Where is the economy?
• Is the stock market the economy?
• What if the stock market is growing, but other
parts of the economy are not?
Growing
Declining
electrical appliances
Automobiles
∆
construction 
Wages (decline in immigration)
Productivity
Mechanization/efficiency
textiles
boots and shoes
Housing market
coal mining
Agricultural output (never recovered 1918-19
levels)
Lower growth in auto mfg after 1925 (but still
growing)
Government spending (Andrew Mellon)
Does inequality matter?
Hoover’s First 30 days
•
•
•
•
•
Expanded Civil Service Protection
Cancelled Private Oil Leases on Public Land
Passed laws to crack down on organized crime
Funded children’s health clinics in rural areas
Reorganized gov’t departments to be more
efficient
• Publicized large tax refunds
Hoover Makes some Changes
• Prgm to pay every American over 65 $50/mo
• Authorized $5bil to overhaul federal prisons
(building libraries and chapels)
• Created federal subsidies to country health
centers and rural child health centers.
• Cut federal salaries by 15%
Hoover’s Economics
Jan. 1930: Emergency Committee for
Employment
Established 3000 local chapters to
manage distribution of welfare. (Mostly
from donations from charitable
organizations).
1930: Federal Farm Board (FFB)
To establish price controls on wheat and
corn.
Apr. 1930: Public Works Administration
5% of the fed. Budget (of $3bil) set aside
for public works:
highway construction
Golden Gate Bridge
Farm Loan Banks (to avoid foreclosure)
1932: Reconstruction Finance Corporation provided railroads, banks, and other
(RFC)
financial institutions with money for
loans.
$3 billion program!
1931: Cancellation of European War
Debts
(1 year Moratorium)
Hoover wanted to cancel war debts owed
to the US as well as debts between other
countries in Europe. He failed at
cancelling the debts, but 15 nations
agreed to the moratorium, and after it
expired, the US continued to get token
payments from the Allies.
Hawley-Smoot Act
Hoover did not favor the Smoot-Hawley
Tariff, but it passed after 1000 economists
voiced their support. It established some
of the highest tariffs in American history,
raising, for example, average agricultural
rates from 38 percent under Ford to 49
percent.
(Raising Tariffs = Protectionism)
Davis-Bacon Act
Pay union wages on all federal contracts
Summary of Hoover Reforms
• Cancelled private oil leases of public land
• Funded the opening of rural health clinics,
focusing on children’s health.
• Publicized large tax refunds (allowed public to see
tax forms of wealthy people)
• Program to pay every american over 65 $50/mo
• $5 billion to overhaul and modernize prisons
• Cut federal salaries by 15% (Hoover never
accepted a salary).
• Increased enforcement of anti-trust laws
• Increased taxes
Economic
Isolation
v.
Deregulation
v.
pluralismnism
Women’s
Sufferage
Cosmopolitanism
provincialism
1920s
Culture
wars
Great Migration
Rrsurgence of
the KKK
Red Scare
Prohibition
Deregulation
• The progressive movement to regulate the
economy and break up trusts was over.
• WWI expansion of the government in the
economy rolled back.
• Coolidge: “the chief business of the American
People is business,” if government kept its
hands out of the economy, business would
prosper.
Harlem Renaissance
• 1920s Harlem was 70% black-owned.
• Many African Americans had been
moving North as part of the Great
Migration during and after WWI, during
which 750,000 blacks left the South.
• A new interest in Africa, and creating an
identity based on cultural roots was
developing in the USA, along with a new
sense of pride in black culture.
• With many economic opportunities closed to
them, creative expression was one viable
option flourishing of music and arts.
• Harlem attracted a large number of educated
and talented African Americans and became a
center of cultural and artistic expression,
transforming “social disillusionment to race
pride.”
• Alain Locke
Politics, Culture, Art
• The Harlem Renaissance was a broad
movement including political activism, cultural
achievements in the literary, performing and
visual arts.
• NAACP moves offices to New York, and DuBois
becomes an editor of their journal, The Crisis.
The journal sponsored artists of the Harlem
Renaissance such as Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of
human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all
golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Jazz
• Cotton Club – famous Harlem venue: Served only
white customers and had a jungle motif with
plantation decoration.
• Ragtime – takes military march and changes the
time.
• Piano music also popular because of a growing
number of people who have pianos in their homes
in the ’20s.
• 1st Blues album – Jellyroll Morton – sells 75,000
copies!
Palmer Hayden
Aaron Douglass
James Van der Zee
Harlem Renaissance photographer – famous for staged portraits and for
developing a technique to retouch negatives.
• Above: Marcus Garvey
• Right: “The Barefoot Prophet”
Archibald Motley
Dox Thrash