The 1920s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 24.

The 1920s

© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.

Chapter 24Chapter 24

Prosperity

• WWI good for U.S. economy– Brief period of difficulty in moving from war economy

• 1922-1929: American economy was vigorous and prosperous

• GNP rose at 5.5% annual rate– From $149 billion to $227 billion

• Unemployment never exceed 5%• Real wages rose 15%

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

A Consumer Society• 1920s: growth of consumer goods

– Cars, tractors, washing machines, electric irons, radios, vacuum cleaners

– “Consumer durable”

– Fresh fruits and vegetables

• Number of cars purchased in the U.S. increased– Paved roads extended beyond the city

– Gas stations, hot dog stands, motels

• Greater number of Americans bought into the stock market, especially middle class


Growth of Six Leading Grocery Chains


A People’s Capitalism

• Capitalists claim economic inequality not an issue with 1920s prosperity

• Middletown– Robert and Helen Lynd

• Consumer credit– Capitalists won’t raise wages, workers unorganized to

force it

• People’s capitalism reality mainly middle class


The Rise of Advertising and Mass Marketing

• General Motors and annual model change• Advertising appealed to consumer desires

– Professional advertising firms– Beauty products, cigarettes, fashion

• Advertisers believed they were helping Americans achieve self-improvement and personal pleasure

• Advertising aimed at middle class


Expenditures on Advertising, 1915-1929


Changing Attitudes Toward Marriage and Sexuality

• Modern husbands and wives were encouraged to share and pursue sexual and recreational satisfaction together

• “Flappers” : independent-minded young, single females


An Age of Celebrity

• Mega-events and mass marketing

• George Herman “Babe” Ruth

• Charles Chaplin

• Rudolph Valentino

• Charles A. Lindbergh– Spirit of St. Louis

• Role of media hype in celebrity


Celebrating Business Civilization

• Bruce Barton– The Man Nobody Knows (1925)

• Welfare Capitalism


Industrial Workers

• Skilled workers higher wages, more benefits• Semiskilled and unskilled industrial workers

contended with labor surplus• New machines sometimes replaced workers• 40% of workers remained in poverty• Coal and textile workers suffered the most through the

1920s• Sidney Hillman• Unions lost significant ground in the 1920s

– “Yellow dog” contracts



Value of Regional Cotton Textile Output, 1880-1930

Women and Work

• Women were excluded from skilled craftsmen• Women were often relegated to areas of “women’s

work” within an industry• Received less pay for equal work of a man• Opportunities grew for white-collar work

(secretaries, typists, file and dept. store clerks)• Social services and teaching • Amelia Earhart


The Women’s Movement Adrift

• Expected changes from women’s voting did not occur

• Some success– Sheppard-Tower Act– League of Women Voters

• Internal division– Equal Rights Amendment– Protective labor legislation

The Politics of Business

• 1921-1933: Republican presidents governed the country

• Blend of Gilded Age mediocrity and Roosevelt style state building


Harding and the Politics of Personal Gain

• Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)– Harry M. Daugherty– "Ohio Gang“: Harding’s drinking and womanizing

cohorts

• Albert Fall– Teapot Dome and Elk Hills– Harry Sinclair– Edward Doheny

• Charles R. Forbes– Veterans’ Bureau

• Harding dies in 1923(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Coolidge and the Politics of Laissez-Faire

• Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)– Revenue Act (1926)– Curtailed FTC ability to regulate industry


Hoover and the Politics of “Associationalism”

• Herbert Hoover Secretary of Commerce (1921-1929)

• Economy built on trade associations


The Politics of Business Abroad• Hoover wanted Commerce Dept. to control U.S.

international economic relations• Washington Conference

– Charles Evans Hughes– Five-Power Treaty– Hoover shut out

• Dawes Plan– Charles G. Dawes

• Kellogg-Briand pact (1928)• Continued intervention in Latin America


Farmers, Small-Town Protestants, and Moral

Traditionalists

• Not all Americans enjoyed prosperity of the 1920s

• Farmers suffered due to overproduction

• Moral-traditionalist white Protestants in small towns– Fear and suspicion of foreigners


Agricultural Depression

• Slump for farmers after the wartime boom

• Tractor enabled over-production– Produce market flooded– Prices fell dramatically

• Many farmers lost, sold, or abandoned their farms

• McNary-Haugen Bill



Price of Major Crops, 1914-1929

Cultural Dislocation

• Majority of farmers saw themselves as ‘backbone of the nation’– White, Protestant, Northern-European, hard-working,

honest, God-fearing

• 1920 Census: urban areas vs. rural areas• Fears of rural whites manifested in their support of

