Homework

• Read Ch 32– Message board• Online quiz

Ch 32 American Life in the “Roaring Twenties”

Seeing Red

• Fear of Communism– Bolshevik Revolution 1917

• Spawns a tiny Communist Party in America– Post-War labor strife

• High prices and failures to form unions result in labor-troubles• General strike – Seattle, 1919

– Orderly, but mayor calls for federal troops to head off the “anarchy of Russia”

– Strong anti-communist feelings after WWI– Labor Unions = Communism–Why?

» Proletariat = working class = Labor unions = strike, or working class revolution = socialism = communism

Red Scare

• Red Scare 1919-1920– Nationwide crusade against left-wing activists

(radical liberals)• Led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer • “Palmer Raids”– Arrest and deportations of socialists/communists

• June 1919 bombings• Sept. 1920 Wall Street bombing

Red Scare• Results of the Red Scare: – Deportations

• The Buford – Dec. 1919– 249 alien radicals deported to the Soviet Union

– Criminal Syndicalism Laws• State laws which banned the mere mention of violence.

– Words = action = violation of the law» Violation of the first amendment

– Used to prosecute radicals in the IWW

– Demise of Unions• Unions = “Sovietism” in disguise (closed shop)• “open shop” = American

– A place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a labor union.

Red Scare continues

• Other backlashes against “radicals”– 1920: 5 Socialists denied seats in the NY state

legislature– Sacco & Vanzetti Trial

• Italian immigrants, admitted anarchists, atheists, and draft dodgers.

• Accused of murdering a factory paymaster• Trial conducted during the supercharged atmosphere of

anti-foreign/anti-radical sentiment– No real evidence that they had committed the crime

• Found guilty, and received death penalty and were electrocuted in 1927– Become “martyrs” in the “class struggle”

Vanzetti Sacco

Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK• The New KKK– The Klan of the 1860s changed

• The 1920s Klan– Primarily in the Midwest and Bible Belt region of the South

• 5 million members by mid-1920s

• Primarily an anti-immigrant/anti-modernist phenomenon– Similar to nativism of the 1850s, although still a racist organization

• Endorses 100% Americanism– Anti: black, Catholic, Jewish, foreign, pacifist, Communist,

internationalist, evolutionist, bootlegger, gambler, birth-control, etc.– Pro: Anglo-Saxon, native-born, Protestant

• Demise comes in the wake of scandals– Congress investigates corruption in the KKK

• Bribery, kickbacks, and murder

Midwest and Bible Belt

Stemming the Foreign Flood• Immigration Restriction

– Caused by the continuation of “new immigration” from war-torn Europe• 800,000 arrived 1920-21, mostly from southern/eastern Europe

• Emergency Quota Act of 1921– Creates a “national origins” system

• Only 3% of a nations American population in 1910 may be admitted– 100 Italian immigrants in the US in 1910, then only 3 Italian immigrants would be

allowed in after 1921

– Problem• By 1910, hundreds of thousands of Southeastern Europeans in the US

– A large flow of immigrants from that area of Europe continue to come to the US» Americans wanted more Anglo-Saxon Europeans

• Solution • Immigration Act of 1924

Emergency Quota ActOf 1921

1910

Annual Immigration to the US1860-1930

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northern and western Europe

southern and eastern Europe

latin America and Caribbean

Asia

Canada

27,000 immigrants

Immigration Restrictions continue• Immigration Act of 1924

– Amends EQA from 3% to 2% of 1890 populations• Ensures smaller quantities of southern/eastern immigrants

– Japanese immigrants barred altogether• Canadians and Latin Americans were exempt

– Main reason: proximity

• Impact of new immigration policies– Immigrants not welcomed

• Prior to these laws, immigration was virtually unrestricted– Major change in US policy (used to be a nation of immigrants)

– More foreigners leave than arrive in 1931 • first time in American history

2%

Immigration ActOf 1921

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Annual Immigration to the US1860-1930

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northern and western Europe

southern and eastern Europe

latin America and Caribbean

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27,000 immigrants

3,000 immigrants

The Prohibition Experiment

• Prohibition– Enacted in 1919 by the 18th Amendment– the Volstead Act

• the enforcement act of Prohibition–The act will define exactly what is prohibited.

