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


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Decade notable for obsessive
interest in celebrities
Consumer Culture
Eat, drink & be merry, for
tomorrow we die
Return to normalcy
US turned inward---isolationism
Jazz Age
first modern era in the U.S.
Break with Progressivism?
The Second Industrial Revolution


U.S. develops the highest standard
of living in the world
The twenties and the second
revolution
– electricity replaces steam
– Henry Ford’s modern assembly line
introduced

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Rise of the airline industry
Modern appliances and
conveniences begin to change
American society
The Automobile Industry

Auto makers stimulate sales
through model changes,
advertising

Auto industry fostered the
growth of other businesses

Autos encourage movement and
more individual freedom.

By 1929 auto industry most
productive in US.
•Radio sets, parts
and accessories
brought in $60
million in 1922…
• $136 million in
1923
•$852 million in
1929
•Commercial
Broadcasting
•Listening audience was 50,000,000 by 1925
Patterns of Economic Growth

Structural change (F.W. Taylor)
– professional managers replace individual
entrepreneurs
– corporations become the dominant
business form

Uniformity
– Big business weakens regionalism

Government Policy
– Corporate tax cuts
Economic Weaknesses

Labor Problems?
– Welfare Capitalism

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Coal displaced by petroleum
Farmer Problems
– decline in prices and exports


