Transition Years
1918-1920
Post-War Fears
U.S. becomes increasingly isolationist
 Fears being drawn into another war
 Rapid changes in society – socially
reinforced conformity

– Technology
– Immigration – 1.2 million in 1914 alone
– Culture – New immigration - Nativism
Racial Tension - Red Summer
Ten black soldiers, several still in uniform were
lynched and some set on fire
 Between 1919 and 1922, 239 blacks were
lynched and many more killed in individual and
unrecorded acts of violence
 April to October 1919 – became known as Red
Summer – more than 20 violent race riots in
cities in North & South
 Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Omaha,
Nebraska; Charleston, S.C.; Longview, Texas;
Knoxville Tennessee; Elaine, Arkansas

Omaha
Omaha Riot
Chicago Riot
7 Day riot – Deaths:
15 whites; 23
blacks; Injuries: 195
whites; 342 blacks
 State militia required
to stop the riot

Strikes
Seattle General Strike – 65,000 workers –
February 1919
 Boston Police Strike – September 1919
 Steel Strike – September 1919 – 365,000
workers
 Coal Strike – November 1919 – John L.
Lewis – United Mine Workers
 Most thought radical anarchists and
socialists were behind the strikes

Communism & Socialism
1919 – American Communist Party had
60,000 members and Socialist Party of
America had 40,000
 1924 Daily Worker newspaper published
by American Communist Party had
circulation of 35,000
 Socialist Party – Eugene Debs got almost
1 million votes in 1912 & 1920, the party
elected two Congressmen and numerous
state legislators and mayors

Red Scare
May Day Bombings
 A. Mitchell Palmer & J. Edgar Hoover –
Beginning of the F.B.I. – starts to investigate
American citizens who criticized the war
 November 1919 – Palmer Raids – over 10,000 January 1920 – more raids – over 6,000
 September 16, 1920 – bomb explodes in parked
horse-drawn wagon near Wall Street’s financial
district.

The Roaring Twenties
Second Industrial Revolution
Replace steam with electricity
 Scientific management & behavior
psychology
 Automatic machinery increases
productivity
 Rise in real wages but little or no
expansion of the labor force
 More consumer goods
 Housing boom creates demand

Labor Unions

Lost membership and power
– Supreme Court rulings against strikes –
injunctions
– Federal government’s pro-business
policies
– Suggestions that unions were unAmerican
– Workers got the same wages whether
they were in the union or not
The Modern Corporation
By 1929, 200 firms owned half the
corporate wealth due to mergers
 Prosperity of the 1920s was enjoyed
mostly by the corporations
 Open shop/Closed shop –

– Open: workers could choose to join a union or
not
– Closed: workers had to join the union in order
to work there
Welfare Capitalism
Company medical services
 Recreation programs for workers
 Improved safety of working conditions
 Encouraged workers to become home
owners

The Auto Age
Gave youth independence & mobility
 Created demand for steel & glass
 Stimulated appreciation for the
government as a provider of public goods
 Make leisure part of everyday life
 Decentralized sprawl with little zoning as
people move out of inner city
 30 million cars on the road in 1929 – 1 for
every 5 residents


Original caption: Camping gear bed combines all the comforts of home. An
ingeniously arranged four seat car in which the cushions can be adjusted to
form beds, has been designed by Mr. Melville Hart, the British naval
architect. It carries full equipment for camping, including a suitcase, which
when opened becomes a cooking apparatus with an oven. The above photo
shows the roomy and comfortable bed into which the car was quickly
transformed.
Henry Ford
Assembly line – speed up slow workers
 Breaks jobs into small increments - allows
unskilled labor in jobs previously requiring
skilled labor
 High wages & profit sharing – promote
loyalty, less turnover and training costs,
allow to buy product
 Had to agree to morality clause in contract
– no drinking, gambling, swearing

Agriculture
Land values fell sharply after World War I
 Decline in net income
 Global surplus of staples like cotton &
wheat
 Number of blacks classified as tenant
farmers declined
 Great Plains wheat farmers used
mechanized farming on huge farms to
turn a profit

Ailing Industries
Farmers – debt from increasing production for
war effort, drop in foreign markets, drought –
30% of workforce by end of 1920s income was
1/3rd of national average
 Railroads – competition from trucking
 Textiles, boots, shoes – Fewer orders after war
ended – overproduction & falling demand
 Coal Mining – hurt by strikes & Americans turn
to other fuel sources – natural gas & electricity

Mass Culture
Brings news, music, sporting events to a
national audience
 1922 - $60 million in radio sales; 1929 $426 million in radio sales
 Westinghouse, General Electric, AT&T,
Radio Corporation of America
 KDKA - Philadelphia

Movies
Rudolph Valentino, Charlie
Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks &
Mary Pickford (America’s
sweethearts)
 Fantasy
– Upward mobility
– Material success with little
work/effort
– Possibility to remake one’s
identity
– Surrounded with beautiful
people