– Popularity• Most of the nation was dry by 1919• Midwest & South• Leading industrialists (e.g., Henry Ford)

– Opposition• Large eastern cities; ethnic communities

Prohibition Continued

• Success – – Bank savings increased and absences from work decreased

• Failure– Tradition of drink was too strong– A strong minority opposed it and wanted it repealed– Too difficult to legislate

• people never viewed it as “wrong”• saloons replaced by speakeasies (underground clubs)• encouraged consumption of harder alcohol (easier to transport)

– Govt was too weak to control people’s private lives.– Growth of lawlessness

• both among violators and providers of the bootlegged liquor– Rise of organized crime, Gangsters, the Mob, Mafia, etc

The Golden Age of Gangsterism

• Rise of organized crime– Bootlegging becomes a big business

• Chicago the home of numerous gang wars• 1925 Al “Scarface” Capone

– Gangster who makes millions from bootlegging in Chicago» He’s eventually arrested for tax evasion, serves 11 years

– Success from bootlegging encourages expansion into prostitution, gambling, narcotics, and racketeering • threatening businesses into paying protection money

– By 1930, underground crime had a $12-$18 billion dollar per year economy: • Much larger than the US Gov’t

Illegal activities

Southside Chicago Gangster

St. Valentine’s Massacre

The Night Chicago Died

Gangster Violence

• St. Valentine’s Massacre– Rival gang attack over territory and control of

bootlegging• Kidnappings for ransom– Kidnapping of Charles A. Lindbergh’s infant son– 1923 Lindbergh Law• Interstate kidnapping = possible death sentence

Educational Reform

• Progressive strides in education– Rise in secondary education

• Students required to stay in school until 16 or graduation• # of 17 year olds completing high school doubled in the 20s

• John Dewey– One of Americas foremost philosophers and educational reformers– Set forth the principles of “learning by doing”

• Called for “experiential education” in laboratory schools, where students “learned by doing”

• Scientific advances– The Rockefeller Foundation promotes better public health

• Wipes out hookworm by the 1920s• Better nutrition and healthcare increased life expectancy to 59 years by

1920.

Monkey Business in Tennessee

• Fundamentalism– Religious response to the growing modernism of the

1920s• Emphasized a literal interpretation of the bible—a strong

force in Protestantism, esp. Baptists• Attacked

– the theory of evolution by Darwin» Three states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution

– Jazz age – Progressive education– Birth-control, and many other changes

• Key figures:– Billy Sunday – Radio personality/evangelist

Billy Sunday

Killers of God

The Scopes Trial: “Monkey Trial” • John T. Scopes, high school biology teacher, in

Dayton, Tennessee– 1925 decided to teach the theory of evolution– Arrested

• The Scopes Trial (1925) – “The Monkey Trial”• Scopes defended by liberal attorney: Clarence Darrow• William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution

– Scopes lost, fined $100—but • Fundamentalism was hurt by the ridiculous trial

The Mass Consumption Economy

• Prosperity and Production– Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon

• Tax policies favor rapid expansion of capital investment– New industries and technologies emerge

• New machines, washing machine, refrigerator, sewing machine, and many other appliances

• Ford Motor Company was able to produce a car every ten seconds

–Life was great for Laborers and Employers• Both were making money and in better

conditions

Mass Consumption

• Advertising and Consumption– Now that industry had mastered production, they

now needed consumers to buy their product– Turned to persuasion and other ploys to turn

“wants into needs”– Bruce Barton• Foremost ad professional• Writes The Man Nobody Knows (1925) –

– claimed that Jesus Christ was the greatest ad man of all time – “he picked up 12 men from the bottom ranks of business and

turned them into an organization that conquered the world.”

Mass Consumption

• Sports becomes big business– Baseball and “the babe”• More people knew Babe Ruth than Washington

politicians– Boxing and Jack Dempsey• Million dollar fights

Mass Consumption

• People are making money, but when they don’t have it, they turn to…– CREDIT• People were now tied to debt

– Both good and bad.» As long as people pay their debt all was good

Putting American on Rubber Tires

• Automobile• Emerges in 1890s– Autos were primarily produced in Europe– Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds began production

of American autos• By 1910, 69 car companies in the US• Ford then sought to produce an inexpensive car

• Henry Ford– Employs Frederick W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific

Management to the auto industry– Standardizes production to create a democratic car for the

masses (as opposed to toys for rich people): • the Ford Model T• Create a car that any working man could own• By 1925, Model T cost $260

– Model T’s• 1914: 500,000 produced• 1930: 20,000,000 • By 1929 there was 1 car for every 4.9 Americans

Ford Motor Company

1908 1914 1920 19240

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Ford

Ford

Months

Effects of the Auto• Automobiles become the “kingpin” industry– Employs 6 million people– Related industries: steel, rubber, glass, fabrics, highway

construction, filling stations, and petroleum• The Petroleum Industry– Explodes as oil fields are tapped in Oklahoma, Texas, and California

