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Teddy Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Woodrow Wilson
Herbert Hoover
Theodore
“Teddy”
Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was never intended to be
President. He was seen as a reckless cowboy by
many in the Republican Party leadership. As
his popularity soared, he became more and
more of a threat. His success with the Rough
Riders in Cuba made him a war hero in the
eyes of many Americans. Riding this wave, he
was elected as governor of New York.

During the campaign of 1900, it was decided
that nominating Roosevelt for the VicePresidency would serve two purposes. First,
his popularity would surely help President
McKinley's reelection bid. Second, moving him
to the Vice-Presidency might decrease his
power.


Vice-Presidents had gone on to the White
House only if the sitting President died in
office. The last Vice-President elected in his
own right had been Martin Van Buren in 1837.
Many believed Roosevelt could do less harm as
Vice-President than as governor of New York.
McKinley and Roosevelt won the election, and
all was proceeding according to plan until an
assassin's bullet ended McKinley's life in
September 1901.


Soon it was clear that a new type of President
was in town. The Presidency had been dormant
since Lincoln's time. Congress seemed to be
running the government, and big business
seemed to be running Congress.
Philosophically, Roosevelt was outraged by
these realities. Although he himself hailed from
the wealthy classes, he strongly believed that
no individual, no matter how rich and
powerful, should control the people's
representatives.

Roosevelt did not wait long to act.
Before long he lashed out against the
trusts and sided with American
labor. The Pure Food and Drug Act
and the Meat Inspection Act
protected consumers. Steps were
taken to protect America's
wilderness lands that went beyond
any previous President.

Furthermore, Roosevelt was convinced
that if abuse of workers continued to go
unchecked, a violent revolution would
sweep the nation. An outspoken foe of
socialism, Roosevelt believed that
capitalism would be preserved with a
little restraint and common sense. Within
months he began to wield his newfound
power.

The worst fears of conservatives
were realized as Roosevelt used the
White House as a "bully pulpit" to
promote an active government that
protected the interests of the people
over big business. The Progressive
movement finally had an ally in the
White House.

Roosevelt changed the office in
other important ways. He never
went anywhere without his
photographer. He wanted
Americans to see a rough and
tumble leader who was unafraid to
get his hands dirty. He became the
first President to travel out of the
country while in office and the first
to win the Nobel Prize.

Unlike his quieter predecessors,
Roosevelt knew that if the
Washington politicians resisted
change, he would have to take
his case to the people directly.
He traveled often and spoke
with confidence and enthusiasm.
Americans received him warmly.

The country was thirsting for
leadership and Roosevelt became a
political and popular hero.
Merchandise was sold in his
likeness, paintings and lithographs
created in his honor, and even a film
was produced portraying him as a
fairy-tale hero. The White House
was finally back in business.


Teddy Roosevelt was one American who
believed a revolution was coming.
He believed Wall Street financiers and
powerful trust titans to be acting foolishly.
While they were eating off fancy china on
mahogany tables in marble dining rooms, the
masses were roughing it. There seemed to be
no limit to greed. If docking wages would
increase profits, it was done. If higher railroad
rates put more gold in their coffers, it was
done. How much was enough, Roosevelt
wondered?

Although he himself was a man of means, he
criticized the wealthy class of Americans on
two counts. First, continued exploitation of the
public could result in a violent uprising that
could destroy the whole system. Second, the
captains of industry were arrogant enough to
believe themselves superior to the elected
government. Now that he was President,
Roosevelt went on the attack.

The President's weapon was the Sherman
Antitrust Act, passed by Congress in 1890. This
law declared illegal all combinations "in
restraint of trade." For the first twelve years of
its existence, the Sherman Act was a paper
tiger. United States courts routinely sided with
business when any enforcement of the Act was
attempted.


For example, the American Sugar Refining
Company controlled 98 percent of the sugar
industry. Despite this virtual monopoly, the
Supreme Court refused to dissolve the
corporation in an 1895 ruling. The only time an
organization was deemed in restraint of trade
was when the court ruled against a labor union
Roosevelt knew that no new legislation was
necessary. When he sensed that he had a
sympathetic Court, he sprung into action.

Theodore Roosevelt was not the type to initiate
major changes timidly. The first trust giant to
fall victim to Roosevelt's assault was none
other than the most powerful industrialist in
the country — J. Pierpont Morgan.

Morgan controlled a railroad company known as
Northern Securities. In combination with railroad
moguls James J. Hill and E. H. Harriman, Morgan
controlled the bulk of railroad shipping across the
northern United States.
James J Hill House,
St. Paul, MN
James J Hill
E. H. Harriman

Morgan was enjoying a peaceful dinner
at his New York home on February 19,
1902, when his telephone rang. He was
furious to learn that Roosevelt's Attorney
General was bringing suit against the
Northern Securities Company. Stunned,
he muttered to his equally shocked
dinner guests about how rude it was to
file such a suit without warning.

Four days later, Morgan was at the White
House with the President. Morgan
bellowed that he was being treated like a
common criminal. The President
informed Morgan that no compromise
could be reached, and the matter would
be settled by the courts. Morgan inquired
if his other interests were at risk, too.
Roosevelt told him only the ones that
had done anything wrong would be
prosecuted.

This was the core of Theodore Roosevelt's
leadership. He boiled everything down to a
case of right versus wrong and good versus
bad. If a trust controlled an entire industry but
provided good service at reasonable rates, it
was a "good" trust to be left alone. Only the
"bad" trusts that jacked up rates and exploited
consumers would come under attack. Who
would decide the difference between right and
wrong? The occupant of the White House
trusted only himself to make this decision in
the interests of the people.

The American public cheered Roosevelt's
new offensive. The Supreme Court, in a
narrow 5 to 4 decision, agreed and
dissolved the Northern Securities
Company. Roosevelt said confidently
that no man, no matter how powerful,
was above the law. As he landed blows
on other "bad" trusts, his popularity grew
and grew.

John Mitchell, president of the United
Mine Workers, represented the
miners. He was soft-spoken, yet
determined. Many compared his
manner to Abraham Lincoln's. In the
spring of 1902, Mitchell placed a
demand on the coal operators for
better wages, shorter hours, and
recognition of the union. The owners,
led by George Baer, flatly refused. On
May 12, 1902, 140,000 miners walked
off the job, and the strike was on.
This frightening-looking structure is a coalbreaker,
located in Scranton, PA.


Mitchell worked diligently behind the scenes to
negotiate with Baer, but his efforts were
rejected. According to Baer, there would be no
compromise. Even luminaries such Mark
Hanna and J.P. Morgan prevailed in vain on
the owners to open talks. As the days passed,
the workers began to feel the pinch of the
strike, and violence began to erupt.
Soon summer melted into fall, and President
Roosevelt wondered what the angry workers
and a colder public would do if the strike
lasted into the bitter days of winter. He decided
to lend a hand in settling the strike.

No President had ever tried to negotiate a
strike settlement before. Roosevelt invited
Mitchell and Baer to the White House on
October 3 to hammer out a compromise.
Mitchell proposed to submit to an arbitration
commission and abide by the results if Baer
would do the same. Baer resented the
summons by the President to meet a "common
criminal" like Mitchell, and refused any sort of
concession.

Roosevelt despaired that the violence would
increase and spiral dangerously toward a classbased civil war. After the mine operators left
Washington, he vowed to end the strike. He
was impressed by Mitchell's gentlemanly
demeanor and irritated by Baer's insolence.
Roosevelt remarked that if he weren't
president, he would have thrown Baer out of a
White House window.

He summoned his War Secretary, Elihu Root,
and ordered him to prepare the army. This
time, however, the army would not be used
against the strikers. The coal operators were
informed that if no settlement were reached,
the army would seize the mines and make coal
available to the public. Roosevelt did not seem
to mind that he had no constitutional authority
to do any such thing.


