The Roaring 20’s
America in the 1920s
■America was changed by the
industrialism of the Gilded Age &
the economic boom of WWI
■During the 1920s:
–The USA was the richest & most
developed country in the world
–Wages rose, hours declined, &
Americans had access to new,
innovative consumer goods
The increase
national name
brands
The
SecondofIndustrial
Revolution
(rather than locally produced goods)
■From
1922
to 1929,
U.S.
linked
Americans
morethe
than
everhad
a 2nd industrial boom:
–Mostly in consumer durable
goods like appliances, cars,
radios, furniture, & clothing
–Electricity replaced steam power
–Corporations used salaried
executives, plant managers, &
engineers to increase efficiency
Henry Ford
revolutionized
the
assembly
line,
The consumer
goods
revolution
“The
work
moves
and
the “$5-day,”
&industry
advertising
was best new
seenmarketing
inthe
themen
autostand
still”
techniques, & annual model changes
Henry
Ford’s
River
Rouge plant
emphasized
The
auto
industry
stimulated
the steel,
sheet
uniformity,
speed,
precision,
& coordination
metal, rubber,
glass,
petroleum
industries
1920s consumerism led to luxury living:
New appliances like refrigerators,
washing machines, & vacuums
Glenwood
Stove Ad
1920s advertising
1920s consumerism led to luxury living:
Radios & movies boomed
100 million Americans went to the
firstnetwork
“talkie”
NBC was movies
the 1st successful
radio
in 1929 The
per
week
Economic Weaknesses
■The “Roaring 20s” was not as
prosperous as it appeared:
–RR, cotton textile, coal industries
suffered due to new competition
–Farmers boomed during WWI
but a decline in demand after the
war deflated farm prices
Farm per capita income was $273 per year vs.
the U.S. average of $681 per year
Social Changes in the
“Jazz Age”
Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party (NWP)
failed to pass an Equal Rights Amendment
Women and the Family
–“Flappers” rebelled against
Victorian customs
–Divorce rates doubled
Women and the Family
■Change (& continuity) for women:
–Female workers after WWI were
limited to teachers, nurses, &
other low-paying jobs
–The 19th
Amendment
gave women the
right to vote but
few women
voted
Women and the Family
■Families
became
“I have been
kissed bysmaller
dozens ofdue
men.to I
suppose
I’ll kiss
more.”
greater
access
todozens
birth control
—character in F. Scott Fitzgerald novel
■Children were no longer need to
work to support their families
■Teens began to “discover” their
adolescence & revolt against their
parents by drinking, having
premarital sex, & searching for
new forms of excitement
The Flowering of the Arts
■The Harlem Renaissance
reflected the explosion of black
culture & the “New Negro”:
–Jazz & Blues expressed the
social realities of blacks; Louis
Armstrong became very popular
–Langston Hughes’ poetry,
novels, & plays promoted
equality, condemned racism, &
celebrated black culture
Josephine Baker,
internationally
renowned singer/dancer
“You could be black & proud, politically
assertive & economically independent,
creative & disciplined—or so it seemed”
The
Flowering
of theonArts
“The
Waste
Land” focused
a sterilegave
U.S. society
■The 1920s
rise to a new
Poetry
discussed
a “botched
wasteland”
class of
intellectuals
who
“Main
Street”–narrow-minded
small towns
condemned
the new American
“Great
Gatsby”—human
emptiness
industrial
society & materialism:
Romantic individualism
& violence
–Pessimistic
Literature:
TS Eliot,
Ezra Pound,
Lewis,
Plays ofSinclair
tragic pipedreams
F Scott Fitzgerald, Hemmingway
–Playwrights: Eugene O’Neill
–Music: Gershwin & Copland
Marcus Garvey
■Marcus Garvey was the
preeminent civil rights
activist of the 1920s
■Oppression in the U.S.
necessitated strict
segregation & black
nationalism
“Theformed
most dangerous
enemy
■He
the United
of the
Negro race”
Negro
Improvement
—W.E.B. DuBois
Assoc & advocated a
return to Africa
The Rural
Counterattack
The shift in focus from the countryside revealed
Life
in thetraditional
Jazz Ageties of
that urban City
life was
different;
home,
church,
schools
were
absent
■The 1920 census revealed for the
1st time that more Americans lived
in cities than the countryside
The New York City skyline in 1930: Skyscrapers
gave cities a unique architectural style
The Rural Counterattack
■Rural Americans identified cities
with saloons, whorehouses,
communist cells, & immorality
■The 1920s saw an attempt to
restore a “Protestant” culture in
America & an attack on any
“un-American” behavior like
drinking, illiteracy, & immigration
Prohibition
■In Jan 1920, Congress passed
the Volstead Act to enforce the
18th Amendment (1919)
■26 states had already banned
alcohol but the real conflict came
when prohibition was applied to
urban ethnic groups
■Rural America became dry &
A rural, Protestant attack on the
urban
consumption
dropped
but
“social disease of drunkenness”
was severely resisted
Per capita consumption of alcohol (1910-1929)
The 1st KKK
disbanded when
Reconstruction
ended in the
1870s, but the 2nd
KKK formed in
1915 to protect
rural, Christian
values
The Ku Klux Klan
■The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in
1915 (Stone Mtn, GA) was aimed
at blacks, immigrants, Jews,
Catholics, & prostitutes
■The “Invisible Empire” sought to
ease rural anxieties in the face of
changing cultural attitudes
■Used violence, kidnapping,
murder, & politics to affect change
D.W. Griffith’s The
Birth of a Nation
(1915) was one of the
most controversial
films in movie
history. Set during &
after the Civil War,
the film glorifies