Movies
Culture of consumption
 Celebration of youth
 Cult of celebrity
 Nationalized cultural norms
 Big studios thrived by recognizing changes
in popular tastes
 Will Hayes – Movie morality czar – ratings
system

Journalism & Advertising
Connect a product with common belief of
society
 Present consumption as positive attribute
 Focus on the desires or anxieties of the
buyer
 Take a scientific approach to market
research

New Products
Electric sewing machines
 Electric washing machines
 Vacuum cleaners
 Mixers
 Gas & Electric stoves
 Toasters & Irons
 Refrigerators

Sports & Celebrity
Major League Baseball
 College football
 Negro baseball leagues – some of the best
players like Satchel Paige
 Gertrude Ederle – 1st woman to swim the
English channel – broke best men’s time
by 1 hour and 59 minutes
 Helen Wills Moody – 31 Grand Slam tennis
titles & 2 gold medals in 1924

Helen Wills Moody & Gertrude
Ederle
Knute Rockne, Red Grange, Babe
Ruth
Printed Matter
Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan of
the Apes
 Zane Grey – Riders of the Purple
Sage
 Confession magazines – romantic
stories of success, failure, divorce,
fantasy, and adultery – writers
put disclaimers at the end to warn
readers to avoid similar mistakes
 Gossip – The New Yorker or
Vanity Fair

New Morality
Margaret Sanger tried to make
contraception free to all women
 Freud argued sex is a healthy, normal
impulse
 The percentage of women who were
virgins at marriage dropped significantly
from the previous generation
 A more public homosexual community
developed in bohemian areas

Women
National Women’s Party – immediate equality for
women in all aspects of life
 Equal rights amendment

– Protective legislation stereotyped women as inferior &
prevent women from getting the better paying jobs
– Right to vote was not the same as equality
– Women should be free to compete with men in any
field
Flappers
Fads
Crossword puzzles
 Mah Jong
 Dance Marathons
 Flagpole Sitting
 The Charleston

Resistance to Modernity
Rural/Urban Conflict
 Temperance/Prohibition, Traditional
Gender Roles, Work/Career Expectations,
Respect for Law
 Traditional Values vs. New Culture
 Small number of people actually involved
in new morality but it had huge shock
value for the masses

The Second Rise of the KKK





Save America from foreign influences
Strengthen community life and family values
Elimination of birth control
Rejection of Catholicism as an alien belief
Separation of church & state
Prohibition
18th Amendment – 1920
 21st Amendment – 1933
 Save grain for the soldiers
 Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Catholic
 Prevent domestic violence & help care for
families
 Volstead Act – enforcement of Prohibition
 Eliot Ness & Untouchables

Prohibition
Promoted disrespect for the law
 Amount of alcohol consumed rose
 Rise of organized crime – bootlegging
 Speakeasies
 Harsh punishments didn’t fit the crime

Organized Crime
Al Capone & many others
make money from
bootlegging and other
illegal enterprises
 Many feel Prohibition gave
them the foothold they
needed to establish
themselves in American
society

Eliot Ness & Untouchables
Fore-runners of the F.B.I.
and A.T.F., federal agents
enforcing the Volstead Act
in the 1920s went after
organized crime, illegal
breweries and bootleggers.
 Led by Eliot Ness, these
agents became known as
the Untouchables in the
media after they refused to
be bribed by Capone.

Lost Generation
Writers who reject American materialism
 Sinclair Lewis – Babbitt, Main Street –
satirized the complacency and dullness of
small town America
 Expatriate novelists and artists who
emerged from World War I convinced it
was an exercise in futility.
 Individual must salvage personal meaning
from the void – Hemingway, Fitzgerald

Immigration Restriction

Old Immigration – Northern & Western Europe
– Protestant
– Farmers
– Literate

- light skin, hair, eyes
- easier to assimilate
New Immigration – Southern & Eastern Europe
– Jewish & Catholic
- dark skin, hair, eyes
– Lived in dirty, crowded cities in ethnic neighborhoods
which slows assimilation
– Illiterate, from countries where socialism, communism
& anarchism are accepted forms of government
Immigration Restriction

Emergency Immigration
Act of 1921
– Immigration quota
introduced
– 3% of a country’s
residents in 1910 was
the formula to
determine the quota
allowed to immigrate
to the USA
– Cap at 375,000
Johnson-Reed Act of 1924
Restricted immigration from Southern &
Eastern Europe and Japan
 Only 160,000 or so a year allowed
 Quotas were by nationality – Northern &
Western European countries were allowed
more immigrants and Southern & Eastern
European countries were allowed very few
spots.