J.P. Morgan finally convinced Baer and the other
owners to submit the dispute to a commission. On
October 15, the strike ended. The following March, a
decision was reached by the mediators. The miners
were awarded a 10 percent pay increase, and their
workday was reduced to eight or nine hours. The
owners were not forced to recognize the United Mine
Workers.
Workers across America cheered Roosevelt for
standing up to the mine operators. It surely seemed
like the White House would lend a helping hand to
the labor movement.

As America grew,
Americans were
destroying its natural
resources. Farmers were
depleting the nutrients of
the overworked soil.
Miners removed layer
after layer of valuable
topsoil, leading to
catastrophic erosion.
Everywhere forests were
shrinking and wildlife
was becoming more
scarce.
President Theodore
Roosevelt with Pioneer
environmentalist John Muir
on Glacier Point, Yosemite
Valley, California.

The growth of cities brought a new interest in
preserving the old lands for future generations.
Dedicated to saving the wilderness, the Sierra
Club formed in 1892. John Muir, the president
of the Sierra Club, worked valiantly to stop the
sale of public lands to private developers. At
first, most of his efforts fell on deaf ears. Then
Theodore Roosevelt inhabited the Oval Office,
and his voice was finally heard.

Roosevelt was an avid outdoorsman. He
hunted, hiked, and camped whenever possible.
He believed that living in nature was good for
the body and soul. Although he proved willing
to compromise with Republican conservatives
on many issues, he was dedicated to protecting
the nation's public lands.

The first measure he backed was the Newlands
Reclamation Act of 1902. This law encouraged
developers and homesteaders to inhabit lands
that were useless without massive irrigation
works. The lands were sold at a cheap price if
the buyer assumed the cost of irrigation and
lived on the land for at least five years. The
government then used the revenue to irrigate
additional lands. Over a million barren acres
were rejuvenated under this program.

John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt were more
than political acquaintances. In 1903, Roosevelt
took a vacation by camping with Muir in
Yosemite National Park. The two agreed that
making efficient use of public lands was not
enough. Certain wilderness areas should
simply be left undeveloped.

Under an 1891 law that empowered the
President to declare national forests and
withdraw public lands from development,
Roosevelt began to preserve wilderness areas.
By the time he left office 150,000,000 acres had
been deemed national forests, forever safe from
the ax and saw. This amounted to three times
the total protected lands since the law was
enacted.

In 1907, Congress passed a law blocking the
President from protecting additional territory
in six western states. In typical Roosevelt
fashion, he signed the bill into law — but not
before protecting 16 million additional acres in
those six states.
Yellowstone's Tower Falls
and Sulphur Mountain, one
of the earliest tracts of
preserved wilderness in
America.
The First National Park Was
Yellowstone National park in
Wyoming. When Roosevelt
became president there were only
4 national parks (Yellowstone,
Yosemite Mount Rainer and
Sequoia). President Roosevelt
almost doubled that number,
adding Crater Lake, OR in 1902,
Wind Cave, SD in 1903, and Mesa
Verde, CO in 1906. Glacier Park,
MT was added in 1910. Today it
consists of 58 parks across the
United States.


Conservation fever spread among urban intellectuals
as a result. By 1916, there were sixteen national parks
with over 300,000 annual visitors. The Boy Scouts
and Girl Scouts formed to give urban youths a
greater appreciation of nature. Memberships in
conservation and wildlife societies soared.
Teddy Roosevelt distinguished himself as the
greatest Presidential advocate of the environment
since Thomas Jefferson. Much damage had been
done, but America's beautiful, abundant resources
were given a new lease on life.
Construction of locks on the Panama Canal, 1913
SS Kroonland at the Culebra Cut
while transiting the Panama Canal on
2 February 1915.

A canal was inevitable. A trip by boat from
New York to San Francisco forced a luckless
crew to sail around the tip of South America —
a journey amounting to some 12,000 miles. The
new empire might require a fast move from the
Atlantic to the Pacific by a naval squadron.
Teddy Roosevelt decided that the time for
action was at hand. The canal would be his
legacy, and he would stop at nothing to get it.

Fearing that either side would build an isthmathian
canal and use it for national advantage, the United
States and Great Britain agreed in the 1850 ClaytonBulwer Treaty that neither side would build such a
canal. A half century later, the now dominant United
States wanted to nullify this deal. Great Britain,
nervous about its South African Boer War and an
increasingly cloudy Europe, sought to make a friend
in the United States. The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty
permitted the United States to build and fortify a
Central American canal, so long as the Americans
promised to charge the same fares to all nations. One
roadblock was clear.

The next question was where to build. Ferdinand de
Lessups, the same engineer who designed the Suez
Canal, had organized a French attempt in Panama in the
1870s. Disease and financial problems left a partially
built canal behind. While it made sense that the United
States should buy the rights to complete the effort,
Panama posed other problems. Despite being the most
narrow nation in the region, Panama was very
mountainous, and a complex series of locks was
necessary to move ships across the isthmus. Nicaragua
was another possibility. The canal would be situated
closer to the United States. The terrain was flatter, and
despite Nicaragua's width, there were numerous lakes
that could be connected. Volcanic activity in Nicaragua
prompted the United States to try to buy the territory in
Panama.

But Panama was not an independent state. To
obtain the rights to the territory, the United
States had to negotiate with Colombia. The
1903 Hay-Herran Treaty permitted the United
States to lease a six-mile wide strip of land at
an annual fee. The treaty moved through the
United States Senate, but the Colombian Senate
held out for more money. Roosevelt was
furious. Determined to build his canal,
Roosevelt sent a U.S. gunboat to the shores of
Colombia.

At the same time, a group of "revolutionaries"
declared independence in Panama. The
Colombians were powerless to stop the
uprising. The United States became the first
nation in the world to recognize the new
government of Panama. Within weeks, the
Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty awarded a 10-mile
strip of land to the United States, and the last
hurdle was cleared.

Or so it seemed. Construction on the canal was
extremely difficult. The world had never known such
a feat of engineering. Beginning in 1907, American
civilians blasted through tons of mountain stone.
Thanks to the work of Walter Reed and William
Gorgas, the threats of yellow fever and malaria were
greatly diminished. When Theodore Roosevelt
visited the blast area, he became the first sitting
American President to travel outside the country.
Finally, the deed was done. In 1914, at the cost of
$345 million, the Panama Canal was open for
business.

For many years, the Monroe Doctrine was
practically a dead letter. The bold proclamation
of 1823 that declared the Western Hemisphere
forever free from European expansion
bemused the imperial powers who knew the
United States was simply too weak to enforce
its claim. By 1900, the situation had changed. A
bold, expanding America was spreading its
wings, daring the old world order to challenge
its newfound might. When Theodore Roosevelt
became President, he decided to reassert
Monroe's old declaration.

American policy. Fearful that the new nation would
be prey to the imperial vultures of Europe, United
States diplomats sharpened American talons on the
island. In the Platt Amendment of 1901, Cuba was
forbidden from entering any treaty that might
endanger their independence. In addition, to prevent
European gunboats from landing on Cuban shores,
Cuba was prohibited from incurring a large debt. If
any of these conditions were violated, Cuba agreed
to permit American troops to land to restore order.
Lastly, the United States was granted a lease on a
naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Independent in name
only, Cuba became a legal protectorate of the United
States.

Convinced that all of Latin America was vulnerable
to European attack, President Roosevelt dusted off
the Monroe Doctrine and added his own corollary.
While the Monroe Doctrine blocked further
expansion of Europe in the Western Hemisphere, the
Roosevelt Corollary went one step further. Should
any Latin American nation engage in "chronic
wrongdoing," a phrase that included large debts or
civil unrest, the United States military would
intervene.

