NOTE-TAKING GUIDE: Of the People: A History of the United States CHAPTER 23 “The Modern Nation: 1920-1928”
COMMON THREADS
 How did the Industrial Revolution continue to affect culture and politics as well
as the economy?
 What differentiated the modern culture of the 1920s from the popular culture of
the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era?
 Why did individualism continue to be such an important force in American life?
 How did the Republican New Era of the 1920s mark a break from the
progressive politics of the 1900s–1910s?
 What were the long-term implications of a political and cultural order so
dependent on material prosperity?
OUTLINE
A Dynamic Economy
The Development of Industry
The Trend Toward Large-Scale Organization
The Transformation of Work and the Workforce
The Defeat of Organized Labor
The Decline of Agriculture
The Urban Nation
A Modern Culture
The Spread of Consumerism
New Pleasures
A Sexual Revolution
Changing Gender Ideals
The Family and Youth
American Landscape: “Flaming Youth” on Campus
The Celebration of the Individual
The Limits of the Modern Culture
The “Lost Generation” of Intellectuals
Fundamentalist Christians and “Old-Time Religion”
Nativists and Immigration Restriction
The Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan
Mexican Americans
African Americans and the “New Negro”
A “New Era” in Politics and Government
The Modern Political System
The Republican Ascendancy
The Politics of Individualism
Republican Foreign Policy
America and the World: “Jazz-band partout!”
Extending the “New Era”
Conclusion
WHO?
Bruce Barton
Calvin Coolidge
Henry Ford
Marcus Garvey
Warren G. Harding
Herbert Hoover
Margaret Sanger
John Scopes
New Negro
New Woman
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What caused the transformation of the industrial economy in the 1910s and
1920s? How did that transformation benefit or harm different economic
groups such as big business, workers, and farmers?
2. Why did the modern culture emerge in the 1920s and not before?
3. How did views of sexuality, gender, family, and youth change in the 1920s?
Why was individualism so important to the modern culture?
4. Why was there such a widespread backlash against the modern culture of
the 1920s? Why did the backlash fail?
5. Why did the Republican Party dominate the emerging political system of the
1920s? How did Republican policies reflect the economic and cultural
changes of the decade?
6. Did the United States become more or less democratic a nation in the
1920s?
7. How would the emergence of consumer culture shape the United States
beyond the 1920s?
NOTES: TO FOLLOW UP / QUESTIONS TO ASK IN CLASS
WHAT?
Fordism
Fundamentalism
New Era
NOTE-TAKING GUIDE: Of the People: A History of the United States CHAPTER 23 “The Modern Nation: 1920-1928”