The American Journey
A History of the United States, 7th Edition
By: Goldfield • Abbott • Anderson • Argersinger • Argersinger • Barney • Weir
Chapter
24
Toward a Modern
America: The 1920s
Toward a Modern America: The 1920s
24.1
The Economy That Roared
What contributed to the economic boom of the 1920s?
24.2
The Business of Government
What was the relationship between big business and
government in the 1920s?
24.3
Cities and Suburbs
What factors contributed to the growth of America’s
cities and suburbs in the 1920s?
Toward a Modern America: The 1920s
24.4
Mass Culture in the Jazz Age
How did new systems of distribution, marketing, and
mass communication shape American culture? What
forces fueled the cultural divisions in the 1920s?
24.5
Herbert Hoover and the New Era
In what ways did Hoover promote the policies of the
New Era abroad? What was Hoover’s final triumph
in the New Era?
Video Series: Key Topics in U.S. History
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The 1920s
Cities and Suburbs
The New Power of Advertising
The Scopes Trial
The Economy That Roared
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Boom Industries
Corporate Consolidation
Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism
Sick Industries
Home
Boom Industries
• Automobiles
• New industries
 Aviation
 Chemicals
 Radio and movies
• Federal Communication Commission ‒ 1934
• Hollywood
The Economy
That Roared
Corporate Consolidation
• Period of mergers
• Oligopoly
 Ford, General Motors, Chrysler
 Including financial institutions
The Economy
That Roared
Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism
• National Association of Manufacturers
 Open-shop campaign
 Yellow-dog contracts
• Attraction of labor unions weakened with
welfare capitalism
• Unemployment
• Consumer credit
The Economy
That Roared
Sick Industries
• Older industries: coal mining, textiles, clothing,
railroads
• Excess capacity, shrinking demand
• Labor conflict
The Economy
That Roared
The Business of Government
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Republican Ascendancy
Government Corruption
Coolidge Prosperity
The Fate of Reform
Home
Republican Ascendancy
• Herbert Hoover
 Secretary of Commerce ‒ Herbert Hoover
 Secretary of the Treasury ‒ Andrew Mellon
• Support for business
• Supreme Court
 William Howard Taft
The Business
of Government
Government Corruption
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Justice Department officials
Head of Veterans Bureau
Teapot Dome scandal
Death of Harding ‒ 1923
The Business
of Government
Coolidge Prosperity
• Calvin Coolidge
 Free rein to business
• Federal Trade Commission
 Supported mergers
• Election of 1924
 Coolidge elected
The Business
of Government
The Fate of Reform
• Leadership of Robert La Follette and George
Norris
• League of Women Voters agenda
 Equal-pay laws
 Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act
The Business
of Government
Cities and Suburbs
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Expanding Cities
The Great Black Migration
Barrios
The Road to Suburbia
Home
Expanding Cities
• Urbanization
 South urbanized most rapidly
• Western regional centers: Denver, Portland,
Seattle
• Skyscrapers
Cities and
Suburbs
The Great Black Migration
• Great Migration
 Push and pull factors
• Segregation in the North
• Black identity
 Universal Negro Improvement Association ‒
Marcus Garvey
• Harlem Renaissance
 Langston Hughes
 Alain Locke
 Zora Neale Hurston
Cities and
Suburbs
Barrios
• Puerto Ricans, Mexicans
• Barrios grew from segregation
• La Orden de Hijos de America
 League of United Latin American Citizens
Cities and
Suburbs
Explore the Immigrants and Migrants in the
Early Twentieth Century on MyHistoryLab
• The Immigrants and Migrants in the Early
Twentieth Century History Explorer is a
study of both anti-immigrant legislation and
internal migration, including the large-scale
exodus of African Americans from the rural
South to the urban North, in the decades
around the turn of the twentieth century.
The Road to Suburbia
• Car culture
 Compared to earlier streetcar suburbs
• Often exclusively white
• State highway systems
• Shopping centers
Cities and
Suburbs
Mass Culture in the Jazz Age
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Advertising the Consumer Society
Leisure and Entertainment
The New Morality
The Searching Twenties
Culture Wars
Nativism and Immigration Restriction
The Ku Klux Klan
Prohibition and Crime
Old-Time Religion and the Scopes Trial
Home
Advertising the Consumer Society
• Created new demand
• Consumption replaced thrift
• Installment purchases
 Debt rose faster than incomes
Mass Culture
Leisure and Entertainment
• Movies
 Cecil B. De Mille
• Phonographs
• Jazz Age
 Louis Armstrong
• Professional sports
 Baseball
 Boxing
Mass Culture
The New Morality
• Shift away from traditional values
• Young culture
 Flappers
 Economic independence
Mass Culture
The Searching Twenties
• Theme of disillusionment
 F. Scott Fitzgerald
 Ernest Hemingway
• Critiques of mass culture
 Harold Stearns
 H. L. Mencken
Mass Culture
Culture Wars
• Deep divisions
• Lasting legacy
 Immigration reform
 Evolution
 Racism
Mass Culture
Nativism and Immigration Restriction
• Demands for immigration restriction
• Red Scare
 Sacco and Vanzetti
• Emergency Quota Act ‒ 1921
• National Origins Act of 1924
• Asian immigration
 None allowed under quota system
 Nisei
Mass Culture
The Ku Klux Klan
• Founded ‒ 1915
 National organization
 Many more groups targeted
 More public, vocal
• Backlash
 Weakened by 1930
Mass Culture
Prohibition and Crime
• Eighteenth Amendment
 Volstead Act ‒ 1920
• Bootleggers
 Organized crime
 Al Capone
• Support for Prohibition wanes
 Repealed in 1933
Mass Culture
Old-Time Religion and the Scopes Trial
• Evangelists
 Billy Sunday
 Aimee Semple McPherson ‒ “Foursquare Gospel”
• Fundamentalism
 Attacks on Darwinian ideas
• American Civil Liberties Union challenge
 Scopes trial
 Clarence Darrow
Mass Culture
Herbert Hoover and the New Era
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War Debts and Economic Expansion
Rejecting War
Managing the Hemisphere
Hoover and the Final Triumph of the
New Era
Home
War Debts and Economic Expansion
• United States became a creditor nation
 European war debts
• Multinational corporations
 Ford, International Telephone and Telegraph
• United Fruit Company
• Bureau of Foreign Commerce
 Offices around the world
Herbert Hoover
Rejecting War
• Washington Naval Conference ‒ 1921
 Disarmament
 Suspended shipbuilding
• Kellogg-Briand Pact ‒ 1928
 Sixty-four nations
Herbert Hoover
Managing the Hemisphere
• Interventions
 Less than under Roosevelt and Wilson
 But enough to raise resentment
• Inter-America Conference ‒ 1928
 Condemned intervention
• Clark Memorandum
 Backed off from Roosevelt Corollary
Herbert Hoover
Hoover and the Final
Triumph of the New Era
• Hoover’s cooperative federalism
 Moderately progressive
• Al Smith exacerbated culture wars
• Republican triumph
Herbert Hoover
Conclusion
• Innovations transformed business, often
actively supported by the federal government.
• Cultural developments were equally important,
and provoked strident debates in the culture
wars.
• The prosperity and changes of the period were
not experienced equally by all.