The Jazz Age-- 1920-29I. Return to “Normalcy”

A. National PoliticsB. Local PoliticsC. Big Business

II. Fordism--Mass Production and the Five Dollar DayIII. The New Consumer Society

A. Rising Standard of LivingB. Mass Culture-- Radio, Movies, Music, SportsC. Black RenaissanceD. Gender Revision-- The Flapper

IV. Culture in ConflictA. ProhibitionB. CensorshipC. Red ScareD. Scopes TrialE. Ku Klux Klan

Warren G. Harding“America's present need is not

heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It's one thing to battle successfully against the world's domination by a military autocracy because the infinite God never intended such a program; but it's quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life's requirements.”

• Teapot Dome Scandal• Heavy Drinker• Illegitimate daughter

Calvin Coolidge

– “The chief business of the American people is business”

– “The man who builds a factory builds a temple, and the man who works there worships there”

Local Politics

• People tire of reform

• Bosses return• Prohibition

corrupts

NYC Mayor Jimmy “Beau James”

Walker

Fordism

• The Assembly Line– reduces cost from $1,200 (1904) to

$290 (1924)– reduces time from 12 hours to 2 hours

• The Five Dollar Day– Wants workers to purchase cars– Prevents strikes, quitting– Encourages assimilation

Henry Ford

Hollywood

• Studios founded– Paramount, Universal,

Fox, Metro, Warner Brothers

• First feature– Birth of a Nation

(1915)

• First “talkie”– The Jazz Singer (1927)

Clara Bow-- The “It” Girl

Music• Recording Industry• Jazz, Blues, and

Country– Louis Armstrong– Bessie Smith– Jimmie Rodgers

The Golden Age of Sport

• Babe Ruth• Red Grange• Bobby Jones

Sports

• 90,000 fans to see Carpentier-Dempsey fight

Black Renaissance

• Artists, writers, intellectuals• Sophistication

– Duke Ellington

• Pride– Marcus Garvey

• United Negro Improvement Assn.

The Flapper

• Short hair• No corset• Short dress• Heels• Smoking• Drinking

Sex

Louise Brooks

Rudy Valentino

• Freud• Birth Control

– Margaret Sanger, What Every Woman Should Know (1921)

Bootlegging

• Capone earns $60,000,000 annually

• Government corrupted

• St. Valentine’s Day Massacre-- 7 killed by men in police uniforms

Censorship• Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

• Will Hays

The Red Scare Continued

• Italian-American anarchists arrested 5/5/1920

• Accused of killing two while robbing factory

• Executed 8/22/1927

• Worldwide protest

Sacco Vanzetti

The Scopes “Monkey Trial”

• 1925: 24 y.o. John T. Scopes teaches evolution• Butler Law (OK, FL, MS, NC, KY) prohibits• Clarence Darrow v. William Jennings Bryan• Science versus religion

The Klan, 1915-30

• 4M members (1924)– Mostly in the

North• 80,000 in NYS

– Politics• Govs. of TX, IN, OR• Mayors of Atlanta,

Indianapolis, Denver

• Targets– Blacks, Catholics,

Jews, Immigrants, Unions

The Coming Crash

• Schumpeter’s Paradox• Rising Expectations