Pearl HarborDecember 7th, 1941

The Roaring 20’sTHE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Demobilization and Adjustment to Peace, 1920

Demobilization

The transition process during which a nation at war returns to a state of peace

After World War I, the federal government no longer needed a large amount of:

Guns

Bullets

Uniforms

Battleships

Demobilization and Adjustment to Peace, 1920

Returning from War

Soldiers returned from home looking for jobs

African Americans, women, and others who had filled in for the soldiers were suddenly no longer needed

Spanish Flu

Lasted from 1918-1919

Actually killed more Americans than the war itself

The Red Scare

Bolsheviks

A group of Russian communists

Pulled Russia our of WWI

Opposed private property, religious beliefs, and free enterprise

Americans refused to extend diplomatic recognition to the new Russian government.

With the success of the Bolsheviks, Americans were afraid of a communist revolution in the United States.

The “Palmer Raids”

J. Edgar Hoover, at this time a young lawyer

Supervised the arrest of Russian workers suspected of radical activity in 12 cities

More than 200 of them were deported

Hoover directed simultaneous raids in 30 cities, known as the “Palmer Raids”

About 6,000 suspects were arrested

Most of them were foreign-born residents from Russia and Germany

Sacco and Vanzetti

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (a shoemaker and a fish seller) were arrested in 1920 for murders committed during a payroll truck robbery.

Reasons they were discriminated against:

They were anarchists

Immigrants

Showed disloyalty during the war by going to Mexico to escape the draft

Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and sentenced to death and executed in 1927.

The Republican Presidents:Warren Harding

Return to Normalcy

Emphasis on maintaining prosperity at home and a less ambitious foreign policy abroad.

Favored American businesses

Higher tariffs

Fordney- McCumber Act

Goods that were subject to custom duties (taxes on imports) paid an average duty of 38.5% of their value.

Other countries retaliated by raising their own tariffs on goods from the United States which caused made a horrible impact on world trade.

Lower taxes

Believed that wealthy Americans were more likely to invest in the economy than other social classes were

Slashed taxes on the rich

Minimal government interference in business activities

The government did not overturn existing laws regulating business, they just simply did not enforce them.

The Republican Presidents:Warren Harding

Restrictions on Immigration

In 1917, a literacy test was passed over President Wilson’s veto.

Required immigrants to read and write in their own language.

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

Limited the total number of immigrants who could enter the United States in any one year to 350,000

Fewer than half the number admitted in 1920

The Republican Presidents:Warren Harding

Foreign Policy

Harding was a moderate internationalist

Tried to reduce the threat of war

Worked to promote American business overseas

The Washington Naval Conference

Proposed partial disarmament

that the United States, Great Britain, and Japan each stop building new battleships and even scrap some of those they already had

US and Britain accepted equality in the number of battleships and Japan got a little fewer

The ratio was 5:5:3

The Four-Power Treaty

Included the United States, Britain, Japan and France

They agreed to respect each other’s territories and rights in the Pacific Region and to submit to any “joint conference” of all four powers.

The Republican Presidents:Warren Harding

International Finance

During WWI, the US had lent $10 billion to allied nations, and the US expected them to pay it back with interest

The Allies argued against having to pay the US back because their soldiers paid in their lives when the US only paid with their money in the beginning.

Harding extended Britain’s repayment period to 62 years and lowered the interest rate

German Money

Germany was unable to pay their reparations

The German government printed excessive amounts of paper money to make its reparation payments

This led to wild inflation, increasing the prices of goods in Germany

The Dawes Plan

Private American investors lent $200 million to Germany which Germany then used to pay its reparation payments.

The Dawes Plan

The Republican Presidents:Warren Harding

International Finance

Harding actively promoted American economic expansion and investment in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East

Teapot Dome Scandal

The Secretary of the Interior arranged to have the oil-rich lands at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, previously reserved for the navy, transferred to his own department

He then secretly leased them to businessmen in exchange for personal bribes

The Republican Presidents:Calvin Coolidge

“Coolidge Prosperity”

Symbol of old-fashioned American values

“The business of America is business”

Called “Silent Cal” because he barely spoke in public.

Coolidge’s accomplishments

Reduced government expenditures and vetoed a bill to help farmers because he did not think the government should regulate farm prices

Coolidge’s Downside

Did nothing to curb the frenzy of stock market speculation and the continuation of high tariffs and regressive taxation

Led to overproduction and under-consumption

The Republican Presidents:Calvin Coolidge

Further Restrictions on Immigration

The Immigration Act of 1924

Lowered the total number of immigrants per year to 150,000

The National Origins Act

The number of immigrants became based on the percent of people of that national origin compared to all Americans

Coolidge’s Foreign Policy

The Geneva Disarmament Conference 1927

Attempted to have success like Harding, but the participants refused to accept further limitations and nothing was achieved

The Kellogg- Briand Pact

15 nations signed the pact

Promised not to use war as an instrument of policy

The Republican Presidents:Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Self-made millionaire and engineer

Optimistically announced that America was on the verge of ending poverty

Favored business cooperation to increase efficiency and avoid wasteful competition

Supported promoting voluntary cooperation among farmers with government funds

Rugged individualism

Hoover believed that if individuals are given an education and equal opportunities, the country will succeed

How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s Altered the American Economy

Greater Efficiency in Manufacturing

Henry Ford

Introduced electric conveyor belts on his assembly lines

The Rise of Automobiles

The production of automobiles helped employ many other areas as well

Steel, glass, rubber, paved roads, bridges, garages, gas stations, etc.