Europe was to remain across the Atlantic, while
America would police the Western Hemisphere. The
first opportunity to enforce this new policy came in
1905, when the Dominican Republic was in jeopardy
of invasion by European debt collectors. The United
States invaded the island nation, seized its customs
houses, and ruled the Dominican Republic as a
protectorate until the situation was stabilized.

The effects of the new policy were enormous. Teddy
Roosevelt had a motto: "Speak softly and carry a big
stick." To Roosevelt, the big stick was the new
American navy. By remaining firm in resolve and
possessing the naval might to back its interests, the
United States could simultaneously defend its
territory and avoid war. Latin Americans did not
look upon the corollary favorably. They resented U.S.
involvement as Yankee imperialism, and animosity
against their large neighbor to the North grew
dramatically. By the end of the 20th century, the
United States would send troops of invasion to Latin
America over 35 times, establishing an undisputed
sphere of influence throughout the hemisphere.

China still had an emperor and system of government, but the
foreign powers were truly in control. Although the Chinese
Empire was not carved into colonies such as Africa, Europe
did establish quasi-colonial entities called spheres of influence
after 1894. Those enjoying special privileges in this fashion
included Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Japan.
Secretary of State John Hay feared that if these nations
established trade practices that excluded other nations,
American trade would suffer. Britain agreed and Hay devised
a strategy to preserve open trade. He circulated letters among
all the powers called Open Door Notes, requesting that all
nations agree to free trade in China. While Britain agreed, all
the other powers declined in private responses. Hay,
however, lied to the world and declared that all had accepted.
The imperial powers, faced with having to admit publicly to
greedy designs in China, remained silent and the Open Door
went into effect.

In 1900, foreign occupation of China resulted in
disaster. A group of Chinese nationalists called the
Fists of Righteous Harmony attacked Western
property. The Boxers, as they were known in the
West, continued to wreak havoc until a multinational
force invaded to stop the uprising. The Boxer
Rebellion marked the first time United States armed
forces invaded another continent without aiming to
acquire the territory. The rebels were subdued, and
China was forced to pay an indemnity of $330
million to the United States.

Japan was also a concern for the new imperial
America. In 1904, war broke out between Russia and
Japan. The war was going poorly for the Russians.
Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate the peace
process as the war dragged on. The two sides met
with Roosevelt in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and
before long, a treaty was arranged. Despite agreeing
to its terms, the Japanese public felt that Japan
should have been awarded more concessions. AntiAmerican rioting swept the island. Meanwhile,
Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his
efforts. This marked the first time an American
President received such an offer.

America were faced with harsh discrimination, including
segregated schooling. In the informal Gentleman's
Agreement of 1907, the United States agreed to end the
practice of separate schooling in exchange for a promise
to end Japanese immigration. That same year, Roosevelt
decided to display his "big stick," the new American
navy. He sent the flotilla, known around the world as the
Great White Fleet, on a worldwide tour. Although it was
meant to intimidate potential aggressors, particularly
Japan, the results of the journey were uncertain. Finally,
in 1908, Japan and the United States agreed to respect
each other's holdings on the Pacific Rim in the RootTakahira Agreement. Sending troops overseas, mediating
international conflicts, and risking trouble to maintain
free trade, the United States began to rapidly shed its
isolationist past.

Before his two terms came
to a close, the federal
government passed
legislation further
restricting trusts, banning
child labor, and requiring
worker compensation. The
Progressive causes of
temperance and women's
suffrage were embedded
into the Constitution.

The Progressive lock on the Presidency
did not end with Theodore Roosevelt.
His popularity secured the election in
1908 of his hand-picked successor,
William Howard Taft. Although Taft
continued busting America's trusts, his
inability to control the conservative wing
of the party led to a Republican versus
Republican war.

1908 was not a good year for Teddy Roosevelt.
The nation was recovering from a financial
panic that had rocked Wall Street the previous
year. Many leading industrialists unjustly
blamed the crisis on the President. The
Congress that he had finessed in his early
term was now dominated by conservative
Republicans who took joy at blocking the
President's initiatives. Now his time in the
White House was coming to a close.

He had promised not to seek a third term
when he was elected in 1904. No prior
President had ever broken the two-term
tradition. Roosevelt would keep his
word. He decided that if he could no
longer serve as President, the next best
option was to name a successor that
would carry out his programs. He found
the perfect candidate in William Howard
Taft.

Taft and Roosevelt were best friends.
When Roosevelt was sworn in as chief
executive, Taft was serving as governor
of the Philippines. Roosevelt offered his
friend a seat on the Supreme Court, but
his work in the Philippines and the
ambitions of Mrs. Taft propelled him to
decline. In 1904, he became Secretary of
War and his friendship with Roosevelt
grew stronger.

By 1908, Roosevelt was convinced that
Taft would be the ideal successor. His
support streamrollered Taft to the
Republican nomination, and the fall
election against the tired William
Jennings Bryan proved to be a landslide
victory.

Upon leaving the White House,
Roosevelt embarked on a worldwide
tour, including an African safari and a
sojourn through Europe. Taft was left to
make his own mark on America. But he
lacked the political skill of his
predecessor to keep both the progressive
and conservative wings of his party
happy. Soon he would alienate one side
or the other.

The defining moment came with the
Payne-Aldrich Tariff. Progressives hated
the measure, which raised rates, and
conservatives lauded it. Taft signed the
bill, and his progressive supporters were
furious.

Ballinger-Pinchot controversy. Richard
Ballinger was Taft's Secretary of the Interior.
His appointment shocked Gifford Pinchot, the
nation's chief forester and longtime
companion of Theodore Roosevelt. Pinchot
rightly saw that Ballinger was no friend to
Roosevelt's conservation initiatives. When
Pinchot publicly criticized Ballinger, Taft fired
Pinchot, and progressives were again
outraged. The two wings of the party were
now firmly on a collision course.

Despite criticism from progressive Republicans,
Taft did support many of their goals. He broke
twice as many trusts in his one term as Roosevelt
had broken in his two. Taft limited the workday
of federal employees to 8 hours and supported
the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which
empowered the Congress to levy a federal
income tax. He also created a Children's Bureau
and supported the 17th Amendment, which
allowed for senators to be directly elected by the
people instead of the state legislatures.
Unfortunately,
Taft is probably
most famous for
getting stuck in
his bathtub. His
obvious obesity
helped change
American
attitudes toward
fitness.

Still, when Roosevelt returned to America,
progressives pressed him to challenge Taft for
the party leadership. As 1912 approached, the
fight was on. Teddy Roosevelt challenged Taft
for the Republican nomination in 1912,
splitting the party wide open.

Roosevelt's decision to challenge Taft for the
Republican nomination in 1912 was most
difficult. Historians disagree on his motives.
Defenders of Roosevelt insist that Taft
betrayed the progressive platform. When
Roosevelt returned to the United States, he
was pressured by thousands of progressives
to lead them once more. Roosevelt believed
that he could do a better job uniting the party
than Taft. He felt a duty to the American
people to run.

The two former friends
hurled insults at each
other as the summer of
1912 drew near. Taft had
the party leadership
behind him, but Roosevelt
had the people. Roosevelt
spoke of a New
Nationalism — a broad
plan of social reform for
America.

Rather than destroying every trust, Roosevelt
supported the creation of a Federal Trade
Commission to keep a watchful eye on unfair
business practices. He proposed a minimum
wage, a workers' compensation act, and a
child labor law. He proposed a government
pension for retirees and funds to assist
Americans with health care costs. He
supported the women's suffrage amendment.
The time of laissez faire was over. The
government must intervene to help its people.

