Chapter 23
Teddy’s Death
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Booming Business
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Ford Motor Company
Stimulated rubber, gasoline and motor oil,
advertising, and highway construction
industries
Capitalism Expansion
Overseas markets
Loaned money to Europe
Economic Nationalism
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High tariffs = no foreign competition
Corporate tax cuts
New technologies help farmers but
don’t solve problems
Post-war slowdown and surplus
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War kept prices/demand high
Tariff depressed exports
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Electricity = appliances
Automobile
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Ailing Agriculture
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Consumer Prosperity
Increase in use of oil and electricity
Oil 23% of U.S. energy by 1930
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Energy technologies
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Recession and Recovery
After WWI slowdown
64% rise in manufacturing output between
1919-1929
Scientific management, Frederick Taylor
Assembly line (Fordist method)
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1919
Allowed return of Republican “old
guard” (conservatives)
Not laissez-faire government but limited
government regulation
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Increased Productivity
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Fordney-McCumber Tariff 1922
Smoot-Hawley Tariff 1920
Farm income falls 60% between 19191921
Weak prices
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Surplus = lower prices
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Increase in productivity
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Frederick Taylor’s studies
Increased use of oil and electricity
Assembly line
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Wage policies
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Higher wages increase productivity
“one’s own employee should be one’s
own best customer”
• Union activity decreased
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Fordism
• Ford didn’t invent assembly line, he
perfected
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Business consolidation
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Product development
Market research
Employee relations
Distribution
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Ford, GM, Chrysler, GE
Elaborate management systems
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Corporate giants
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Ford
Chain stores
Department stores
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Advertising
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Air conditioning
Albert Lasker (Chicago)
Celebrities
Credit
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New consumer credit
Payment schedules
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Prior to 1920 – personal loans
Less women working than
Pre- WWI
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Wage discrimination
Corporate World
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Secretaries
Clerks
Typists
Women not “welcomed”
into professional world
• Less women lawyers, doctors
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Employed women lived in
the city
More women going to
college
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Membership falls 20%
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Why?
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Overall wages climbed
Industrial changes
Management hostility
Series of unsuccessful strikes
– United Mine Workers
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“open shop” success
– Keeping jobs open to nonunion
workers
– In south unionization violently
resisted
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Anti-Union Campaign
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Welfare capitalism
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Cafeterias
Recreational facilities
Improved benefits
Higher wages
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Democrats
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White south and
immigrants
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Republicans
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Accepted limited
government
regulation as aid to
stabilizing business
Northern farmers,
corporate leaders,
business people,
native, professionals
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Agenda
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Good choices:
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Tax cuts (income, estate)
Help for big business
America 1st foreign policy
High tariffs
Bureau of the Budget
Sec. of State: Charles Hughes
Sec. of Commerce: Hoover
Supreme Ct Justice: Taft
Pardoned Eugene V. Debs
Bad choices:
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Charles Forbes (Veteran’s Bureau)
Harry Daugherty (Att. General)
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Took bribes for not prosecuting certain
criminals
Albert Fall (Interior Secretary)
Scandals
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Teapot Dome Scandal
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Fall accepted bribes for granting oil leases near
Teapot Dome, Wyoming
Fall 1st cabinet officer in U.S. History to go to
jail
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Reduction of income tax
Increased Tariff FordneyMcCumber Act of 1922
Established Bureau of the
Budget
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Government budget
must be voted on by
Congress
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Died unexpectedly in
August 1923
Assumed presidency in 1923
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Re-elected in 1924
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Independent Internationalism
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No scandals
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Pro-Business climate
• Lower taxes
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– Ex. Child Labor Law
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• disarmament
Supreme Court
• Overturned reform measures
Opposition to Government
Assistance
• Mississippi River flood 1927
• No obligation to protect against
“hazard of elements”
• Vetoed WWI vet bonuses
• Vetoed McNary-Haugen Bill for
farmers
– Gov’t purchases surplus of 6 basic
commodities
Harding’s Achievements:
• Washington Naval Arms
Conference
• Dealt with Arms race
• Reduced battleship construction
“America’s Business is Business”
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Foreign Policy
• Only pursue what’s in America’s
national interest
• Isolationism
Morality of White House
improves
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• Respect territorial holdings
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Coolidge:
• 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
