Chapter 23
5. Increased Productivity
A. Booming Business
1. Recession and
Recovery
2. Consumer Prosperity
• Electricity = appliances
3. Capitalism Expansion
• Loaned money to Europe
4. Economic Nationalism
• High tariffs = no foreign
competition
• Corporate tax cuts
•
•
Scientific management,
Frederick Taylor
Assembly line (Fordist
method)
6. Energy technologies
•
•
Increase in use of oil and
electricity
Oil 23% of U.S. energy
by 1930
B. The Big Three
automakers in the United
States were:



Chevrolet
Ford
Chrysler
C. Revolution led by Henry
Ford and his “Fordisms”
(assembly line techniques),
who produced the “Model
T” cars.
D. Ailing Agriculture
1. New technologies help farmers but don’t solve
problems
2. Post-war slowdown and surplus
– War kept prices/demand high
3. Farm income falls 60% between 1919-1921
4. Weak prices
– Surplus = lower prices
E. Struggling Unions
1. Membership falls 20%
• Why?
–
–
Overall wages climbed
Series of unsuccessful strikes
– United Mine Workers
–
“open shop” success
– Keeping jobs open to nonunion workers
– In south unionization violently resisted

Democrats

White south and
immigrants

Republicans


Accepted limited
government
regulation as aid to
stabilizing business
Northern farmers,
corporate leaders,
business people,
native, professionals
•
Scandals
–
Teapot Dome Scandal
– Fall accepted
bribes for granting
oil leases near
Teapot Dome,
Wyoming
– Fall 1st cabinet
officer in U.S.
History to go to jail



Reduction of income tax
Increased Tariff FordneyMcCumber Act of 1922
Established Bureau of the
Budget

Government budget
must be voted on by
Congress

Died unexpectedly in
August 1923
1. Morality of White House
improves
–
No scandals
2. “America’s Business is
Business”
–
Pro-Business climate
• Lower taxes
–
Opposition to
Government Assistance
3. Independent
Internationalism
• US now a creditor nation
– Dawes Plan 1924
» Cycle of payments
• Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928
– Renounced aggression
– Led by women
– Jane Addams wins Nobel
Peace Prize in 1931
– Outlawed war unless
defensive
– Lacked enforcement
1. First movies


The Great Train Robbery
Birth of a Nation
2. The first “talkie” was
The Jazz Singer
3. Movie houses were
called Nickelodeons
1. New “heroes” replaced heroes
of past like T.R., WJB, and Wilson
2. Professional Sports
–
Baseball
• America’s pastime
– Played by and for working class
• Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb
–
Boxing
• Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney
–
Football
• Collegiate sport
– Celebrated for its life lessons and
teamwork
• Turned pro with Chicago Bears
– Jim Thorpe
3. Media-promoted spectacles
–
Miss America Pagent 1921
4. Decade’s Hero
–
Charles Lindbergh
•
•
•
•
“Lucky Lindy”
Spirit of St. Louis
May 20-21, 1927
Embodied American Spirit
1. Modernism
– Historical and critical view of the bible
– Accepted Darwin without abandoning faith
2. Fundamentalism
•
Led by protestant preachers in rural areas that condemned
modernists
– Creationism
– Blamed liberals for decline in morals
3. Revivalists
– Preached fundamentalism through radio
– Billy Sunday
– Aimee McPherson
– Attacked drinking, dancing, gambling
A. Radio made Jazz available to
public
B. Media/Novelistic creation
–
F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Great Gatsby 1929
C. Not everyone participated
D. Bubbling postwar cultural
ferment
–
Women
• “Flappers”
• Challenged “separate spheres”
• Smoking, birth control, short
skirts, short hair, drinking
• Sexual revolution
• Changes in divorce laws
• 1 in 8 in 1920
• 1 in 6 in 1930
A. Term coined by Gertrude Stein
B. Alienated Writers
Scorned religion as hypocritical and bitterly condemned
sacrifices of WWI vets as fraud perpetrated by big
business
C. Expatriates
•
• Sinclair Lewis
– Critical of Postwar US
• Ernest Hemingway
– The Sun Also Rises 1926
– Farwell to Arms 1929
– Futility of war
• William Faulkner
A. Created by African-American urban
migration
Largest A.A. community in
Harlem, NYC
•
Population in 1930= 200,000
•
B. Explosive artistic movement
–
Music
•
•
–
Poets
•
•
•
–
Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen
Claude McKay
James Weldon Johnson
Authors
•
–
Duke Ellington , The Cotton Club
Bessie Smith
Zora Neale Hurston
Art
•
Aaron Douglas
C. No Equality….. Yet.
–
–
Still segregated
But promising step
A. Return of “Nativism”
B. Immigration
Preservation of a “white”
nation
– Quota Law of 1921
– National Origins Act 1924
– Supreme Court
reinforcement
–
• Ozawa v. U.S. 1922
– Citizenship request from
Japanese born student a Univ. of
Cal- B
• Upheld in 1923 Cali law
limiting right of Japanese to
own land


