American Life in the
“Roaring Twenties”
1919 - 1929
Insulating
America
• THE RED SCARE
1919 - 1920
– Provoked by fear that labor violence after WWI
was associated with the communist revolution in
Russia.
– The US continues to believe that Communism is
trying to sink its red teeth into the democratic
neck of the United States!
– Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
• Led raids against suspected left-wing radicals
• Rounded up over 6000 suspects
• Why is he so mad?
– Many states passed laws that made
unlawful the mere advocacy (talking) of
violence to secure social change
Sacco & Vanzetti Trial
• Nicola Sacco - (shoe-factory worker)
• Bartolomeo Vanzetti – (fish peddler)
• Convicted in 1921 of the murder of a
Massachusetts paymaster & his guard
– Mainly because they were: Italian, atheists,
anarchists, & draft dodgers
• Electrocuted in 1927
• Whether they were guilty or
Not, the atmosphere of antiCommunism was more than
Enough to have them killed.
KKK
• Against:
– Foreigners (nativist)
– Catholics
– Blacks
– Jews
– Pacifists
– Communists
– Internationalists
– Evolutionists
– Bootleggers
– Gambling
– Adultery
– Birth Control
– Almost everyone
Except white sheets, 800
thread count of course
• Pro:
– Anglo-Saxon
– “Native” Americans
– Protestants
• They are a new twist
on an old costume.
• Especially popular in
the Midwest & “Bible
Belt” South
– 5 million due-paying
members
• Decline in late 1920s
Slowing
Immigration
• Emergency Quota Act of 1921
– European immigrants were restricted by a
definite quota
– Quota was set at 3% of their nationality that had
been living in the US in 1910
– Favorable to southern & eastern European
immigrants
• Immigration Act of 1924
– Quotas were cut to 2% & base year switched to
1890
– No Japanese immigrants allowed
– Canadians & Latin Americans were excluded
– Who does this hurt?
– This is overly harsh against Southern and
Eastern Europeans.
Results of Restricted
Immigration
• Patchwork of ethnic communities
separated from each other and larger
society by language, customs, and
religion
• Employers used ethnic rivalries to
keep workers divided and powerless
– Undermined political and class solidarity
– Labor unions found organizing difficult
Prohibition
• Supported mainly by churches & women
• 1919 – 18th Amendment
• Volstead Act – passed by Congress
– Provided the means to enforce the law
• Fairly popular in the Midwest & especially
in the South
• Strong opposition in larger eastern cities
• Extremely difficult to enforce
– “speakeasies”
– “bathtub gin”
• Many see as pointless
Illegal
Activity
• Gangsters
– Made lush profits of illegal alcohol, or hooch, led
to
• bribery of the police
• Violent gangs
• Gang wars – especially in Chicago
• “Scarface” Al Capone
– Convicted of income-tax evasion
• Other profitable & illicit activities
– Prostitution , gambling & narcotics
• Lindbergh Law
– Making interstate abduction in certain
circumstances a death-penalty offense
Education in
the 1920s
• High School Graduation rate – 25%
• John Dewey – father of education
– “learning by doing” & “education for life”
• Rockefeller Foundation launched a public
health program in the South
– Increased life expectancy by 9 years
– Virtually eradicated hookworm
• Fundamentalists
– Teaching Darwinian evolution was destroying
faith in God & the Bible & contributing to the
moral breakdown of the youth in jazz age
The Monkey Trial
• 1925 – Dayton, Tennessee
– John T. Scopes, a high school biology teacher,
was indicted for teaching evolution
– Prosecution – William Jennings Bryan
(Fundamentalist)
– Defense – Clarence Darrow
– Scopes was found guilty & fined $100
• Fined set aside on technicality
– Absurdities of the trial cast
ridicule on their cause
The Mass-Consumption
Economy
• Recession of 1920 – 1921, then sprinted
forward for the next 7 years
– War & Treasury Secretary Andrew
Mellon’s tax policies
• Productivity of the laborer increased
– Assembly line
– Electrical power
– Automobile
• Advertising
– Bruce Barton – The Man Nobody Knows 1925
• Jesus Christ was the world’s best adman
Commercialized
Atmosphere