• Railroad industry– Declines as a result of competition from passenger cars, busses,

and trucks• Agricultural boom– Allows for marketing of perishables, such as fresh fruits and

vegetables within urban areas

Social effects of the auto

• A sign of freedom and independence– Leisure hours (vacations, Sunday drives, “touring”)– Frees women from dependence on men…– Breaks down isolation of communities

• Auto deaths:– 1 million Americans killed in automobile accidents by 1951– used by gangsters for quick getaways

• Disruption of home life– Dating moved from the ice cream parlor to the highway– An Indiana judged condemned the automobile as “a house of

prostitution on wheels” • Contributes to cleaner air quality in cities…ironically• In the end, it brought more pleasure than pain

Humans Develop Wings

• Airplanes– Origins• Orville and Wilbur Wright – Kitty Hawk, N.C. 1903

– 1st heavier-than-air craft with sustained flight• Used in WWI 1914-1918• Commercial airmail after the war

– NY to San Francisco 1920 – 1st transcontinental airmail route

1920s Airplane

• Charles A. Lindbergh - 1927– 1st solo trans-Atlantic flight in the single-engine

Spirit of St. Louis– Lindbergh’s flight boosts prestige of the air

industry• Commercial air will become a significant form of travel

(and significantly safer) by the 1930s and early 40s.

– Howard Hughes built the Spruce Goose, not Lindbergh

Impact of Air Industry

• Impact:– Another nail in the RR industries coffin– New weapon for war – • paves the way for aerial bombardment of urban centers

– Contributes to the “shrinking” of the Atlantic and Pacific…• World becomes smaller• Makes American isolation much more difficult

Radio Revolution

• Origins– Guglielmo Marconi – invents the “wireless” in 1890s

(wireless telegraph)• Used in WWI for long range communication

– KDKA – Pittsburgh (1920): • first to broadcast news of the Harding’s landslide victory

• Emergence– Initially, radios picked up local broadcasts (a range of a few

miles)– By mid-1920s, national broadcasting networks

• US radio is a private enterprise, paid for by commercial advertising• A different system than Europe’s gov’t-owned radio

Impact of the Radio

• Impact and Significance– A unifying force, a return home• Standardizes experiences

– Amos n’ Andy show– Sporting events– Political messages

– Opens American’s horizons: music, art, religion, politics, etc.

– Accelerates the “name brand” revolution

Film/Movies

• Origins– An invention of Thomas Edison– By 1890s, used as a novelty in penny-arcades and

peep shows– The Great Train Robbery (1903)

• The first real “movie” -- 10 minutes long, 14 scenes, contained a story sequence…–Silent films–Music, but no dialogue

• Nickelodeons – 5 cent theaters

Film/Movies

• The Birth of a Nation (1915)– D.W. Griffith’s full length film (2+ hours) – Presented the myth of Reconstruction which

glorified the KKK • Portrayed Radical Republicanism and black

participation in gov’t as evil.

The Birth of a Nation

Film/movies/Hollywood

• Hollywood:– Industry moves to California to escape Edison’s

control of the industry and to take advantage of ample sunshine, space, and scenery

• WWI propaganda films gave industry a boost:– “Hang the Kaiser” flicks

• “Talkies” – talking pictures usher in a new era in 1927– The Jazz Singer (1927), • Al Jolson – a white singer in blackface

Impact of Film• Impact– Emerge as the #1 source of amusement– “Star” system emerges in Hollywood –• huge salaries, huge promotion, nationwide releases in

industry-owned theaters…– Adds to the standardization of American tastes and

language– Breaks down close-mindedness of ethnic

communities:• Creates common experiences across ethnic lines–Americanization of immigrants

The Dynamic Decade

• Modernism in Society – Jazz Age values– American was becoming more urban

• 1920 census: more live in cities than in rural areas for 1st time

• Women’s Rights– Birth control movement

• Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood– National Women’s Party, 1923

• Begin campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution– Women in the workplace

• Women finding work in the cities, and, during WWI in war-industries• Still, most cluster in clerical or retail work (“women’s work”) that

generally paid less– Flappers

• A symbol of independence and freedom from traditional values

• Bobbed hair is a state of mind and not merely a new manner of dressing my head. It typifies growth, alertness, up-to-dateness, and its part of the expression of the élan vital! (spirit)… I consider getting rid of our long hair one of the many little shackles that women have cast aside in their passage to freedom. Whatever helps their emancipation, however small it may seem, is well worth while.

• Sexual values– Advertising capitalizes on sexual allure to sell products– Sigmund Freud

• Psychologist • Argues that sexual repression was responsible for neurosis and

anxiety– Jazz

• Energetic music that captured the spirit of the 1920s• Embraced by youth–This was the music that will anger parents» Later it’ll be rock ‘n roll, heavy metal, disco, rap,

punk, etc.