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Reform in legislative
branch
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Business
Prohibition
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Women
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• Only success 1921 with
Sheppard-Towner Act
– Adopted in 1920
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1922 Midterm elections
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Labor and farm groups
Conference for political action
1924 Party
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Sen. La Follette
Supported by AFL, Socialist
Party
19th amendment 1919
Little political power
Party split
• Alice Paul and others want
equal rights for women added
to the constitution
• Others content with right to
vote
• Reforms short-lived
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Cities
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1920 urban population surpasses
rural
Migration of African Americans
Cars
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Changes America
 Increased mobility
 Changed social dymanic
 Standardized transportation
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Women, farmers, families,
culture, and suburbs
Consumer goods
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Electricity and gas reduce
household labor
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Electrical use tripled in 1920s
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Coal, oil, an natural gas
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1929= 20 million cars
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Influenced foreign policy with
Mexico
Teapot Dome Scandal
Oil Rush in TX and OK
Lots of waste
Wilderness
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Easier access for vacations
Heavy pressure from tourists
Hoover concerned
Sierra Club, Audubon, Izaak
Walton League
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Reading
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Magazine circulation over 2.5
million
• Saturday Evening Post
• Reader’s Digest
• Book of the month clubs
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Radio
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Movies
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Rudolph Valentino, Mary
Pickford, Cecil B. DeMille
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By 1922
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Independent ventures led to
networks
• NBC 1926, CBS 1927
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Advertising
1st “talkie” Jazz Singer 1927
– 1st movie with sound
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• 500 new stations, national
obession
Reached all classes
Combined opulence, sex, and
adventure
Celebrities
• Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow,
Drew America together and
shared culture
Began 11/02/1920
• Pittsburgh w/ KDKA
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1st cartoon Steamboat Willie
1928
Weekly attendance 80 million
by 1930
• MGM, Warner Brothers
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Shaped youth culture
Less impact in rural America
• Resisted by evangelical
Christians
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New “heroes” replaced
heroes of past like T.R., WJB,
and Wilson
Professional Sports
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Baseball
• America’s pastime
– Played by and for working class
• Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb
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Boxing
• Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney
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Football
• Collegiate sport
– Celebrated for its life lessons and
teamwork
• Turned pro with Chicago Bears
– Jim Thorpe
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Media-promoted spectacles
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Miss America Pagent 1921
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Decade’s Hero
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Charles Lindbergh
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“Lucky Lindy”
Spirit of St. Louis
May 20-21, 1927
Embodied American Spirit
Modernism
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Fundamentalism
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Historical and critical view of the
bible
Accepted Darwin without
abandoning faith
Led by protestant preachers in rural
areas that condemned modernists
Creationism
Blamed liberals for decline in
morals
Revivalists
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Preached fundamentalism through
radio
Billy Sunday
Aimee McPherson
Attacked drinking, dancing,
gambling
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Radio made Jazz available to public
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Media/Novelistic creation
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
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This Side of Paradise 1925
The Great Gatsby 1929
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Not everyone participated
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Bubbling postwar cultural ferment
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College Students
Threw parties, drank, danced the
Charleston, went to jazz clubs
• Sexual revolution
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Women
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“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
Term coined by Gertrude Stein
Alienated Writers
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Scorned religion as hypocritical and
bitterly condemned sacrifices of
WWI vets as fraud perpetrated by
big business
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Expatriates
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Sinclair Lewis
– Critical of Postwar US
– The Main Street 1920
– Babbitt 1922
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Henry L. Mencken
– Baltimore journalist
– 1924 The American Mercury Magazine
– Ridiculed small-town America,
Fundamentalism, all politicians
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Ernest Hemingway
– The Sun Also Rises 1926
– Farwell to Arms 1929
– Futility of war
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William Faulkner
Poets
• Ezra Pound
• T.S. Elliot
Created by African-American urban
migration
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Largest A.A. community in
Harlem, NYC
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Population in 1930= 200,000
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Explosive artistic movement
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Music
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Poets
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Zora Neale Hurston
Art
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Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen
Claude McKay
James Weldon Johnson
Authors
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Duke Ellington , The Cotton Club
Bessie Smith
Aaron Douglas
No Equality….. Yet.