The suburbs

Encourages people to move to the outskirts of town to live

The Expansion of Other New Industries

Electric household appliances

Use of petroleum and natural gas

Radio commercials and motion pictures

How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s Altered the American Economy

New Marketing Practices in an Age of Consumerism

Advertising agencies specialized in developing slogans and advertisements to attract customers

Instalment Buying

Paying for things in instalments instead of all at once after a small down payment

Used this for goods like cars, refrigerators, and household appliances

Higher wages

Increased spending

Allowed for more leisure time

Spent more in entertainment

How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s Altered the American Economy

Speculation in the Stock Market and in Real Estate

The federal government reduced taxes on the rich

The rich then reinvested their profits into the stock market

People assumed that stocks were a way to get rich quick

Buying on “margin”

Investing in real estate

How the Boom of the Roaring 20’s Altered the American Economy

Prosperity of the 1920’s was Unevenly Distributed

Farmers

Advances in technology led to overproduction and a catastrophic drop in farm prices

Many farmers went bankrupt

Workers in the Railroad, Coal, and Textile Industries

Minority Groups

Limited job opportunities

Low pay

High levels of unemployment

Attempts to Preserve Traditional Values

Prohibition

Temperance Movement

A group of people who saw alcoholic beverages as the root cause of poverty, crime, and the breakdown of families and sin

18th Amendment

Prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors”

Volstead Act

Defined “intoxicating liquors to include both wine and beer

Permitted limited production of alcohol for medical or religious purposes

Difficult to enforce

“Bootleggers” brought beer and whiskey across from Canada

“Speakeasies” served liquor in cities

Criminal bosses like Al Capone in Chicago made a fortune from selling bootlegged liquor

Repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933

Attempts to Preserve Traditional Values

Fundamentalism and the Scopes Trial

Christian Fundamentalists

Believed that the bible- including the account of Creation- was to be taken literally

Opposed Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

John Butler

Passed a bill in the state legislature that prohibited the teaching of evolution in state-funded public schools

The American Civil Liberties Union

Formed in 1920 to protect freedom of speech and other civil liberties

John Scopes

Scopes was a high school teacher who chose to defy the Butler Act and taught the theory of evolution

Scopes was convicted, but his fine of $100 was cleared later on a technicality

New Values

Women

19th Amendment

Guaranteed women the right to vote

Increased employment opportunities

New household appliances gave middle class women more leisure time

Flappers

Fashionable young women who wore lipsticl, short hair, and straight simple dresses or pleated skirts that just reached their knees

Known as “flappers” because they were like birds flapping their wings

Margaret Sanger

Developed the Birth Control League in 1921 which has since become Planned Parenthood

New Values

The “Lost Generation”

Responsible for weird fads

Goldfish swallowing, marathon dancing, and flagpole sitting

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott-Fitzgerald

Showed how the search for purely material success could lead to tragedy

Hollywood and New Popular Heroes

Hollywood became a mecca for the motion picture scene

More and more Americans were attracted to the movies as a form of entertainment

Some people believed that Hollywood had become a corrupting influence

The African-American Experience and the Harlem Renaissance

Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois

Booker T. Washington

Thought African-Americans should not try to rock the boat and stay out of the way of the white people

W.E.B. Du Bois

Thought that African-Americans should fight for social equality

Created the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The Great Migration

A wartime shortage of workers led Northern manufacturers to employ African-American workers

Thousands of African Americans moved to the north over the next 20 years

Continuing Racism and Violence

Forced to move to a limited number of neighborhoods because landlords and homeowners elsewhere refused to rent or sell to them

Lynching was still a major problem in the south

The African-American Experience and the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance

The greatest concentration of African Americans was found in Harlem

African Americans of different occupations mixed together in Harlem where they lived side by side

There was a flourishing of black culture during this time

Writers and Artists

Enter the New Negro, Alain Locke

Langston Hughes

Aimed to capture “the spirit of the race” and inspire his people

Home to Harlem, Claude McKay

Jazz

Jazz roots come from old work songs, blues music from the south, and African American spirituals

Marcus Garvey

Established the Universal Negro Improvement Association

Believed that “black is beautiful” and disagreed with the NAACP

Other Minority Groups

Hispanic Americans

Landowners from Texas, Arizona, and California wanted to encourage immigration because they needed cheap labor for development

The citizens disagreed because they felt as though the Hispanic immigrants were there to take their jobs

American Indians

The goal of federal policy towards American Indian tribes remained the same as under the Dawes Act

Assimilate their members into “mainstream” society and turn them into small farmers

The American Indian Defense Association

Created in 1921 to protect the rights of American Indians

Indian Citizenship Act 1924

Made all Indians into United States Citizens

Indians could vote in federal elections and became subject to federal income tax

Other Minority Groups

Asian Americans

Less than 1% of the population was Asian

Most lived on the West- especially California

Asian immigration was barred by the Immigration Acts of 19221 and 1924

Asiatic Exclusion League 1905

Aimed to end Asian immigration and to segregate Asian children in public schools

The Ku Klux Klan

The KKK has laid dormant since the 1870’s

Rebirth of the Klan in 1915 by William Simmons

Not only included traditional racism against African Americans, but also embraced the hatred of

Jews, Catholics, unions, immigrants, an all those advocating the rights of women

“One hundred percent Americanism”

Klan members supported the Democratic Party

Membership started to decline after 1930

The Roarin’ 20’s in Florida

Beginning of the “snow birds”

Rosewood

A rural African- American community in community southwest of Gainesville

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