Teddy Roosevelt survived an assignation
attempt on the way into the convention. The
bullet was stopped by his speech, which he
had folded in his pocket. When asked how he
felt, Roosevelt responded “I fell as strong as a
bull moose”. This was later taken as the name
for Roosevelt’s new political party – The Bull
Moose Party.

Although the Republicans lost the
election, it was not necessarily a loss
for Progressives. The winning
Democrat, Woodrow Wilson,
embraced much of the Progressive
agenda himself.


Progressives did not come
only in the Republican
flavor. Thomas Woodrow
Wilson also saw the need for
change.
Born in Staunton, Virginia,
Wilson served as president
of Princeton University and
governor of New Jersey. He
combined a southern
background with northern
sensibilities.

His 1912 platform for change was called the New
Freedom. Wilson was an admirer of Thomas
Jefferson. The agrarian utopia of small, educated
farmers envisioned by Jefferson struck a chord
with Wilson. Of course, the advent of industry
could not be denied, but a nation of small farmers
and small businesspeople seemed totally
possible. The New Freedom sought to achieve
this vision by attacking what Wilson called the
Triple Wall of Privilege — the tariff, the banks,
and the trusts.

Tariffs protected the large industrialists at the
expense of small farmers. Wilson signed the
Underwood-Simmons Act into law in 1913,
which reduced tariff rates. The banking
system also pinched small farmers and
entrepreneurs. The gold standard still made
currency too tight, and loans were too
expensive for the average American. Wilson
signed the Federal Reserve Act, which made
the nation's currency more flexible.

Unlike Roosevelt, Wilson did not distinguish
between "good" trusts and "bad" trusts. Any
trust by virtue of its large size was bad in
Wilson's eyes. The Clayton Antitrust Act of
1914 clarified the Sherman Act by specifically
naming certain business tactics illegal. This
same act also exempted labor unions from
antitrust suits, and declared strikes, boycotts,
and peaceful picketing perfectly legal.

When Wilson's first term expired, he felt he
had to do more. The nation was on the brink
of entering the bloodiest conflict in human
history, and Wilson had definite ideas about
how the postwar peace should look. But he
would have to survive reelection first.

As an appeal to the Roosevelt progressives, he
began to sign many legislative measures
suggested by the Bull Moose Campaign. He
approved of the creation of a federal trade
commission to act as a watchdog over
business. A child labor bill and a workers'
compensation act became law. Wilson agreed
to limit the workday of interstate railroad
workers to 8 hours. He signed a federal farm
loan act to ease the pains of life on the farm.
 Progressive
Republicans in the
Congress were pleased by
Wilson's conversion to their
brand of progressivism, and the
American people showed their
approval by electing him to a
second term.
 In
two years, he successfully
attacked each "wall of privilege."
Now his eyes turned to greater
concerns, particularly the
outbreak of the First World War
in Europe.

The 1920s saw the culmination of fifty years of
rapid American industrialization. New
products seemed to burst from American
production lines with the potential of
revolutionizing American life. Other products
that had previously been toys for the rich were
now available to a majority of Americans. The
standard of living increased as the economy
grew stronger and stronger. The results were
spectacular. The America of 1929 was vastly
different from the America of 1919.

The automobile was first and foremost among
these products. The practices of Henry Ford
made these horseless carriages affordable to the
American masses. Widespread use of the
automobile ushered in changes in work
patterns and leisure plans. A host of support
industries were launched.
Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village.
Model T — 1919

Dating and education were changed by the
automobile. Radio usage brought further
changes. For the first time, a national popular
culture was supplanting regional folkways.
Americans across the continent were sharing
the same jokes, participating in the same fads,
and worshipping the same heroes. Housework
was minimized with the introduction of labor
saving devices. As a result, leisure time was
increased.

The bleak outlook and large sacrifices of the
wartime era were now a part of the past.
Young Americans were looking to cut loose
and have a good time. Prohibition did not end
alcohol usage. The romantic subculture of the
speakeasy kept the firewater flowing.
Organized crime flourished as gangland
violence related to bootlegged liquor plagued
America's cities.

Flapper women strove to eliminate double
standard values. Young females engaged in
behaviors previously reserved for men
including smoking and drinking. Sigmund
Freud's assertion that sexual behavior was a
natural instinct brought down more barriers as
young Americans delved into sexual
experimentation. The Harlem Renaissance
brought a new form of entertainment. The
sounds of jazz bands had appeal that
transcended African American audiences, as
thousands flocked to hear the new sounds.

The 1920s ushered in more lasting changes to
the American social scene than any previous
decade. Escapism loomed large as many coped
with change by living in the present and
enjoying themselves. The economic boom that
unleashed the transformation and its
consequences made the Roaring Twenties an
era to remember.

Although the technology for the automobile
existed in the 19th century, it took Henry Ford
to make the useful gadget accessible to the
American public. Ford used the idea of the
assembly line for automobile manufacturing.
He paid his workers an unprecedented $5 a
day when most laborers were bringing home
two, hoping that it would increase their
productivity. Furthermore, they might use
their higher earnings to purchase a new car.

Ford reduced options, even stating that the
public could choose whatever color car they
wanted — so long as it was black. The Model T
sold for $490 in 1914, about one quarter the cost
of the previous decade. By 1920, there were
over 8 million registrations. The 1920s saw
tremendous growth in automobile ownership,
with the number of registered drivers almost
tripling to 23 million by the end of the decade.

The growth of the automobile industry caused
an economic revolution across the United
States. Dozens of spin-off industries
blossomed. Of course the demand for
vulcanized rubber skyrocketed. Road
construction created thousands of new jobs, as
state and local governments began funding
highway design.

Even the federal government became involved
with the Federal Highway Act of 1921. Gas
stations began to dot the land, and mechanics
began to earn a living fixing the inevitable
problems. Oil and steel were two wellestablished industries that received a serious
boost by the demand for automobiles.
Travelers on the road needed shelter on long
trips, so motels began to line the major longdistance routes.

Even cuisine was transformed by the automobile.
The quintessential American foods — hamburgers,
french fries, milk shakes, and apple pies — were
hallmarks of the new roadside diner. Drivers wanted
cheap, relatively fast food so they could be on their
way in a hurry. Unfortunately, as new businesses
flourished, old ones decayed. When America opted
for the automobile, the nation's rails began to be
neglected. As European nations were strengthening
mass transit systems, individualistic Americans
invested in the automobile infrastructure.

The social effects of the automobile were as
great. Freedom of choice encouraged many
family vacations to places previously
impossible. Urban dwellers had the
opportunity to rediscover pristine landscapes,
just as rural dwellers were able to shop in
towns and cities. Teenagers gained more and
more independence with driving freedom.
Dating couples found a portable place to be
alone as the automobile helped to facilitate
relaxed sexual attitudes.

Americans experienced traffic jams for the first
time, as well as traffic accidents and fatalities.
Soon demands were made for licensure and
safety regulation on the state level. Despite the
drawbacks, Americans loved their cars. As
more and more were purchased, drivers saw
their worlds grow much larger.

Saloons were closed, bottles were smashed,
and kegs were split wide open. When the states
ratified the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, the
manufacture, sale, and transportation of
alcoholic beverages was outlawed. Protestant
ministers and progressive politicians rejoiced
and proclaimed a holier and safer America. It
was predicted that worker productivity would
increase, families would grow closer, and
urban slums would disappear. Yet for all its
promise, prohibition was repealed fourteen
years later, after being deemed a dismal failure.

