and traditionalists
supported prohibition
• Many people believed that prohibition would
help reduce unemployment, domestic
violence, and poverty.
• 18th Amendment was passed in Jan. of 1920
Prohibition
• To help enforce the new amendment, Congress
passed the National Prohibition Act, also known as
the Volstead Act. This act made enforcing
prohibition the responsibility of the US Treasury
Dept. Before this, police powers had usually been
reserved for the state governments. This marked a
dramatic increase in federal police powers.
• The Treasury Dept. struggled to enforce prohibition.
During the 1920s they made 540,000 arrests. But
the American people persisted in blatantly ignoring
the law.
• People flocked to secret bars called “speakeasies”,
where they could purchase illegal alcohol.
Prohibition
• In New York city, it is estimated that there were over
32,000 speakeasies in existence. But liquor was
also readily available in rural areas too, where
bootlegging – the illegal production and distribution
of liquor – was common.
• Organized crime specialized in supplying and often
running these speakeasies. The huge profits that
could be made supplying liquor encouraged some
people to become smugglers, brining liquor into the
US form Canada and the Caribbean.
• Smuggling and the consumption of liquor by millions
helped create an illegal billion-dollar industry for
gangsters.
Prohibition
• More than 70 federal agents were killed while
enforcing Prohibition in the 20s
• Crime became big business and some
gangsters had enough money to corrupt local
politicians. Al Capone, one of the most
successful and violent gangsters of the era,
had many police officers, judges, and other
officials on his payroll. Capone dominated
organized crime in Chicago, where he ran
bootlegging and other criminal rackets. Elliot
Ness, the leader of a special Treasury Dept.
task force, finally brought Capone to justice.
Al Capone
• Elliot Ness
Prohibition
• The battle to repeal Prohibition began almost
as soon as the 18th Amendment was ratified.
The ratification of the 21st Amendment in
1933 repealed the 18th Amendment and
ended federally-mandated prohibition