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Still segregated
But promising step
Architecture
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Skyscrapers
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Art
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Painted impact of new technology
and urban life in stark paintings
Thomas Hart Benson
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Celebrated mythic past
Edward Hopper
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Faded towns, lonely cities
Georgia O’Keefe
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Form follows function
Congestion and allure of city
Music
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Jazz
From New Orleans
Brought to New York City
Embraced by white composers like
George Gershwin
• Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong
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Return of “Nativism”
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Immigration
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Preservation of a “white” nation
Quota Law of 1921
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National Origins Act 1924
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Limited immigration to 3% of # of foreignborn persons from a given nation counted in
the 1920 census
Max of 357,000 persons
Restricted to 2% of 1890 census
Limit 161,000
“America must be kept American”
Focused on Southern and Eastern Europeans
Supreme Court reinforcement
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Ozawa v. U.S. 1922
– Citizenship request from Japanese born
student a Univ. of Cal- B
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Upheld in 1923 Cali law limiting right of
Japanese to own land
Hispanics
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No restrictions on Latin America
Migratory workers, seasonal
Discrimination
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Nativism
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Xenophobia continues after
WWI
Palmer Raids
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Fundamentalism v. Religion
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– Teacher ( John Scopes) arrested
for teaching evolution in Tenn.
classroom
– “hysteria”, red scare
• Attorney General Palmer
– Clarence Darrow (defense)
– William J. Bryan (prosecution)
– Found guilty
– Later overturned
reacting to bombs
• Led to deportations of radicals
• Led to creation of F.B.I.
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Sacco- Vanzetti Case
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Anarchists charged with
murder and robbery in 1920
Judge called them “anarchists
bastards”
Guilty, Electrocuted 1927
Protested by liberal artists and
intellectuals
– Appeals for six years
Scopes Trial 1925
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Captured the interest of US
• Long-lasting effects
• Darrow successful in
discrediting fundamentalists
• Embarrassed W.J.B on stand
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KKK
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Revived in 1915
“Back to Africa”
– Negro Improvement Association 1916
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Stone Mountain, Georgia
• Glorified by “Birth of a Nation”
• Strong political influence
• Supported in low-to middle class
cities/towns
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Used advertising
Targeted
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1920 membership drive
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Garvey Movement
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African-Americans, Jews, Catholics,
Aliens, and Communists
Tulsa 1920
 Black show shiner arrested for sexually
assaulting a white woman
Promise
 Whites gathered outside courthouse
 African Americans came to protect shoe
shiner from white mob and being lynched
Restore nation’s purity
• Defend white womanhood
 Shots fired, chaos
Collapse
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Convicted of fraud 1925
Race Riots
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Gain political and economic independence outside
white society
Encouraged message of racial pride and self-respect
 Mob of 10,000 whites went wild
David Stephenson, rape charges
 120 homes burned
 Mass graves, 300? Died
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Rosewood 1923
 Just like Tulsa
 6 African-Americans killed
 Entire community burned to the ground
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18th amendment
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Would boost production and
eliminate crime and lift
nation’s morality
Volstead Act
– Passed to enforce amendment
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Failure
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Speakeasies
• Not just criminals
• Willingness to break the law led
to wider decline in standards
and morals
• President served alcoholic
drinks!
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Organized crime
• Al Capone
• Bootleggers, rumrunners
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Repealed in 1933
• Only amendment to be repealed
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Social issues on the forefront
prohibition, immigration,
religion, and clash of urban and
rural values
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Democrat Nominee
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Al Smith
 Governor of NY
 Supported by progressives
 Campaigned cross-nation
 Catholic
 Against quotas
 Opposed prohibition
Republican Nominee
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Herbert Hoover
 Self-made millionaire
 Served three presidents
 Secretary of Commerce
 Brilliant but aloof
 Boring campaign
 Pro-prohibition
 Used “Coolidge prosperity”
 Image of morality, efficiency,
service and prosperity
 “Rugged Individualism”
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“Great Engineer”
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“Rugged Individualism”
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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