In fairness, there were advantages to prohibition.
Social scientists are certain that actual consumption
of alcohol actually decreased during the decade.
Estimates indicate that during the first few years of
prohibition, alcohol consumption declined to a mere
third of its prewar level. Although no polls or
surveys would be accurate, health records indicate a
decrease in alcoholism and alcohol-related diseases
such as cirrhosis of the liver. Family savings did
increase during the decade, but it was difficult to
determine whether the increase was due to decreased
alcohol consumption or a robust economy.

The minuses seemed to outweigh the pluses. First,
federal allocation of funds to enforce prohibition were
woefully inadequate. Gaping loopholes in the Volstead
Act, the law implemented to enforce the Eighteenth
Amendment, encouraged abuse. Alcohol possession was
permitted for medical purposes, and production of small
amounts was permitted for home use. The
manufacturing of near beer — regular beer without the
alcohol — was also permitted. The problem was that to
make near beer, it was first necessary to brew the real
variety, so illegal breweries could insist their product
was scheduled to have the alcohol removed. Soon a
climate of lawlessness swept the nation, as Americans
everywhere began to partake in illegal drink. Every city
had countless speakeasies, which were not-so-secret bars
hidden from public view.

While the number of drinkers may have decreased,
the strength of the beverages increased. People drank
as much as they could as fast as they could to avoid
detection. Because alcoholic production was illegal,
there could be no regulation. Desperate individuals
and heartless profiteers distilled anything
imaginable, often with disastrous results. Some
alcohol sold on the black market caused nerve
damage, blindness, and even death. While women of
the previous generation campaigned to ban alcohol,
the young women of the twenties consumed it with a
passion.

The group that profited most from the illegal
market was organized crime. City crime bosses
such as Al Capone of Chicago sold their
products to willing buyers and even
intimidated unwilling customers to purchase
their illicit wares. Crime involving turf wars
among mobsters was epidemic. Soon the mobs
forced legitimate businessmen to buy
protection, tainting those who tried to make an
honest living.

Even city police took booze and cash from the
likes of Al Capone. After several years of trying
to connect Capone to bootlegging, federal
prosecutors were able to convict him for
income tax evasion.

The Eighteenth Amendment was different from all
previous changes to the Constitution. It was the first
experiment at social engineering. Critics pointed out
that it was the only amendment to date that
restricted rather than increased individual rights.
Civil liberties advocates considered prohibition an
abomination. In the end, economics doomed
prohibition. The costs of ineffectively policing the
nation were simply too high. At the deepest point of
the Great Depression, government officials finally
ratified the Twenty-First Amendment, repealing the
practice once and for all.

In the 19th century, the American world
consisted of children and adults. Most
Americans tried their best to allow their
children to enjoy their youth while they were
slowly prepared for the trials and tribulations
of adulthood. Although child labor practices
still existed, more and more states were passing
restrictions against such exploitation. The
average number of years spent in school for
young Americans was also on the rise.

Parents were waiting longer to goad their
youngsters into marriage rather than pairing
them off at the tender age of sixteen or
seventeen. In short, it soon became apparent
that a new stage of life — the teenage phase —
was becoming a reality in America. American
adolescents were displaying traits unknown
among children and adults. Although the word
teenager did not come into use until decades
later, the teenage mindset dawned in the 1920s.

The single greatest factor that led to the
emergence of the independent teenager was the
automobile. Teens enjoyed a freedom from
parental supervision unknown to previous
generations. The courtship process rapidly
evolved into dating. In earlier times, young
boys and girls spent their first dates at home.
The boy would meet the girl's parents, they
would have a sitting in the parlor, followed by
dinner with the entire family.

Later in the evening, the couple might enjoy a few
moments alone on the front porch. After several
meetings, they could be lucky enough to be granted
permission for an unchaperoned walk through town.
The automobile simply shattered these old-fashioned
traditions. Dating was removed from the watchful
eyes of anxious parents. Teenagers were given
privacy, and a sexual revolution swept America.
Experimentation with sexual behaviors before
marriage became increasingly common. Young
Americans were now able to look beyond their own
small towns at an enlarged dating pool.

Automobile technology led directly to the other
major factor that fostered a teenage culture: the
consolidated high school. Buses could now
transport students farther from their homes,
leading to the decline of the one-room
schoolhouse. Furthermore, Americans were
realizing the potential of a longer education,
and states were adding more years to their
compulsory schooling laws.

As a result, a larger number of teenagers were
thrown into a common space than ever before.
It was only natural that discussions about
commonalties would occur. Before long,
schools developed their own cultural patterns,
completely unlike the childhood or adult
experience. School athletics and extracurricular
activities only enhanced this nascent culture.
The American teenager was born.

Flappers were northern, urban, single, young,
middle-class women. Many held steady jobs in
the changing American economy. The clerking
jobs that blossomed in the Gilded Age were
more numerous than ever. Increasing phone
usage required more and more operators. The
consumer-oriented economy of the 1920s saw a
burgeoning number of department stores.
Women were needed on the sales floor to relate
to the most precious customers — other
women. But the flapper was not all work and
no play.

By night, flappers engaged in the active city
nightlife. They frequented jazz clubs and
vaudeville shows. Speakeasies were a common
destination, as the new woman of the twenties
adopted the same carefree attitude toward
prohibition as her male counterpart. Ironically,
more young women consumed alcohol in the
decade it was illegal than ever before. Smoking,
another activity previously reserved for men,
became popular among flappers.

With the political field leveled by the
Nineteenth Amendment, women sought to
eliminate social double standards.
Consequently, the flapper was less hesitant to
experiment sexually than previous generations.
Sigmund Freud's declaration that the libido
was one of the most natural of human needs
seemed to give the green light to explore.

The flapper had an unmistakable look. The
long locks of Victorian women lay on the floors
of beauty parlors as young women cut their
hair to shoulder length. Hemlines of dresses
rose dramatically to the knee. The cosmetics
industry flowered as women used make-up in
large numbers. Flappers bound their chests and
wore high heels. Clara Bow, Hollywood's "It"
Girl, captured the flapper image for the nation
to see.

Many women celebrated the age of the flapper
as a female declaration of independence.
Experimentation with new looks, jobs, and
lifestyles seemed liberating compared with the
socially silenced woman in the Victorian Age.
The flappers chose activities to please
themselves, not a father or husband. But critics
were quick to elucidate the shortcomings of
flapperism.

The political agenda embraced by the previous
generation was largely ignored until the
feminist revival of the 1960s. Many wondered
if flappers were expressing themselves or
acting like men. Smoking, drinking, and sexual
experimentation were characteristic of the
modern young woman. Short hair and bound
chests added to the effect. One thing was
certain: Despite the potential political and
social gains or losses, the flappers of the 1920s
sure managed to have a good time.

It was time for a cultural celebration. African
Americans had endured centuries of slavery
and the struggle for abolition. The end of
bondage had not brought the promised land
many had envisioned. Instead, white
supremacy was quickly, legally, and violently
restored to the New South, where ninety
percent of African Americans lived. Starting in
about 1890, African Americans migrated to the
North in great numbers.

This Great Migration eventually relocated
hundreds of thousands of African Americans
from the rural South to the urban North. Many
discovered they had shared common
experiences in their past histories and their
uncertain present circumstances. Instead of
wallowing in self-pity, the recently
dispossessed ignited an explosion of cultural
pride. Indeed, African American culture was
reborn in the Harlem Renaissance.

The Great Migration began because of a "push"
and a "pull." Disenfranchisement and Jim Crow
laws led many African Americans to hope for a
new life up north. Hate groups and hate crimes
cast alarm among African American families of
the Deep South. The promise of owning land
had not materialized. Most blacks toiled as
sharecroppers trapped in an endless cycle of
debt.