Jazz Age

• Black pride– Jazz

• Moves northward with migrating blacks during the Great Migration

• W.C. Handy, Jelly Roll Morton, and Joseph King Oliver become leading icons of the early jazz age

• Harlem Renaissance– 100,000 African-American residents in the 1920s– produced a vibrant, creative culture (both artistically and

politically)– Capitalize on Afro-centric themes and images…

Harlem Renaissance • Poets:

– Langston Hughes -- The Weary Blues (1926); A Dream Deferred;

– Countee Cullen – Heritage;– James Weldon Johnson -- 50 Years;; Lift Every Voice and Sing

• Writers – Zora Neale Hurston – Black Death

• Painters– William H. Johnson– Palmer Hayden– Lois M. Jones

Langston Hughes

1923

1953

Zora Neale Hurston

Lois M Jones

• Political leaders:– Marcus Garvey and the United Negro

Improvement Association (UNIA)• “Back-to-Africa” movement;

– black separatism; Black Star Steamship Line– convicted of mail fraud and deported to Jamaica in 1927

– An important figure in encouraging black separatists (Nation of Islam; Malcolm X, etc,)

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey Video

Cultural Liberation

• Literary Voices– H.L. Mencken

• Societal critic/commentator• Baltimore-based writer for the monthly American Mercury • Attacked middle-class American “booboisie”–Uneducated and uncultured people

– F. Scott Fitzgerald• Captures the “bewilderment” of the Jazz age in his novels• This Side of Paradise (1920); The Great Gatsby (1925)

– Ernest Hemingway (the “Lost Generation”)• Deeply affected (and disillusioned) by WWI – served on the Italian

front• The Sun Also Rises (1926); A Farewell to Arms (1929)

• Sherwood Anderson– Attacks small-town America in Winesburg, Ohio

(1919)• Characters are all warped

• Sinclair Lewis– Attacked small-town values in Main Street (1920)

and middle-class materialism in Babbit (1922)• Poets– Ezra Pound; T.S. Eliot; E.E. Cummings; Robert Frost

Architecture

• Architecture– Frank Lloyd Wright• “Prairie Style” architecture• attempts to incorporate the new values of materialism

and functionalism: buildings should grow from their sites, and not impose upon them

– NYC’s Empire State Building built throughout the 1920s, opened in 1931

Wall Street’s Big Bull Market

• Signals of trouble in the 1920s economy– Get-rich-quick schemes abound, and often fail

resulting in crashes• 700 banks failed per year in the 1920s• 1925 Florida real estate boom

– land sold by “developers” that was worthless—inaccessible, no piped water, salt marshes, etc.

– It all went down hill, after a devastating hurricane

Stock Market madness

• A bull market prevailed that encouraged speculation– Bull Market• tends to be associated with increasing investor

confidence to buy in anticipation of future price increases in stock and therefore future capital gains.

– Speculation• Invest in stocks, hoping for big gains at a high

risk.– Then, people started buying-on-margin

Buying on Margin

• Buying-on-margin:–you put money down with a broker to open

an account to buy stock • That account now lets you borrow more money

from your stock broker to purchase more stocks– Then you hope that profits will cover the loan.

– If it goes down, you lose and still owe money you borrowed from your broker• You also owe interest on the loan from your

broker.

• Gov’t Fiscal Policy– They failed to do anything to curb speculation– National Debt • Increased from $1,188,235,400 (1914) to

$23,976,250,608 (1921) as a result of WWI• Congress responds

– Created the Bureau of the Budget (1921)» Its main job was to prevent too much govt. spending

Trickle Down Economics

• Andrew Mellon (sec. of the Treasury)

– Endorses a “trickle down” theory: • high-taxes cause the rich to sheltering money, instead of

investing it.• Tax reductions encourage them to spend and invest• Tax reductions from 1921-26:

– Taxes on $1 million = $663,000 in 1921; (66% of income)– In 1926 it decreased to $200,000 (20%)

– Tax reductions lowered the National debt by $10 billion• If the rich are paying less in taxes, who will have to pick up

the slack?– Middle Class

Wealthyupper class

Middle Class

Lower Class

Pay little in taxes.Supposed to cause

spending and investing that will trickle down to

the other classes $$$$$$$$$$ $ $$ $

• Mellon, hailed as the greatest secretary of the Treasure since Alexander Hamilton– Others blamed him for not reducing the debt

more than 10 billion• The country was doing well, he could’ve easily taxed

the rich more than 20%– Others even blame him for the stock market crash

in 1929• Reduction in taxes made it seem like people had money

and were spending or at least putting it on credit. – Indirectly encouraged the bull market and speculation