Religious Fundamentalism
Harding
Compromise candidate
 Small town Ohio – tiny
college, ran father-in-law’s
newspaper
 Married to older woman,
Florence Kling
 Return to Normalcy

Harding






“The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple
declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is
dead.” e. e. cummings
“He writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It
reminds me of a string of wet sponges.” H.L. Mencken
“It’s a good thing you weren’t born a female, Warren,
you’d be in the family way all the time because you just
can’t say no.” – Harding’s father.
“I don’t hope to be the best president but the best
loved.”
“I knew this damn job would be too much for me.”
“It’s not my enemies that keep me walking the floors at
night, it’s my friends, my damn friends.”
The Good
Herbert Hoover – Sec. of Commerce –
advocated trade associations that reduced
corporate competition
 Andrew Mellon – Sec. of Treasury –
reduced taxes on the very wealthy
 Charles Evans Hughes – Secretary of State
– negotiated several important treaties

The Bad – Ohio Gang
Harry Daugherty – Attorney General – resigned after
allegations of bootlegging – accused of homosexual
affair with Jess Smith
 Jess Smith – personal assistant to Attorney General
commits suicide after shredding many papers. Gathering
to drink and play poker were at his house.
 Albert Fall – Secretary of the Interior – first Cabinet
member to be sent to jail – Teapot Dome Scandal
 Charles Forbes – one time deserter – Head of Veterans
Bureau – took kickbacks, skimmed profits, directed
underground alcohol & drug distribution – got a 2 yr.
sentence. His aide also committed suicide.
 Doctor Charles Sawyer – Surgeon General – from his
hometown tells him he has indigestion when he suffers
his fatal heart attack.

The Ugly
Affairs – Carrie Phillips & Nan
Britton
 Phillips, the wife of a close
personal friend – 15 year
relationship - reportedly paid
over $50,000 and then monthly
payments to keep it quiet. Love
letters – “I love you garbed, but
naked more.”
 Letters confiscated by Harding
heirs and under protective order
that won’t expire until 2023.
 Britton claimed an illegitimate
daughter by Harding and to have
had sex with him in the White
House.

Calvin Coolidge
Favored allowing the wealthy to make
decisions for America
 Believed in only working 4 hours a day
 “Keep Cool With Coolidge”
 “Silent Cal”

Foreign Policy & Isolation
Corporate Investment overseas tended to
promote autocratic, military regimes
 Washington Naval Conference – several
treaties signed limiting tonnage of ships
from the various countries.
 Kellogg-Briand –

– Militarily uncommitted but moral leadership
War Debts & Reparations
By 1930, the U.S. insisted that the Allies pay
some of the war debt
 Dawes Plan – 10 representatives from Belgium,
France, Britain, Italy & U.S.

– Find a solution to collecting reparations from
Germany
– U.S. would make loans to Germany so it could pay
reparations to Britain & France.
– Locked the economies of the countries together so
the Depression in the U.S. added to worldwide
economic woes even more dramatically.
Mexican Immigration
Big farms (agri-business) promoted
Mexicans as racially suited to field work
 When the Great Depression hits Mexican
workers will be the targets of
discrimination and abuse and be driven
out of the country.

Harlem Renaissance
Search for meaning and identity by
African-Americans
 Writers, Artists, Musicians
 Music crosses over to white audiences
 Harlem – culture – Apollo Theater

Claude McKay – If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one
deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly
pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Langston Hughes – A Dream
Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the
root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern
breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar
trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to
suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Election of 1928
Democrat Al Smith – 1st Catholic to run for
President, opposed Prohibition, Urban
 Republican Herbert Hoover – Protestant,
supports Prohibition, headed Food
Administration in WWI and was Sec. of
Commerce under Harding & Coolidge
 Hoover wins but Smith wins a
considerable amount of the urban vote
signaling a change for the future

Sensational Trials

Lawyer of the decade – Clarence Darrow
Scopes “Monkey” Trial
Teaching scientific theory in school
 Tennessee – Butler Act prohibited
teaching of evolution
 ACLU Test Case
 Clarence Darrow v. William Jennings Bryan
 Broadcast on radio
 Scopes loses but trial makes religious
fundamentalism look ridiculous

Fatty Arbuckle



At party has sex with a
young woman who dies
the next day of peritonitis
caused by a ruptured
bladder
Alleged he killed her
because she was petite
and he wasn’t – impact of
his overweight body
caused her bladder to
burst
Major media event
Sacco & Vanzetti



Italian immigrant, anarchists
Charged with killing a paymaster & guard
Prejudices trial judge taints the jury
Leopold & Loeb
Highly intelligent
teens, homosexual
relationship, decide to
commit the perfect
murder
 Kidnap and kill Bobby
Franks, neighbor &
distant cousin of Loeb
 Several mistakes
 Darrow – insanity plea
to spare their lives

Lindbergh Kidnapping- 1932