In the 1890s, a boll weevil blight damaged the
cotton crop throughout the region, increasing
the despair. All these factors served to push
African Americans to seek better lives. The
booming northern economy forged the pull.
Industrial jobs were numerous, and factory
owners looked near and far for sources of
cheap labor.

Unfortunately, northerners did not welcome African
Americans with open arms. While the legal systems
of the northern states were not as obstructionist
toward African American rights, the prejudice
among the populace was as acrimonious. White
laborers complained that African Americans were
flooding the employment market and lowering
wages. Most new migrants found themselves
segregated by practice in run down urban slums. The
largest of these was Harlem. Writers, actors, artists,
and musicians glorified African American traditions,
and at the same time created new ones.

The most prolific writer of the Harlem
Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Hughes
cast off the influences of white poets and wrote
with the rhythmic meter of blues and jazz.
Claude McKay urged African Americans to
stand up for their rights in his powerful verses.
Jean Toomer wrote plays and short stories, as
well as poems, to capture the spirit of his times.

Book publishers soon took notice and
patronized many of these talents. Zora Neale
Hurston was noticed quickly with her moving
novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Music
met prose in the form of musical comedy. The
1921 production of Shuffle Along is sometimes
credited with initiating the movement. Actor
Paul Robeson electrified audiences with his
memorable stage performances.

No aspect of the Harlem Renaissance shaped
America and the entire world as much as jazz. Jazz
flouted many musical conventions with its
syncopated rhythms and improvised instrumental
solos. Thousands of city dwellers flocked night after
night to see the same performers. Improvisation
meant that no two performances would ever be the
same. Harlem's Cotton Club boasted the talents of
Duke Ellington. Singers such as Bessie Smith and
Billie Holiday popularized blues and jazz vocals.
Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong drew huge
audiences as white Americans as well as African
Americans caught jazz fever.

The continuing hardships faced by African
Americans in the Deep South and the urban North
were severe. It took the environment of the new
American city to bring in close proximity some of the
greatest minds of the day. Harlem brought notice to
great works that might otherwise have been lost or
never produced. The results were phenomenal. The
artists of the Harlem Renaissance undoubtedly
transformed African American culture. But the
impact on all American culture was equally strong.
For the first time, white America could not look
away.

The 1920s was a decade of increasing
conveniences for the middle class. New
products made household chores easier and led
to more leisure time. Products previously too
expensive became affordable. New forms of
financing allowed every family to spend
beyond their current means. Advertising
capitalized on people's hopes and fears to sell
more and more goods.

By the end of the 1920s, household work was
revolutionized. A typical work week for a
housewife before the twenties involved many
tedious chores. All the furniture was moved off
the carpets, which were rolled up and dragged
outside to beat out the week's dirt and dust.
The ice in the icebox was replaced and the
waterpan that lay beneath was repeatedly
changed. The clothes were scrubbed in a
washing tub on a washboard. An iron was
heated on the stove to smooth out the wrinkles.

Women typically spent the summer months canning
food for the long winter. Clothes were made from
patterns, and bread was made from scratch. Very few
of these practices were necessary by the end of the
decade. Vacuum cleaners displaced the carpet beater.
Electric refrigerators, washing machines, and irons
saved hours of extra work. New methods of canning
and freezing made store-bought food cheap and
effective enough to eliminate this chore. Off-the-rack
clothing became more and more widespread. Even
large bakeries were supplying bread to the new
supermarkets. The hours saved in household work
were countless.

"Buy now, pay later" became the credo of many
middle class Americans of the Roaring
Twenties. For the single-income family, all
these new conveniences were impossible to
afford at once. But retailers wanted the
consumer to have it all. Department stores
opened up generous lines of credit for those
who could not pay up front but could
demonstrate the ability to pay in the future.

Similar installment plans were offered to
buyers who could not afford the lump sum, but
could afford "twelve easy payments." Over half
of the nation's automobiles were sold on credit
by the end of the decade. America's consumers
could indeed have it all, if they had an iron
stomach for debt. Consumer debt more than
doubled between 1920 and 1930.

Fueling consumer demand were new techniques in
advertising. This was not a new business, but in the
increasingly competitive marketplace, manufacturers
looked to more and more aggressive advertising
campaigns. One major trend of the decade was to use
pop psychology methods to convince Americans that
the product was needed. The classic example was the
campaign for Listerine. Using a seldom heard term
for bad breath — halitosis — Listerine convinced
thousands of Americans to buy their product.
Consumers might not have known what halitosis
was, but they surely knew they did not want it.


Advertisers were no longer simply responding
to demand; they were creating demand. Radio
became an important new means of
communicating a business message.
Testimonials from Hollywood film stars sold
products in record numbers.
The advertising business created demand for
the gadgets and appliances being
manufactured by American factories.

Commercial radio in America had humble
beginnings. Frank Conrad, an engineer for
Westinghouse, set up an amateur radio station
above his garage in a Pittsburgh suburb. Since
the wireless technology was developed by
Guglielmo Marconi in the late 19th century,
thousands of enthusiasts across the world
experimented with the new toy. After World
War I, Conrad began broadcasting a variety of
programming from his "station."

High school music groups performed,
phonograph records were played, and news
and baseball scores were reported. Conrad had
dramatically improved the transmitter, and
soon hundreds of people in the Pittsburgh area
were sending requests for air time. The bosses
of Westinghouse knew that Conrad was on to
something and convinced him to make his
hobby commercially profitable.

On the night of November 2, 1920, Conrad and
his Westinghouse associates announced that
Warren G. Harding had defeated James Cox to
become the next President. The message was
heard as far north as New Hampshire and as
far south as Louisiana. The federal government
granted the call letters KDKA to the Pittsburgh
station and a new industry was born. For
nearly a year, KDKA monopolized the
airwaves.

But competition came fast and furious; by the
end of 1922, there were over 500 such stations
across the United States. The federal
government excercised no regulation over the
nascent enterprise, and the result was complete
chaos. Stations fought over call letters and
frequencies, each trying to outbroadcast the
closest competitor. Finally in 1927, Congress
created the Federal Radio Commission to
restore order.

One of the great attractions to the radio listener
was that once the cost of the original
equipment was covered, radio was free.
Stations made money by selling air time to
advertisers. The possibility of reaching millions
of listeners at once had advertising executives
scrambling to take advantage. By the end of the
decade advertisers paid over $10,000 for an
hour of premium time.

The Radio Corporation of America created a
new dimension to the venture in 1926. By
licensing telephone lines, RCA created
America's first radio network and called it the
National Broadcasting Company. For the first
time, citizens of California and New York
could listen to the same programming
simultaneously.

Regional differences began to dissolve as the
influence of network broadcasting ballooned.
Americans listened to the same sporting events
and took up the same fads. Baseball games and
boxing matches could now reach those far
away from the stadiums and arenas. A mass
national entertainment culture was flowering.
RCA Radiola Senior and the Radiola Jr. The
Junior was a Crystal set, and the Senior was a
one tube radio. These radios were made in
1922.

The Roaring Twenties was a time of great
change. As exciting as dynamic times may
seem, such turmoil generates uncertainty.
Sometimes, in an effort to obscure tensions,
people seek outlets of escape. Fads —
sometimes entertaining, sometimes senseless
— swept the nation. Another coping strategy in
a time of great uncertainty is to find role
models who embody tried and true values.
National heroes heretofore unknown to
peacetime America began to dominate
American consciousness.

The radio created the conditions for national
fads. Without such a method of live and
immediate communication, fads could amount
only to local crazes. Roaring Twenties fads
ranged from the athletic to the ludicrous. One
of the most popular trends of the decade was
the dance marathon. New dance steps such as
the Charleston swept the nation's dance halls,
and young Americans were eager to prove
their agility. In a typical dance marathon,
contestants would dance for forty-five minutes
and rest for fifteen. The longest marathons
lasted thirty-six hours or more.