Growing income disparity
Middle class speculates with idle money
“Flappers” sought
individual freedom
Ongoing crusade for
equal rights
Teenaged children no
longer needed to work and
indulged their craving for
excitement
most women remain in
the “cult of domesticity”
sphere
Rural Americans
identify urban culture with Communism, crime,
immorality
Sex becomes an all-consuming topic of interest in popular entertainment
Communities of home, church, and school are absent in the cities
Conflict: Traditional values vs new ideas found in the cities.
Reemergence of the KKK was a
response to the cultural changes
taking place in America.
1925: Membership of 5 million (Hiram
Evans)
Attack on urban culture and defends
Christian/Protestant and rural values
Against immigrants from Southern
Europe, European Jews, Catholics and
American Blacks
Sought to win U.S. by persuasion and
gaining control in local/state government.
Violence, internal corruption result in
Klan’s virtual disappearance by 1930 but
will reappear in the 1950s and 1960s.
•Red Scare, 1919 to 1921, was a
time of great upheaval…U.S.
“scared out of their wits".
Attorney General
Mitchell Palmer
•"Reds” as they were called,
"Anarchists” or "Outside
Foreign-Born Radical
Agitators” (Communists).
•Anti-red hysteria came about after WWI and the
Russian Revolution.
•6,000 immigrants the government suspected of
being Communists were arrested (Palmer
Raids) and 600 were deported or expelled from
the U.S.
•No due process was followed
•The U.S. Government began to restrict
certain “undesirable” immigrants from
entering the U.S.
•Congress passed the Immigration Act of
1921, in which newcomers from Europe were
restricted at any year to a quota, which was
set at 3% of the people of their nationality
who lived in the U.S. in 1910.
•Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, the
quota now 2% and the origins base was
shifted to that of 1890, when fewer
southeastern Europeans lived in America.
•Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti
were Italian
immigrants charged
with two murders and
robbing a shoe factory
in Braintree, Mass.
•The trial and appeals lasted 1920-1927. Convicted on
circumstantial evidence, many believed they had been
framed for the crime because of their anarchist and prounion activities.
•In this time period, anti-foreignism was high as well.
•Liberals and radicals rallied around the two men, but
they would be executed.
•Goal: was to reduce crime and poverty
and improve the quality of life by making
it impossible for people to get their hands
on alcohol.
•This "Noble Experiment" was a failure.
•Midnight, January 16th, 1920, US went
dry.
•The 18th Amendment, known as the
Volstead Act, prohibited the manufacture,
sale and possession of alcohol in America.
Prohibition lasted for thirteen years.
•So was born the industry of bootlegging,
speakeasies and Bathtub Gin.
•People drank more than ever during
Prohibition, and there were more deaths
related to alcohol.
•No other law in America has been violated
so flagrantly by so many "decent law-abiding"
people.
•Overnight, many became criminals.
•Mobsters controlled liquor created a
booming black market economy.
•Gangsters owned speakeasies and by 1925
there were over 100,000 speakeasies in New
York City alone.
Al Capone
Detroit police
inspecting equipment
found in a hidden
underground brewery
during the prohibition
era.
Chicago gangster
during Prohibition
who controlled the
“bootlegging”
industry.
Elliot Ness, part
of the
Untouchables
Agent with the U.S.
Treasury Department's
Prohibition Bureau
during a time when
bootlegging was
rampant throughout the
nation.
1925
The first conflict between
religion vs. science being
taught in school was in 1925 in
Dayton, Tennessee.
John T. Scopes
Respected high
school biology
teacher arrested
in Dayton,
Tennessee for
teaching
Darwin’s Theory
of Evolution.
Clarence Darrow William J. Bryan
Sec. of State for
Famous trial
President
lawyer who
Wilson, ran for
represented
president three
Scopes
times, turned
evangelical
leader.
Represented the
prosecution.
Dayton,
Tennessee
Small town in the
south became
protective
against the
encroachment of
modern times
and secular
teachings.
The trial is conducted
in a carnival-like
atmosphere. The
people of Dayton are
seen as ‘backward’ by
the country.
The right to teach and
protect Biblical
teachings in schools.
The acceptance of
science and that all
species have evolved
from lower forms of
beings over billions of
years.
The 1920 Election
The 1920 Election
Wilson’s idealism and Treaty
of Versailles led many
Americans to vote for the
Republican, Warren
Harding…
US turned inward and
feared anything that was
European…
The 1924 Election
Calvin Coolidge served as
President from 1923 to 1929.
“Silent Cal”.
Republican president
REPUBLICAN ECONOMY SUPPORTED LAISSEZ FAIRE
AND BIG BUSINESS……….
+
Lower Taxes
Less Federal
Spending
=
+
$
Higher
Tariffs
Fordney-McCumber Tariff---1923
Hawley-Smoot Tariff ---1930
raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%!!!
Strong
National
Economy
Washington Naval Conference
[1921-1922]
U. S.
5
Britain
5
Japan
3
France
1.67
Italy
1.67
Four-Power Pact (December 13, 1921).
Britain, France, Japan and the United States agreed to
submit disputes among themselves over Pacific issues to a
conference for resolution.
Pledged mutual respect for the possessions and mandates of
other signatories (participants) in the Pacific.
Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty (February 6, 1922).
The leading naval powers, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and
the United States pledged adherence to limitations on the
tonnage of capital ships and accepted a moratorium on new
naval construction. 5-3-1 ratio
Britain could only have 1 ship for every 3 ships in Japan, and
Japan could only have 3 ships for every 5 ships in the U.S.
Britain, U.S. and Japan agreed to dismantle some existing
vessels to meet the ratio.
Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty (February 6, 1922).
Agreed on a series of rules for the use of submarines in
future warfare and also outlawed the use of poisonous gases as
a military weapon.
Nine-Power Treaty (February 6, 1922).
Big Four, plus Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and
China endorsed the Open Door Policy and pledged mutual
respect for Chinese territorial integrity and independence.
In the following months, the U.S.
Senate ratified all of the treaties
from the Washington Conference.
Afghanistan
Finland
Peru
Albania
Guatemala
Portugal
Austria
Hungary
Rumania
Bulgaria
Iceland
Russia
China
Latvia
Kingdom of the Serbs
Cuba
Liberia
Croats and Slovenes
Denmark
Lithuania
Siam
Dominican Republic
Netherlands
Spain
Egypt
Nicaragua
Sweden
Estonia
Norway
Turkey
Ethiopia
Panama
Additional countries which join by July 24, 1929. Persia, July 2, 1929; Greece,
August 3, 1929; Honduras, August 6, 1929; Chile, August 12, 1929; Luxemburg August
14, 1929; Danzig, September 11, 1929; Costa Rica, October 1, 1929; Venezuela,
October 24, 1929.
Kellogg-Briand Pact: 1928
 15 nations committed to outlawing aggression and war for
settling disputes.
 Problem  no way of enforcement.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact provided for outlawing war
as an “an instrument of national policy,” and was
further notable for the following:
The
pact was signed in August 1928 by 15 nations.
In
the following months, more than 60 countries
joined in this renunciation of war.
The
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
studied the matter and issued a report that maintained
that the pact did not impair the nation’s ability to act to
protect the Monroe Doctrine. US Senate ratified this
treaty.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact provided for outlawing war
as an “an instrument of national policy,” and was
further notable for the following:
Major problems with this treaty
1. No enforcement mechanism was provided for changing the
behavior of warring signatories.
2. The agreement was interpreted by most of the signatories
to permit “defensive” war.
3. No expiration date was provided.
4. No provision existed for amending the agreement was
included.
 In the 1930’s, the idealism of “ending all war”
would be shattered when the Japanese, Italy,
Germany and Soviet Union began WWII.
 Idealism, is what it is: “ideas”. Some can
work and others can’t.
 In a realistic world, countries realized that
they needed to protect themselves from
aggressor nations.
 It is still this way today but we have the
United Nations to promote world peace and
“contain” aggressor nations.
Dawes Plan
•Presented in 1924 by the committee headed by Charles G.
Dawes to the Reparations Commission of the Allied nations. It
was accepted the same year by Germany and the Allied
Nations.
•The Dawes Committee was entrusted with finding a solution
for the collection of the German reparations debt, set at
almost $54 billion.
•Germany had been lagging in payment of this obligation and
the Dawes Plan provided a repayment schedule over 4 years to
the Allies. The Germans would continue to lag behind in
payments.