white supremacy &
the KKK
The Fear of Radicalism
Including
the bombing
of Attorney
■The
most dramatic
rural
reaction
Palmer’s
in 1919
wasGeneral
the Red
Scarehouse
(1919-1920):
–A general workers strike in
Seattle, police strike in Boston,
& series of mail bombs led to
fears of anarchy & socialism
–Deportation without due
process, searches without
warrants, & imprisonment of
innocent people was initially
backed by the American people
Palmer’s
“Soviet Ark”
The solution is simple:
“S.O.S.—ship or shoot”
“Place the Bolsheviks on ships
of stone with sails of lead”
“Stand them up before the firing
squad and save space on our ships”
Italian
immigrants
Nicola Sacco &
Bartolomeo
Vanzetti were
The judge in the case even
executed for referred to Sacco & Vanzetti
armed robbery as “those anarchist bastards”
& murder
without
evidence
Immigration
Restriction
This act still
allowed over 500,000
immigrants
mostlyfeared
from South
& East
Europe
■Many
mass
immigration
to
the U.S. among Europeans
escaping post-war rebuilding:
–The
Immigration
Act (unlike
(1921)the
Immigration
restrictions
placed
a Prohibition,
cap on European
Red
Scare,
or the KKK)
lasted
beyond the
1960s)
immigration
to 1920s
3% of(into
each
ethnic group’s U.S. population
–The National Origins Quota Act
(1924) limited U.S. immigration
to 150,000 total; Allocated most
spots to British, Irish, Germans
The
Fundamentalist
Challenge
Pentecostals, Church of Christ, Jehovah’s
■The
most long-lasting
reaction of
Witnesses
all grew in membership
rural America was a retreat to
Christian beliefs
–Aggressive fundamentalist
churches provided a haven for
rural American values
–The Scopes “Monkey Trial”
revealed the rural attack on
evolution in schools
Conclusions
■Urban America came to define all
of the United States in the 1920s:
–Radio, movies, advertising
reflected urban culture
–Consumer goods were made in
American cities
–Small-town whites, blacks, &
immigrants moved to cities
■But, conservative rural Americans
(religious fundamentalists & KKK)
attacked these new, urban ideas
Politics of the 1920s
Politics of the 1920s
■The 1920s were dominated by
Republicans in the White House
& in both houses of Congress:
–Limited Progressive reforms
–Developed a close relationship
between the gov’t & business
that promoted private enterprise
–Advocated a foreign policy
based on economic investment
of U.S. business in the world
Republican Presidents of the 1920s
■Warren Harding won the 1920
election promising “a return to
hisin presidency
TR setnormalcy”;
aside oil fields
WY & CA for is
the navy;
Harding’s
Sec of the Interior
Albert
Fall accepted
remembered
for two
things:
$400,000 to “lease” oil reserves to businesses
–Corruption: prohibition bribery,
graft in the Veterans Admin, &
the Teapot Dome scandal
–Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon’s
cutback on gov’t spending,
increase in protective tariffs, &
reduction of income taxes
Teapot Dome Scandal
Republican Presidents of the 1920s
“Four-fifths
our troubles
in &
thisVP
lifeCalvin
would
■Hardingofdied
in 1923
disappear
if
we
would
just
sit
down
&
be
still”
Coolidge became president & won
“Coolidge
aspired
to become
the least president
his own
term
in 1924:
the country ever had; he attained his desire”
–Coolidge’s honesty & integrity
was reassuring, but “Silent Cal”
was not much of a leader
–Coolidge continued Harding’s
policies of less gov’t spending,
lowering income taxes, & limiting
Congressional legislation
But urban voters
had clearlyDemocrats
had turned to the
The Divided
Democratic
Party,
they
just
needed
a
■While
the
Republicans
dominated
charismatic leader to unite the party
the gov’t, Democrats were split:
–Rural Dems in the south & west
favored prohibition, traditional
Protestant
thecandidate
Klan
Neither
urbanvalues,
nor rural &
Dem
could
win
majority
so
compromise
–Urban
Democrats
were
mostly
candidate, John Davis of WV
immigrants
■The Democratic Nat’l Convention
Davis
received
fewer
popular
votes of any
in NYC
for the
1924
presidential
Democratic candidate in 20th century
nomination exposed this polarity
The 1928 election reflected a divided USA:
■Herbert Hoover ■Alfred Smith
–Republican
–Democrat
–Protestant
–Catholic
–For prohibition
–“Wet”
–Native-born
–Of immigrant
parents
–Self-made
millionaire
–Rose through
Smith
appealed
to
new
voters
in
cities
but
committed
to
Tammany
Hall
to
Aalienated
new
urban
voting
bloc
was
revealed
in
1928:
old-line
Democrats;
Catholicism
st
Forbusiness
the
1
time,
Democrats
won
the
majority
of
&
be
a
progressive
hurt
Smith
more
than
anything
else
votes
in
the
12
largest
U.S.
cities
volunteerism
NY governor
Herbert Hoover
Instead of the laissez-faire
of Gilded Age, the
Republican
presidents
of proved
the 1920stopioneered
■Herbert
Hoover
be the
a closeeffective
relationship
business
most
of with
the Republican
presidents of the 1920s:
–He believed in free enterprise &
He
was
experienced
having
served
as
tried
to
strengthen
U.S.
trade
by
head of Wilson’s Food Admin & as
allying business
with &
the
gov’t
Commerce
Sec for Harding
Coolidge
–He doubled the size of the U.S.
bureaucracy by creating
bureaus to oversee housing,
transportation, & mining
Conclusions:
The Old and the New
The Old and the New
■Urban culture & industrial
production dominated the 1920s:
–Mass-produced consumer
goods, mass media, advertising
spread a new American culture
–Much to the dismay of a rural
America trying to cling to
traditional values
■Progressive reforms were no
match for technology & prosperity