Beauty pageants came into vogue. The first
Miss America Pageant was staged in Atlantic
City in 1921. One of the most bizarre fads was
flagpole sitting. The object was simple: be the
person who could sit atop the local flagpole for
the longest period of time. Fifteen-year-old
Avon Foreman of Baltimore set the amateur
standard — ten days, ten hours, ten minutes,
and ten seconds.
 Flagpole
sitting
was a popular
fad of the 1920s
and was
definitely the
thing to do!

Mah-jongg is a Chinese tile game. Colored tiles
with different symbols were randomly
arranged geometrically. The object is to remove
all the game pieces.
 Crossword
puzzle fever
swept the nation when
Simon and Schuster
published America's first
crossword puzzle book.

The Book-of-the-Month Club drew thousands
of readers into literary circles. Two new
periodicals began to grace American coffee
tables. The nation's first weekly news
magazine, Time, was founded by Henry Luce
and Briton Hadden. Their punchy writing on
timely stories and eye-grabbing pictures hit the
newsstands in 1923. DeWitt Wallace made a
business out of condensing articles from other
periodicals. His publication, Reader's Digest,
began in 1921 and boasted a half million
subscriptions a decade later.

No individual personified the All-American
hero more than Charles Lindbergh. His
courage was displayed to the nation when he
flew his Spirit of St. Louis from New York to
Paris, becoming the first man to fly solo across
the Atlantic Ocean. National and international
news was hidden in the back pages of the
major newspapers while Lindbergh stole the
front pages.

Confetti flew and bugles
sounded in New York City when
he returned successfully, and
President Coolidge hosted a gala
celebration. There was more to
Lindbergh's appeal than his
bravery. Throughout the ordeal,
Lindbergh maintained a
hometown modesty. He declined
dozens of endorsement
opportunities, ever refusing to
sell out.

Spectator sports provided opportunities for
others to grab the limelight. Ty Cobb and Babe
Ruth were role models for hundreds of
thousands of American boys. Fortunately,
Cobb's outward racism and Ruth's penchant
for drinking and womanizing were shielded
from admiring youngsters.

Football had Red Grange (The Galloping
Ghost), and boxing had Jack Dempsey.
Gertrude Ederle impressed Americans by
becoming the first woman to swim the English
Channel. These heroes gave Americans,
anxious about the uncertain future and rapidly
fading past, a much needed sense of stability.

World War I was over, but the hysteria
lingered. The Eastern front had not gone well
for Russia. The pressures of their losing effort
forced the Russian czar to abdicate. The new
government had not fared much better. Finally
in November 1917, Lenin led a successful
revolution of the Bolshevik workers. The ideas
of Karl Marx had been known since 1848, but
nowhere in the world until now had a
successful communist revolution occurred.

Once the war against Germany was over, the
Western powers focused their energies at
restoring Czar Nicholas. Even the United States
sent troops to Russia hoping the White
Russians could oust the communist Reds. All
this effort was in vain. The Bolsheviks
murdered the entire royal family and slowly
secured control of the entire nation.

Back in the United States, veterans were returning
home. Workers who avoided striking during the war
were now demanding wage increases to keep pace
with spiraling inflation. Over 3,300 postwar strikes
swept the land. A small group of radicals formed the
Communist Labor Party in 1919. Progressive and
conservative Americans believed that labor activism
was a menace to American society and must be
squelched. The hatchetman against American
radicals was President Wilson's Attorney General, A.
Mitchell Palmer. Palmer was determined that no
Bolshevik Revolution would happen in the United
States.

From 1919 to 1920, Palmer conducted a series
of raids on individuals he believed were
dangerous to American security. He deported
249 Russian immigrants without just cause. The
so-called "Soviet ark" was sent back to Mother
Russia. With Palmer's sponsorship, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation was created under the
leadership of J. Edgar Hoover.

In January of 1920, federal agents broke into
the homes of suspected anarchists without
search warrants, jailed labor leaders, and held
about 5,000 citizens without respecting their
right to legal counsel. Palmer felt that
American civil liberties were less important
than rooting out potential wrongdoers.
Eventually most of the detainees were released,
but some were deported.

The climate set by Palmer and Hoover could
not be contained. Still agitated by wartime
propaganda, members of the American public
took matters into their own hands.

American Legionnaires in Centralia, Washington
attacked members of the Wobblies. Twelve radicals
were arrested; one of them was beaten, castrated, and
then shot. The New York State Legislature expelled
five Socialist representatives from their ranks.
Twenty-eight states banned the public display of red
flags. It seemed as though the witch hunt would
never end. Responsible Americans began to speak
out against Palmer's raids and demand that
American civil liberties be respected. By the summer
of 1920, the worst of the furor had subsided.


On April 15, 1921, two employees of a shoe
warehouse in South Braintree, Massachusetts,
were murdered during a robbery. The police
investigating the crime arrested two Italian
immigrants named Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Sacco and Vanzetti maintained their innocence,
but they already had a strike against them: they
were anarchists and socialists. Just a little over
two weeks after their arrest, they were found
guilty.

Many people, particularly fellow socialists,
protested the verdict, saying the two men were
convicted more on political and ethnic
prejudice than on any real evidence. Indeed,
four years later, another man said he had
committed the crime with a local gang.


Despite appeals, Sacco and Vanzetti were never
granted a retrial. When they were sentenced to
death on April 9, 1927, protests erupted around
the country. But to no avail — the men were
executed on Aug. 23, 1927. They claimed they
were innocent until the moment of their deaths.
Scholars still debate the guilt and innocence of
Sacco and Vanzetti, but there is little question
that the trial was biased against them.


When Darwin announced his theory that
humans had descended from apes, he sent
shock waves through the Western world.
In the years that followed his 1859 declaration,
America's churches hotly debated whether to
accept the findings of modern science or
continue to follow the teachings of ancient
scripture. By the 1920s, most of the urban
churches of America had been able to reconcile
Darwin's theory with the Bible, but rural
preachers preferred a stricter interpretation.


In 1925, the Tennessee legislature passed the
Butler Law, which forbade the teaching of
Darwin's theory of evolution in any public
school or university. Other Southern states
followed suit.
The American Civil Liberties Union led the
charge of evolution's supporters. It offered to
fund the legal defense of any Tennessee teacher
willing to fight the law in court. Another
showdown between modernity and tradition
was unfolding.

The man who accepted the challenge was John
T. Scopes, a science teacher and football coach
in Dayton, Tennessee. In the spring of 1925, he
walked into his classroom and read, from
Dayton's Tennessee-approved textbook
Hunter's Civic Biology, part of a chapter on the
evolution of humankind and Darwin's theory
of natural selection. His arrest soon followed,
and a trial date was set.


Representing Scopes was the famed trial
lawyer Clarence Darrow. Slick and
sophisticated, Darrow epitomized the urban
society in which he lived.
The prosecution was led by William Jennings
Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and
former secretary of state. The "Great
Commoner" was the perfect representative of
the rural values he dedicated his life to defend.

Bryan was a Christian who lobbied for a
constitutional amendment banning the
teaching of evolution throughout the nation.
Legendary defense lawyer
Clarence Darrow faces off
against William Jennings
Bryan in the Dayton,
Tennessee trial of
schoolteacher John Scopes.
Bryan died in Dayton five
days after the trial ended.

The trial turned into a media circus. When the
case was opened on July 14, journalists from
across the land descended upon the mountain
hamlet of Dayton. Preachers and fortune
seekers filled the streets. Entrepreneurs sold
everything from food to Bibles to stuffed
monkeys. The trial became the first ever to be
broadcast on radio.

