The 1920s
SCOTUS Decisions
 Gitlow v. New York
Red Scare
 Bolsheviks, Communists
 "Palmer raids"
Nativism
 Ku Klux Klan (anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic)
 Birth of a Nation
 The Clansman
Note the influence of the brief postwar recession, 1921-1922
 Immigration Acts
 Sacco-Vanzetti case
"Second industrial revolution,"
Note increasing standard of living during the Twenties






Oligopoly
“welfare capitalism" (also called ‘company unionism’)
Andrew Mellon/Sec. of Treasury
o ‘Mellonomics’
electricity in the home
installment buying
Henry Ford
o The moving assembly line
o The Model T (Tin Lizzie)
o Five-dollar workday


o
o
o
o
note the social impact of the automobile
note 1920 census - reports that for the first time over half of the population lives in
cities
The Jazz Singer
The influence of radio
Clara Bow, the It Girl
Charles Lindbergh, "The Spirit of St. Louis"
The clash of values and cultures in the 1920's










Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tenn.
Great Migration
Richard Wright, Native Son
1919, Chicago race riot
Marcus Garvey Universal Negro Improvement Association
Harlem Renaissance
Langston Hughes, poetry
“the lost generation"
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, Main Street
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
note the ambiguity in the gains made by women in the 1920's
League of Women Voters
note how "sick" agriculture was as an industry in the 20's note that workers
note the different experiences in the Twenties for the different components of Progressive
reform - efficiency, order, and the social justice movement
o Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act
o Prohibition
 Eighteen Amendment
 Volstead Act
 Al Capone
o Election of 1928
 Al Smith vs Herbert Hoover
 urban, NYC, Catholic, wet VS. rural-born,
Midwesterner, Protestant, dry
o
note the rapid rise in stock prices in the late Twenties
o stock market crash
 Black Thursday, October 24, 1929
 Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929

shared unevenly
in the 20's prosperity
Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows
election of 1920, Harding and Coolidge versus Cox and FDR
Harding Administration
 Teapot Dome scandal
 Sec of Interior Albert Fall
 "the K Street Gang"
Election of 1924
 Coolidge
 Progressive Party
 Robert LaFollette
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover
standardization
Pollution Act of 1924
Foreign policy in the Twenties
o League of Nations
o Washington Naval Conference, 1921-1922
 Five Power Treaty
 Four Power Treaty, Nine Power Treaty
o
note the importance of Latin America for trade
o
o
o
o
o
continued intervention in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua
Mexican nationalization of the oil industry, Dwight Marrow
European debt dilemma, German debt problem (Cycle of Debt)
Hawley-Smoot Tariff, 1930
Kellogg-Briand Treaty