Brinkley Text Chapter 22

The New Economy
 Technology and Economic Growth
 After 1921-1922 recession , there was tremendous economic growth in output and income
 Growth result of collapse of European industry after war

The New Economy
 An era of important technological advances:
 Rise of auto manufacturing (and in turn gas production, road construction, assembly line)
 Rise of radio and commercial broadcasting
 Advances in air travel
 Development of electronics and synthetic materials

The New Economy
 Maturation of electricity and telecommunications fields
 Work during 1920s and 1930s on primitive computer technologies

The New Economy
 Economic Organization
 Certain industries (e.g. steel) continued toward national organization and consolidation
 These companies adopted new modern administrative systems , with efficient division structures to allow subsidiary control and easier expansion

The New Economy
 In industries with more competition , stabilization reached thru cooperation
 Rise of trade association to coordinate production and marketing

The New Economy
 Industrialists feared overproduction and recession
 Efforts to curb competition thru either consolidation or cooperation reflected this

The New Economy
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Labor in the New Era
Some employers 1920s used “welfare capitalism”
Gave workers more rights, improved safety
Raised wages in order to avoid labor unrest and independent union growth
System survived only if industry prospered
Economy collapsed in 1929

The New Economy
 Welfare capitalism helped only a few workers
 Employers wage increases disproportional to their increase in profits
 Ultimately workers still mainly impoverished and powerless
 Families relied on multiple wage earners

The New Economy
 Organized labor and independent unions often failed to adapt to changing nature of modern economy
 American Federation of Labor still used craft union system based on skills
 Did not allow membership to growing pool of unskilled industrial workers

The New Economy
 Women and Minorities in the Work Force
 Number of women in workforce increased, especially in “pink-collar” jobs
 Low-paying service jobs
 Most unions refused to organize them

The New Economy
 African-Americans in cities after 1914 “Great
Migration” were largely excluded from unions
 A. Philip Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters was a notable exception

The New Economy
 In West and Southwest unskilled and unorganized workers were mainly Hispanics and Mexican immigrants
 Also Asians (mainly Japanese who replaced Chinese after Exclusion Acts in menial jobs)

The New Economy
 The “American” Plan
 After 1919, economic uneasiness corporations rallied strongly against
“subversive” unionism and wanted to protect idea of “Open Shop” (in which workers not forced to join union)
 This was known as the “American Plan”

The New Economy
 Government intervened on behalf of management
 Courts often ruled against striking workers
 Between this and corporate efforts union membership saw large decline

The New Economy
 Agricultural Technology and the Plight of the
Farmer
 American agriculture adopted new technologies
(e.g. tractor, combine)
 Allowed more crops with fewer workers
 Hybrid corn and fertilizers also increased productivity

The New Economy
 But improved technology also led to overproduction and collapse in food prices
 Farmers called on government price support
 Idea of “parity” (government set price, farmers reimbursed if good sold for less in fluctuating market)
 High foreign crop tariffs introduced in Congress
(McNary-Haugen Bill, vetoed by Coolidge)

The New Culture
 Consumerism
 Industrial growth led to rise of consumer culture in which people had discretionary funds to buy items for pleasure (appliances, fashion)
 Most revolutionary product was automobile
 Allowed rural people to escape isolation, city people to escape crowded urban life; rise of vacation traveling

The New Culture
 Advertising
 Techniques first used in wartime propaganda came of age in new age of advertising and work of publicists
 Famous book of time The Man Nobody Knows by
Bruce Burton about Jesus as “salesman”
 Ads possible because of mass audience in national chains of newspapers, mass-circulation magazine growth

The New Culture
 The Movies and Broadcasting
 1920s saw rise of Hollywood
 Creation of Motion Picture Association
 The Hays Code as industry self-ban on objectionable material

The New Culture
 Phenomenal rise of radio beginning with first commercial station broadcasting in 1920
 By 1929 , 12 million families owned radio sets

The New Culture
 Modernist Religion
 Growing consumer culture with emphasis on immediate self-fulfillment had influence on religion
 Some abandoned “traditional” and literal
 Harry Emerson Fosdick spokesman for new liberal
Protestantism of 1920s

The New Culture
 Professional Women
 Most employed women were working class because of professional struggle between career and family.
 Few professional women limited to mainly
“feminine” fields of fashion, education, social work, nursing

The New Culture
 Changing Ideas of Motherhood
 Belief grew that maternal affection was not adequate preparation for child rearing
 Advice and help of professionals needed instead

The New Culture
 Motherhood increasingly relied on institutions out of home
 Allowing time to devote to “companionate marriage”
 More involved more as wives, in social life
 Growth of birth control related to sense of sex as
“recreation” vs. only procreation

The New Culture
 The “Flapper”: Image and Reality
 Some women came to believe rigid and Victorian
“feminism” unnecessary
 “Flapper” women expressed themselves freely thru dress, speech, behavior

The New Culture
 Pressing for Women’s Rights
 Women formed League of Women Voters, many women helped growing consumer groups

The New Culture
 Sheppard-Towner Act (1921) gave federal funds to states for prenatal and child healthcare
 Opposed by the American Medical Association, and others
 Repealed in 1929
 Showed that women didn’t vote as single block, even on “female” issues

The New Culture
 Education and Youth
 Growing secularism
 Emphasis on training and expertise manifested itself in growing upper education attendance rates, teaching of technical skills

The New Culture
 Emergence of distinct youth culture with growing idea of adolescence
 Belief this was time for child to develop institutions with peers separate from family

