Pearl Harbor
December 7th, 1941
The Roaring 20’s
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
Demobilization and Adjustment to
Peace, 1920

Demobilization
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The transition process during which a nation at war returns to a state of peace
After World War I, the federal government no longer needed a large amount of:

Guns
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Bullets
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Uniforms

Battleships
Demobilization and Adjustment to
Peace, 1920
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Returning from War

Soldiers returned from home looking for jobs
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African Americans, women, and others who had filled in for the soldiers were suddenly
no longer needed
Spanish Flu

Lasted from 1918-1919
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Actually killed more Americans than the war itself
The Red Scare
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Bolsheviks

A group of Russian communists
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Pulled Russia our of WWI

Opposed private property, religious beliefs, and free enterprise

Americans refused to extend diplomatic recognition to the new Russian
government.
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With the success of the Bolsheviks, Americans were afraid of a communist
revolution in the United States.
The “Palmer Raids”

J. Edgar Hoover, at this time a young lawyer
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Supervised the arrest of Russian workers suspected of radical activity in 12 cities

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More than 200 of them were deported
Hoover directed simultaneous raids in 30 cities, known as the “Palmer Raids”
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About 6,000 suspects were arrested
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Most of them were foreign-born residents from Russia and Germany
Sacco and Vanzetti

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (a shoemaker and a fish seller) were
arrested in 1920 for murders committed during a payroll truck robbery.
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Reasons they were discriminated against:
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They were anarchists
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Immigrants
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Showed disloyalty during the war by going to Mexico to escape the draft
Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and sentenced to death and executed in
1927.
The Republican Presidents:
Warren Harding

Return to Normalcy
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Emphasis on maintaining prosperity at home and a less ambitious foreign policy abroad.
Favored American businesses
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Higher tariffs
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Fordney- McCumber Act

Goods that were subject to custom duties (taxes on imports) paid an average duty of 38.5% of their value.
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Other countries retaliated by raising their own tariffs on goods from the United States which caused made a horrible
impact on world trade.
Lower taxes
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Believed that wealthy Americans were more likely to invest in the economy than other social classes were
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Slashed taxes on the rich
Minimal government interference in business activities

The government did not overturn existing laws regulating business, they just simply did not enforce them.
The Republican Presidents:
Warren Harding
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Restrictions on Immigration

In 1917, a literacy test was passed over President Wilson’s veto.
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Required immigrants to read and write in their own language.
Emergency Quota Act of 1921
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Limited the total number of immigrants who could enter the United States in any one year to 350,000
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Fewer than half the number admitted in 1920
The Republican Presidents:
Warren Harding
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Foreign Policy
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Harding was a moderate internationalist
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Tried to reduce the threat of war
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Worked to promote American business overseas
The Washington Naval Conference
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Proposed partial disarmament
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US and Britain accepted equality in the number of battleships and Japan got a little fewer
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that the United States, Great Britain, and Japan each stop building new battleships and even scrap some of those they already had
The ratio was 5:5:3
The Four-Power Treaty

Included the United States, Britain, Japan and France

They agreed to respect each other’s territories and rights in the Pacific Region and to submit to any “joint conference” of all four
powers.
The Republican Presidents:
Warren Harding
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International Finance


During WWI, the US had lent $10 billion to allied nations, and the US expected them to pay it back with interest

The Allies argued against having to pay the US back because their soldiers paid in their lives when the US only paid with
their money in the beginning.
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Harding extended Britain’s repayment period to 62 years and lowered the interest rate
German Money

Germany was unable to pay their reparations
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The German government printed excessive amounts of paper money to make its reparation payments
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This led to wild inflation, increasing the prices of goods in Germany
The Dawes Plan

Private American investors lent $200 million to Germany which Germany then used to pay its reparation payments.
The Dawes Plan
The Republican Presidents:
Warren Harding
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International Finance

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Harding actively promoted American economic expansion and investment in Europe, Latin America, and the
Middle East
Teapot Dome Scandal