– Prohibition

– The Ku Klux Klan

– Immigration restrictions

– Religious fundamentalism



Urbanization, 1920

Prohibition• Eighteenth Amendment: prohibited manufacture

and sale of alcohol– January 1920– Difficulty of enforcing the law– Speakeasies and bootleggers

• Prohibition effect: encouraged law-breaking more than abstinence

• Al Capone– Liquor trafficking and violence– Chicago

• Urban supporters rethink Prohibition, confirms racist views of rural supporters


The Ku Klux Klan• William Simmons• D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation• Hiram Evans• Hatred of members extended beyond Blacks to include Jews,

Catholics, foreigners• 1924: 4 million Americans were members of the KKK,

many outside the South– Women’s Auxiliary group: Women of the KKK

• In many ways, Klan was also typical fraternal organization• Klan hate speech often sexually themed, reaction against

changed attitudes toward sexuality


Immigration Restriction

• Many white Protestants responded to Klan style nativist arguments

• Johnson-Reed Act (1924)– Limits and quotas on immigration – Western hemisphere exempt

• Border Patrol• Limitation quotas spread to other areas

– Ivy League colleges


Fundamentalism vs. Liberal Protestantism

• Protestant fundamentalism– Bible as God’s word

– Bible as the source of all “fundamental” truths

– Took opposition to liberal Protestantism and the discoveries of science

• Fundmentalists anti-urban• Liberal Protestants believe that religion had to

adapt to modernism, including skepticism and scientific discoveries


The Scopes Trial

• Fundamentalists pass law prohibiting teaching of Theory of Evolution in Tennessee (1925)

• ALCU and other worried it could be start of new wave of restrictions of Free Speech

• John T. Scopes– William Jennings Bryan vs. Clarence Darrow– Bryan’s rejection of Darwin partly reaction of Populist

defender against Social Darwinism

• Publishers, afraid of Fundamentalist backlash, remove Darwin from textbooks until the 1960s


Ethnic and Racial Communities

• Government policy discouraged “new immigrants”

• Continued migration within the United States– African Americans moved from the South to the North

– Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande into the Southwest

• Creation of vibrant subcultures• Surge in religious and racial discrimination in the

Jazz Age


European Americans• “Americanization campaigns”• Many Americans responded by strengthening their

ethnic and religious identities and cultures through organizations and associations

• Use of the vote: Democrats• Split in the Democratic Party between

– Urban-ethnic forces: Smith– Rural-Southern forces: McAdoo

• Election of 1928– Alfred Smith– First Catholic nominated to presidency


African Americans

• African-Americans continue to migrate north• Harlem: the “Negro Capital”

– A Black ghetto

• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters– A. Philip Randolph

• Jazz– Willie Smith– Count Basie– Duke Ellington– Louis Armstrong


The Harlem Renaissance

• Harlem Renaissance: create works in rooted in African culture not imitations of white culture

• "New Negro“• White owned Harlem Jazz Clubs refused to

admit African-Americans• Charlotte Mason

– Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston


Mexican Americans• Johnson-Reed Act, 1924

– Mexican-Americans became primary source of immigrant labor 500,000 Mexicans came to U.S. in 1920s

– Most settled in Southwestern, U.S.• Texas, California• Dominated agriculture and construction jobs• Exploited and discriminated against

• Californios• Los Angeles to Mexican-Americans what Harlem

was to African Americans• corridos


The “Lost Generation” and Disillusioned Intellectuals

• Alienated White artists• Sinclair Lewis

– Main Street (1920)– Babbit (1922)

• T.S. Eliot-- The Waste Land (1922)• F. Scott Fitzgerald-- The Great Gatsby (1925)• Eugene O'Neill’s plays• Ernest Hemingway-- A Farewell to Arms (1929)• William Faulkner--The Sound and the Fury


Democracy on the Defensive

• Alienated intellectuals begin to distrust democracy

• H.L. Mencken: democracy “the worship of jackals by jackasses”

• Walter Lippmann

• John Dewey: Faith in democracy


Conclusion

• Consumerism and mass production• Society seemed somewhat more egalitarian

– However, many groups did not benefit from economic prosperity of the 1920s:

• Working-class, rural Americans

• Democratic party– Tensions between traditionalists and new populations

• Alienated intellectuals• Republicans take credit for prosperity


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The 1920s © 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved. Chapter 24.

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