• Sports:
– George H. “Babe” Ruth – baseball
• Yankee Stadium
– Jack Dempsey – boxer
• Buying on credit / installment buying
– Refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, cars, & radios
Putting America on
Rubber Tires
• By 1890s, Henry Ford & a few other
inventors developed the infant auto
industry
• Detroit became the car capital of America
– Stop-watch efficiency of Frederick w. Taylor,
sought to eliminate wasted motion
• By 1929, 26 million motor vehicles
registered in US, 1 for every 4.9 Americans
• Ford’s Model T (“Tin Lizzie”) cheap, rugged,
and reasonably reliable
Advent of the Gasoline
Age
• Automobile industry employed
directly and indirectly 6 million
– Thousands of other jobs created by
supporting industries
• Glass, rubber, fabric, service stations,
garages, highway construction
• New industries boomed
– Petroleum in Texas, California,
Oklahoma
– Railroads impacted negatively by growth
of cars, trucks, and busses
Impacts of the Gasoline
Engine
• New highways ribboned out
• Called Americans to open road for
vacations
• Consolidation of schools
• Expansion of sprawling suburbs and
commuting workforce
• Drawbacks:
– Death and injury
– “houses of prostitution on wheels”
– Quick getaways for gangsters
Humans Develop Wings
• Wright Brothers—1903
– Orville and Wilbur successful 12 second
airborne flight in Kitty Hawk, NC
• 1920 – 1st transcontinental airmail
route from NY to San Francisco
• 1927 – Charles Lindberg’s solo flight
across the Atlantic
– Piloted Spirit of St. Louis from NY to
Paris in 33 hours and 39 minutes
The Radio Revolution
• Guglielmo Marconi—invented
wireless telegraphy in 1890s
• November 1920: KDKA first
broadcast
• Early local broadcasts gave way to
national networks and standardized
accents
– Sportscasts, politicians, and popular
music
More Changes
• 1903 – 1st movie The Great Train Robbery
• 1927 – 1st “Talkie” movie The Jazz Singer
– Age of silents ushered out as theaters wired for
sound
• *** The automobile, radio, & motion picture
all contributed to the “Standardization” of
American life.
– Provided Americans with a shared experienced
Harlem
Renaissance
• Took root in Harlem
• Writers:
– Claude McKay
– Langston Hughes
– Zora Neale Hurston
• Jazz Musicians:
– Louis Armstrong
– Eubie Blake
– Ella Fitzgerald
• “New Negro” – full
citizen & equal rights
• Marcus Garvey
– United Negro
Improvement
Association (UNIA)
– Promoted the
resettlement of blacks
to Africa
– “Put black dollars into
black pockets”
– Later deported back to
Jamaica
– Led to the later
founding of the Nation
of Islam (Black
Muslim) movement
Life Style Changes
• By 1920, most Americans lived in cities
• Margaret Sanger
– Led the first organized birth-control movement in
the US
• Period of sexual liberation – The Flappers
New Generation
of Writers
• Social critics of materialism & the loss of
idealism
– Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises & A
Farewell to Arms
– F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby & This
Side of Paradise
– Sinclair Lewis – Main Street & Babbitt
– William Faulkner – Soldier’s Pay, The Sound & the
Fury, & As I Lay Dying
• Strong southern themes
Wall Street’s
Big Bull Market
• Incomes & living standards rose
• Signals did exist that a crash may be on
the horizon
– Several hundred banks failed annually
– Speculation in the stock market ran wild
– Stocks were being purchased “on-margin”
• Small down payment & borrow the rest from broker
– National debt increased: 1921 - $23.9 billion
• 1921 - Bureau of the Budget
– Created to assist the president in preparing
estimates of receipts & expenditures for
submission to Congress for annual budget
The Tax Burden
• Sec of Treasury Mellon’s theory
– “The poor rich people”
– High taxes forced the rich to invest
in tax-exempt securities rather than in the
factories that provided prosperous payrolls
– High taxes discouraged business & also brought
a smaller net return to the Treasury than
moderate taxes
– Shifted the tax burden from the wealthy to the
middle-income groups
– Was successful in reducing the national debt by
$10 billion