South Eastern
European
immigration rose
600%
“100% Americans”
(nativists) did not
like this…
**Emergency Quota Act of 1921
limited the number of
immigrants who could be
admitted from any country
to 3% of the number of
persons from that country
living in the United States in
1910
** Johnson Reid Act, or
Immigration Act of 1924,
changed the 1921 act to 1890
census and changed the
limit from 3% to 2%.
The Immigration Act
of 1929 further
changed the law
because it limited the
total immigration to
152,574.
** In 1965, the nationalorigins system was
abolished by Congress.
** The Emergency Quota
Act of 1921, Johnson
Reid Act of 1924, and the
Immigration Act of 1929
were known as the
National Origins system.
** The system favored
Western European over
Eastern European.
Japanese Immigration
was completely shut off
while the law allowed
unlimited immigration
from Canada and
Central America.
C. Nativism
–
–
Xenophobia continues after WWI
Palmer Raids
– “hysteria”, red scare
• Attorney General Palmer reacting to bombs
• Led to deportations of radicals
• Led to creation of F.B.I.
D. Sacco- Vanzetti Case
–
–
–
–
Anarchists charged with murder and robbery in 1920
Judge called them “anarchists bastards”
Guilty, Electrocuted 1927
Protested by liberal artists and intellectuals

ACLU or American
Civil Liberties Union
-Felix Frankfurter
E. Fundamentalism v. Religion
–
Scopes Trial 1925
– Teacher ( John Scopes) arrested for teaching evolution
in Tenn. classroom
– Clarence Darrow (defense)
– William J. Bryan (prosecution)
– Found guilty
– Later overturned
–
Captured the interest of US
• Long-lasting effects
• Darrow successful in discrediting fundamentalists
• Embarrassed W.J.B on stand
F. KKK
–
–
–
–
–
Revived in 1915
• Stone Mountain, Georgia
• Glorified by “Birth of a Nation”
• Strong political influence
• Supported in low-to middle class cities/towns
1920 membership drive
– Used advertising
Targeted
• African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, Aliens, and Communists
Promise
• Restore nation’s purity
• Defend white womanhood
Collapse
• David Stephenson, rape charges
G. Garvey Movement
– “Back to Africa”
– Negro Improvement Association 1916
– Gain political and economic
independence outside white society
– Encouraged message of racial pride
and self-respect
– Convicted of fraud 1925
A. 18th amendment
Would boost production
and eliminate crime and lift
nation’s morality
– Volstead Act
–
– Passed to enforce
amendment
B. Failure
–
Speakeasies
• President served alcoholic
drinks!
–
Organized crime
• Al Capone
• Bootleggers, rumrunners
–
Repealed in 1933
• Only amendment to be
repealed
•
“Great Engineer”
–
•
“Rugged Individualism”
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
Rags to riches
Disapproved of cutthroat
competition
Demanded corporate
cooperation
Economy = efficient machine
Volunteerism, welfare
capitalism
Individual Self-reliance
industrial self-management
limited federal government
Early Months seemed
promising