The Secretary of the Interior arranged to have the oil-rich lands at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, previously reserved
for the navy, transferred to his own department
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He then secretly leased them to businessmen in exchange for personal bribes
The Republican Presidents:
Calvin Coolidge
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“Coolidge Prosperity”
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Symbol of old-fashioned American values
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“The business of America is business”
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Called “Silent Cal” because he barely spoke in public.
Coolidge’s accomplishments

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Reduced government expenditures and vetoed a bill to help farmers because he did not think the government
should regulate farm prices
Coolidge’s Downside

Did nothing to curb the frenzy of stock market speculation and the continuation of high tariffs and regressive
taxation

Led to overproduction and under-consumption
The Republican Presidents:
Calvin Coolidge
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Further Restrictions on Immigration

The Immigration Act of 1924

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The National Origins Act
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Lowered the total number of immigrants per year to 150,000
The number of immigrants became based on the percent of people of that national origin compared to all Americans
Coolidge’s Foreign Policy
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The Geneva Disarmament Conference 1927

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Attempted to have success like Harding, but the participants refused to accept further limitations and nothing was achieved
The Kellogg- Briand Pact
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15 nations signed the pact

Promised not to use war as an instrument of policy
The Republican Presidents:
Herbert Hoover
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Herbert Hoover
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Self-made millionaire and engineer
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Optimistically announced that America was on the verge of ending poverty
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Favored business cooperation to increase efficiency and avoid wasteful competition
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Supported promoting voluntary cooperation among farmers with government funds
Rugged individualism
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Hoover believed that if individuals are given an education and equal opportunities, the country will succeed
How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s
Altered the American Economy
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Greater Efficiency in Manufacturing
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Henry Ford
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The Rise of Automobiles
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The production of automobiles helped employ many other areas as well
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Steel, glass, rubber, paved roads, bridges, garages, gas stations, etc.
The suburbs
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Introduced electric conveyor belts on his assembly lines
Encourages people to move to the outskirts of town to live
The Expansion of Other New Industries
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Electric household appliances
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Use of petroleum and natural gas
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Radio commercials and motion pictures
How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s
Altered the American Economy

New Marketing Practices in an Age of Consumerism
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Advertising agencies specialized in developing slogans and advertisements to attract customers
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Instalment Buying
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Paying for things in instalments instead of all at once after a small down payment
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Used this for goods like cars, refrigerators, and household appliances
Higher wages
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Increased spending
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Allowed for more leisure time
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Spent more in entertainment
How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s
Altered the American Economy
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Speculation in the Stock Market and in Real Estate
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The federal government reduced taxes on the rich
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The rich then reinvested their profits into the stock market
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People assumed that stocks were a way to get rich quick
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Buying on “margin”
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Investing in real estate
How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s
Altered the American Economy

Prosperity of the 1920’s was Unevenly Distributed
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Farmers
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Advances in technology led to overproduction and a catastrophic drop in farm prices
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Many farmers went bankrupt
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Workers in the Railroad, Coal, and Textile Industries
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Minority Groups
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Limited job opportunities
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Low pay
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High levels of unemployment
Attempts to Preserve
Traditional Values
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Prohibition
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Temperance Movement
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18th Amendment
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A group of people who saw alcoholic beverages as the root cause of poverty, crime, and the breakdown of families and sin
Prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors”
Volstead Act
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Defined “intoxicating liquors to include both wine and beer
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Permitted limited production of alcohol for medical or religious purposes
Difficult to enforce
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“Bootleggers” brought beer and whiskey across from Canada
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“Speakeasies” served liquor in cities
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Criminal bosses like Al Capone in Chicago made a fortune from selling bootlegged liquor
Repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933
Attempts to Preserve
Traditional Values
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Fundamentalism and the Scopes Trial
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Christian Fundamentalists
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Believed that the bible- including the account of Creation- was to be taken literally
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Opposed Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
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John Butler
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The American Civil Liberties Union
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Passed a bill in the state legislature that prohibited the teaching of evolution in state-funded public schools
Formed in 1920 to protect freedom of speech and other civil liberties
John Scopes
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Scopes was a high school teacher who chose to defy the Butler Act and taught the theory of evolution