The New Culture
 The Decline of the “Self-Made Man”
 Myth of “self-made man” who could gain wealth and fame thru hard work and natural talent gave way to belief that nothing was possible without education and training

The New Culture
 Men felt losing independence, control,
“masculinity”
 Idolized self-made men such as Thomas Edison,
Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh

The New Culture
 The Disenchanted
 The “Lost Generation”
 New generation of artists and intellectuals
 Viewed society with contempt
 Instead of playing a “reform” role, they isolated themselves

The New Culture
 Lost Generation critical of the American system
 The individual had no means of personal fulfillment
 This rose out of the experience of “The World
War,” and the sense that many had died in vain
 Also the end of Wilsonian idealism, growing business and consumerism

The New Culture
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Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929) expressed contempt of war
Other “debunkers” critical of society included H.L.
Mencken, Sinclair Lewis
Many of these critics who rejected the “success ethics” of America became expatriates living abroad
Paris was center of American artistic life

The New Culture
 The Harlem Renaissance
 Other intellectuals saw solution to problems in exploration of own culture and its origins
 A great example was Harlem during “Harlem
Renaissance”

The New Culture
 Harlem (in New York City) was a center of black artists and intellectuals
 Literature, poetry , and art drew on African roots
 Most famously, Alan Locke, Langston Hughes

The New Culture
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The Southern Agrarians
Group of Southern intellectuals and poets known as the Fugitives
Rebelled against depersonalization and materialism due to industrialization by recalling the Southern nonindustrial, agrarian way of life
Wrote reactionary ideas in their 1930 agrarian manifesto I’ll Take My Stand

A Conflict of Cultures
 Prohibition
 Volstead Act (18 th Amendment) ratified in 1918
 Prohibition took effect in 1920
 Within a year, the “noble experiment” was failing
 Even though some drinking rates fell, alcohol was still widely available

A Conflict of Cultures
 Legitimate businesses were being replaced by organized crime (famous gangster Al Capone)
 Prohibition was supported by women, and by rural
Protestants
 They associated drinking with Catholic immigrants and the new valueless culture

A Conflict of Cultures
 A Conflict of Cultures
 Nativism and the Klan
 After the Great War, many Americans associated immigration with radicalism
 Efforts to restrict influx grew
 In 1921, Congress passed emergency immigration law with a quota system

A Conflict of Cultures
 The Nativists wanted harsher law
 National Origins Act of 1924 banned all east Asian immigration
 Also reduced especially eastern European quotas

A Conflict of Cultures
 Ku Klux Klan re-emerged as force because of fear by some older Americans of disruption of culture by new peoples
 “New Klan” emerged in 1915 after meeting in
Stone Mountain, GA

A Conflict of Cultures
 At first targeted blacks
 After the war, targeted Catholics, Jews, and foreigners
 Sought to purge “alien” influences
 Membership grew in South, but also in Northern industrial cities

A Conflict of Cultures
 The “New Klan” wanted to threaten anyone who challenged “traditional values”
 Targets were irreligion, drunkenness, etc.
 Defended racial homogeneity and the “traditional” culture against modernity
 Provided disenfranchised with sense of community, power

A Conflict of Cultures
 Religious Fundamentalism
 Fight over role of religion in modern society
 Split in Protestantism
 Between urban, middle-class people who wanted to adapt religion to modern science, and
 Secular society vs .
traditional rural people who wanted to retain religious import

A Conflict of Cultures
 Fundamentalists wanted traditional interpretation of bible
 Opposed Darwinism

A Conflict of Cultures
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Evangelical movement wanting to spread doctrine
(famous preacher Billy Sunday)
Teaching Darwinism outlawed in Tennessee
Teacher John Scopes defied the law
ACLU promised to defend him
Scopes trial isolated Fundamentalists from mainstream Protestants, ended their growing political activism

A Conflict of Cultures
 The Democrat’s Ordeal
 Democrats split between urban and rural factions
 Party included prohibitionists, Klansmen, fundamentalists
 But also Catholics, urban workers, immigrants

A Conflict of Cultures
 1924 Democratic National Convention in NY
 Conflict between urban wing and West/South
 Urban wing wanted prohibition repealed
 Denounced the Klan
 Supported Alfred Smith (a Catholic) as nominee

A Conflict of Cultures
 West and South supported William McAdoo
 After deadlock, both withdrew; John Davis chosen as nominee
 In 1928 Al Smith won nomination
 But party still divided because of southern anti-
Catholicism
 Smith lost 1928 election to Herbert Hoover

Republican Government
 Harding and Coolidge
 Pres Warren Harding elected 1920; appointed party elite who had helped win him nomination to positions in administration, ultimately this corrupt
“Ohio Gang” committed fraud and corruption in
Teapot Dome oil reserve scandal
 Harding died of a heart attack 1923, VP Calvin
Coolidge ascended to presidency (known for crushing Boston Police riot)

Republican Government
 Coolidge a passive president like Harding
 Believed government should not interfere in life of nation
 Won re-election 1924 but did not seek office in
1928
 “I do not choose to run again.”
 Nickname: “Silent Cal”

Republican Government
 Government and Business
 Even though New Era presidents were mostly passive, federal government as a whole worked to helped business and industry operate efficient and productively
 Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon reduced tax on corporate profits, personal incomes, inheritances, and cut federal budget

Republican Government
 Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover favored voluntary cooperation of businesses in private sector for stability
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Supported business “Associationalism” in which businessmen in an industry worked together to promote stability, efficient production, and marketing
Hoover won the Presidential election of 1928
 But the nation entered Depression in 1929