Scopes himself played a rather small role in the
case: the trial was reduced to a verbal contest
between Darrow and Bryan. When Judge John
Raulston refused to admit expert testimony on
the validity of evolutionary theory, Darrow lost
his best defense.

He decided that if he was not permitted to
validate Darwin, his best shot was to attack the
literal interpretation of the Bible. The climax of
the trial came when Darrow asked Bryan to
take the stand as an expert on the Bible.
Darrow hammered Bryan with tough questions
on his strict acceptance of several Bible's stories
from the creation of Eve from Adam's rib to the
swallowing of Jonah by a whale.

The jury sided with the law. Clearly, Scopes
was in violation of Tennessee statute by
teaching that humans descended from
monkeys. He was fined $100 and released. But
the battle that played out before the nation
proved a victory for supporters of evolutionary
theory. A later court dismissed the fine
imposed on Scopes, though in the short term,
the antievolution law was upheld.


airwaves, ministers such as Billy Sunday
reached audiences of thousands. Aimee Semple
McPherson of California preached her
fundamentalist message over loudspeakers to
arena-sized crowds. At one point, she used a
giant electric sports scoreboard to illustrate the
triumph of good over evil, foreshadowing
generations of televangelists who would follow
her lead.
Clearly, the 1920s did not see the end to these
conflicts or the answers to their major
questions.

They were called the Lost Generation.
America's most talented writers of the 1920s
were completely disillusioned by the world
and alienated by the changes in modern
America. The ghastly horrors of trench warfare
were a testament to human inhumanity. The
ability of the human race to destroy itself had
never been more evident.

The materialism sparked by the Roaring
Twenties left many intellectuals empty. Surely
there was more to life than middle-class
conformity, they pined. Intolerance toward
immigrants and socialists led many writers to
see America as grossly provincial. Thus the
literature of the decade was that of disaffection
and withdrawal, and many of America's
greatest talents expatriated to Europe in
despair.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the excesses of
the Jazz Age. He and his wife Zelda operated
among the social elite in New York, Paris, and
on the French Riviera. The Great Gatsby, his
most famous novel, highlights the opulence of
American materialism while harshly criticizing
its morality. Ernest Hemingway wrote of
disillusioned youths wandering Europe in the
wake of World War I in search of meaning in
The Sun Also Rises..

T.S. Eliot commented on the emptiness of American
life in his epic poem The Waste Land. American
theater earned worldwide acclaim in the 1920s. The
foremost playwright of this newly respected
American genre was Eugene O'Neill, noted for
Desire Under the Elms and A Long Day's Journey
Into Night. The sharpest critic of American middleclass lifestyle was Sinclair Lewis. In Main Street, he
takes aim on small-town American life. Babbitt
denounced the emptiness of middle-class life in the
city. After a string of successful novels, Lewis
brought honor to American writers by becoming the
first to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature.

While the written page marked a quest for
intellectual insight, the movie industry catered
to mass audiences. Every town seemed to have
at least one theater for the new craze. The early
decade saw millions flock to the screens to see
silent action films and slapstick comedies by
the likes of Charlie Chaplin. Sex appeal reigned
supreme as American women swooned for
Rudolph Valentino and American men yearned
for the all-American beauty Mary Pickford.

The first feature
film was “Birth
of a Nation” by
D.W. Griffin in
1915, about the
Civil War. It
cost $112,000 to
make and made
$50,000,000.

To keep standards of morality high in the film
industry, the Hays Office stifled artistic license
by censoring objectionable scenes. Because of
soaring profits, studios sought quantity rather
than quality. Therefore the decade saw few
pictures of merit. The first talking picture, The
Jazz Singer, appeared in 1927. Walt Disney
introduced Mickey Mouse to the American
public the following year in Steamboat Willie.
By the end of the decade over 100 million
viewers attended moviehouses each week,
more than the number of weekly churchgoers.
Mary Pickford
Charlie Chaplin
Buster Keaton
Laurel and Hardy
Gloria Swanson
Rudolph Valentino

Despite all the verve of the American social
scene in the 1920s, the Presidential leadership
of the decade was quite unremarkable. Warren
Harding won his bid for the White House in
1920 with the campaign slogan "Return to
Normalcy." Republicans believed Americans
had grown weary of the turmoil caused by
World War I and promised tranquility.
Harding found himself mired in scandals
unknown in America since the Grant
Administration.

Although Harding himself was above the graft,
his friends were more than willing to dip into
the public treasury. Fraud and bribery plagued
the Veterans Bureau and the Justice
Department. The Teapot Dome Scandal
exposed Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall for
accepting bribes for allowing private oil
companies to lease public lands. Harding fell ill
in 1923 and died shortly thereafter.

Calvin Coolidge brought no significant change
to Harding's laissez faire, pro-business style.
Progressives bemoaned the end of activist
Presidents protecting the public good,
prompting Fighting Bob LaFollette to launch an
unsuccessful run for the Presidency under the
Progressive Party banner in 1924. The only
successful progressive reforms occurred on the
state and local levels.

Politics became interesting in the election year
of 1928. The Democrats nominated Al Smith,
the first Catholic ever to earn the nomination of
a major party. Smith raised eyebrows with an
open opposition to the Prohibition amendment.
As a result, the South broke with a long
tradition of supporting Democrats and helped
Herbert Hoover to continue Republican
domination of the Presidency.

On the international scene, two themes
dominated American diplomacy. The first was
to take steps to avoid the mistakes that led to
World War I. To this end, President Harding
convened the Washington Naval Arms
Conference in 1921. The United States, Great
Britain, and Japan agreed to a ten-year freeze
on the construction of battleships and to
maintain a capital ship ratio of 5:5:3.

They also agreed to uphold the Open Door
Policy and to respect each other's holdings in
the Pacific. In 1928, the United States and
France led an initiative called the KelloggBriand Pact, in which 62 nations agreed to
outlaw war. These two measures showed the
degree to which Americans hoped to forestall
another disastrous war. The second priority
dealt with outstanding international debt.

While practicing political isolation, the United States
was completely entangled with Europe
economically. The Allies owed the United States an
enormous sum of money from World War I. Lacking
the resources to reimburse America, the Allies relied
on German reparations. The German economy was
so debased by the Treaty of Versailles provisions that
they relied on loans from American banks for
support. In essence, American banks were funding
the repayment of the foreign debt.

As Germany slipped further and further into
depression, the United States intervened again.
The Dawes Plan allowed Germany to extend
their payments on more generous terms. In the
end, when the Great Depression struck, only
Finland was able to make good on its debt to
the United States.

Stock prices soared to record levels. Millionaires
were made overnight. In 1925, the total value of the
New York Stock Exchange was $27 billion. By
September 1929, that figure skyrocketed to $87
billion. This means that the average stockholder
more than tripled the value of the stock portfolio he
or she was lucky enough to possess.

Fueling the rapid expansion was the risky practice of
buying stock on margin. A margin purchase allows
an investor to borrow money, typically as much as
75% of the purchase price, to buy a greater amount of
stock. Stockbrokers and even banks funded the
reckless speculator. Borrowers were often willing to
pay 20% interest rates on loans, being dead certain
that the risk would be worth the rewards.


On October 24, 1929, "Black Thursday," this massive sella-thon began. By the late afternoon, wealthy financiers
like J.P. Morgan pooled their resources and began to buy
stocks in the hopes of reversing the trend.
But the bottom fell out of the market on Tuesday,
October 29. A record 16 million shares were exchanged
for smaller and smaller values as the day progressed. For
some stocks, no buyers could be found at any price. By
the end of the day, panic had erupted, and the next few
weeks continued the downward spiral. In a matter of ten
short weeks the value of the entire market was cut in
half. Suicide and despair swept the investing classes of
America