Scopes was convicted, but his fine of $100 was cleared later on a technicality
New Values
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Women
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19th Amendment
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Guaranteed women the right to vote
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Increased employment opportunities
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New household appliances gave middle class women more leisure time
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Flappers
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Fashionable young women who wore lipsticl, short hair, and straight simple dresses or pleated skirts that just reached
their knees
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Known as “flappers” because they were like birds flapping their wings
Margaret Sanger
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Developed the Birth Control League in 1921 which has since become Planned Parenthood
New Values
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The “Lost Generation”
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Responsible for weird fads
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The Great Gatsby, F. Scott-Fitzgerald
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Goldfish swallowing, marathon dancing, and flagpole sitting
Showed how the search for purely material success could lead to tragedy
Hollywood and New Popular Heroes
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Hollywood became a mecca for the motion picture scene

More and more Americans were attracted to the movies as a form of entertainment

Some people believed that Hollywood had become a corrupting influence
The African-American Experience
and the Harlem Renaissance
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Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois

Booker T. Washington
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Thought African-Americans should not try to rock the boat and stay out of the way of the white people
W.E.B. Du Bois
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Thought that African-Americans should fight for social equality
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Created the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The Great Migration
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A wartime shortage of workers led Northern manufacturers to employ African-American workers
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Thousands of African Americans moved to the north over the next 20 years
Continuing Racism and Violence

Forced to move to a limited number of neighborhoods because landlords and homeowners elsewhere refused to rent
or sell to them
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Lynching was still a major problem in the south
The African-American Experience
and the Harlem Renaissance
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The Harlem Renaissance

The greatest concentration of African Americans was found in Harlem

African Americans of different occupations mixed together in Harlem where they lived side by side
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There was a flourishing of black culture during this time
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Writers and Artists
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Enter the New Negro, Alain Locke
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Langston Hughes
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Home to Harlem, Claude McKay
Jazz
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Aimed to capture “the spirit of the race” and inspire his people
Jazz roots come from old work songs, blues music from the south, and African American spirituals
Marcus Garvey
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Established the Universal Negro Improvement Association
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Believed that “black is beautiful” and disagreed with the NAACP
Other Minority Groups
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Hispanic Americans
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Landowners from Texas, Arizona, and California wanted to encourage immigration because they needed
cheap labor for development
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The citizens disagreed because they felt as though the Hispanic immigrants were there to take their jobs
American Indians
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The goal of federal policy towards American Indian tribes remained the same as under the Dawes Act

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The American Indian Defense Association
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Assimilate their members into “mainstream” society and turn them into small farmers
Created in 1921 to protect the rights of American Indians
Indian Citizenship Act 1924

Made all Indians into United States Citizens

Indians could vote in federal elections and became subject to federal income tax
Other Minority Groups
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Asian Americans
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Less than 1% of the population was Asian

Most lived on the West- especially California
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Asian immigration was barred by the Immigration Acts of 19221 and 1924
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Asiatic Exclusion League 1905
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Aimed to end Asian immigration and to segregate Asian children in public schools
The Ku Klux Klan
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The KKK has laid dormant since the 1870’s
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Rebirth of the Klan in 1915 by William Simmons
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Not only included traditional racism against African Americans, but also embraced the hatred of
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Jews, Catholics, unions, immigrants, an all those advocating the rights of women
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“One hundred percent Americanism”
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Klan members supported the Democratic Party

Membership started to decline after 1930
The Roarin’ 20’s in Florida
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Beginning of the “snow birds”
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Rosewood
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A rural African- American community in community southwest of Gainesville
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