Chapter 32 American Life in the “Roaring Twenties”
- After war, Amer began to turn inward and denounced “un-American” lifestyles.
o Partly sealed domestic economy from rest of world.
- Boom of golden twenties = many benefits, incomes, living standards rose for many.
- But new tech, consumer product, forms of entertainment underneath had America fear that it was losing sight of traditional ways.
Seeing Red
- Fears of Red Russia after Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
o Made a tiny Communist party in America.
- Tensions heightened by strikes after war’s end
o Many b/c of high prices and frustrated union-organizing drives.
o Led to conclusion that Bolsheviks responsible for strikes.
- Small strike in Seattle = mayor sending fed troops to stop “the anarchy of Russia”.
- Red Scare of 1919-1920 = nationwide opposition against left-wingers.
o Mitchell Palmer who “saw red” very easily, earned title “Fighting Quaker”. Due to rounding up suspects.
- Other events incl. deporation of 249 alleged “alien radicals” through Buford. ship.
o Sent to Russia, “worker’s paradise”.
- More Red Scare when there was terrorism in 1920 w/ bomb blast at Wall Street still unexplained.
- Reflecting “solid” citizen’s wants, passed criminal syndication acts.
o Made advocacy of violence to make social change illegal.
o Critics opposed b/c thought words weren’t criminal deeds.
- But IWW members and other radicals prosecuted.
o NEW YORK LEGISLATURES (LAWFULLY VOTED ON) removed because they were Socialists.
- Red Scare very beneficial to conservative businesspeople.
o Broke small unions.
o Unions painted as socialist and “un-American”.
- Anti-foreignism reflected in case regarded by liberals as “judicial lynching”
o Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti convicted of murder of paymaster and his guard.
§ Judge and jury prejudiced against defendants because they were Italians, atheists, anarchists and draft dodgers.
o Liberlas and radicals defended two aliens, but condemned men electrocuted.
- Case presented as communist “class struggles” while Amer. Liberals hung heads.
Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK
- New KKK mushroomed in 1920s.
o Largely same appearance but more closely resembled “nativist” movements of 1850s than their former antiblack riders of 1860.
o Antiforeign, antiblack, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist and internationalist, anti-revolutionist, antigambling, anti-adultery and anti-birth control. Pro WASP.
- Klan spread very fast in “Bible Belt” South and Midwest.
o Claimed 5 mil members and had political influence.
o Had impressive displays and parades, and appealed to American loves.
§ Chief warning was the blazing cross.
§ Principle weapon was the bloodied lash.
- Against best American ideals and collapsed suddenly in late 1920s.
o Amer at last went away from terrorism and embezzling by Klan officials = congressional investigation.
o Uncovered bribery to local organizers as an incentive to recruit.
- Was in all an alarming manifestation of prejudice making people anxious about social change in 1920s.
Stemming the Foreign Flood
- 1920s some 800,000 immigrants to Amer, many of them from soutern and eastern Europe.
o 103% Americans opposed “New Immigration” claimed that Europe was sending what it did not want to Amer like written on Statue of Liberty.
- Congress issued Emergency Quota Act of 1921.
o Newcomers from Europe restricted to a definite quota, set at 3 % of people of their nationality.
o National-origins system favorable to immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, b/c by 1910 already large numbers.
- Later legislation replaced by Immigration Act of 1924.
o Quotas cut from 3% to 2%
o Nationality origins base shifted from that of 1910 to 1890, when a lot of southern Europeans didn’t arrive yet.
- Southern Europeans saw it as discriminating and unfair.
o Triumph for “nativist” belief that northern Europeans of better blood.
o Purpose was to keep Amer’s current racial composition, largely northern Euro.
- Discriminatory section in Immigration Act of 1924 where it closed door against Japanese immigrants.
- Exempt from quota system were Canadians and Latin Americans.
o Proximity for them made it easy to attact for jobs when times were good and send them back home easily.
- Quota system = departure in Amer policy.
o Claimed that nation was filling up.
o Immigration largely declined.
- BY 1931, FOR PROB FIRST TIME, MORE FOREIGNERS LEFT THAN ARRIVED .
o Led Amer to sacrifice some of its tradition of freedom and opportunity as well as future ethnic diversity.
- Immigration Act marked end of period of unrestricted immigration.
o Preceding century brought 35 mil newcomers to US.
- Immigrant tide now off, but by 1920s Amer had many ethnic communities from each other.
o Many separated by language, religion and customs.
- Most recent arrivals were Italisn, Jews, and Poles.
o Lived in isolated places w/ own culture.
- Efforts to organize largely fails due to ethnic differences.
o Immigrant works may often have common interest, but had no common language.
o Employers often used this to keep workers powerless.
§ Undermined class and political solidarity.
The Prohibition “Experiment”
- Last of progressive reform movement was prohibition.
o Supported by churches and women.
- Eighteenth Amendment authorized 1919
- Volstead Act gave it the power and made world “safe for hypocrisy”
- Legal prohibition esp. popular in South and West.
o South eager to keep them out of blacks to make sure they stay and West wanted to go against public drunkenness, prostitution, corruption and crime.
- Strong opposition in large eastern cities.
o “Wet” foreign people had Old World styles of social life built around beer.
- Most Amer. Assumed prohibition had come to stay.
o Prohibitionists overlooked tradition of strong drink and weak control by fed gov esp over private lives.
o Forgot fed authorities never enforced law where majority of people or strong minority were hostile to it.
- Could not legislate away thirst.
- Enforcement of prohibition hampered.
o After war raised questions of self-denial.
o Drinking was liberty and wets believed to bring about repeal was to violate law large enough.
§ Hypocritical legislaters voted dry while privately drinking wet.
o Workers protested loss of cheap beer while rich could purchase all illegal alcohol.
o Youth of jazz age wanted beer.
- Was never strong enough enforcement to begin with.
o Fed gov largely understaffed.
o Snoopers to bribery and underpaid.
o Public distressed as many innocents killed by dry agents.
- Many corner saloons replaced by speakeasies that made it possible for many liquor parties.
o Many men and women involved.
o Had rumrunners often from West Indies where there were many cases coming down from Canada.
§ Dry agents opften led to conflict w/ Canada.
- “Home brew” was popular when adults tried to evade law.
o Worst of homemade recipes resulted in blindness or even death.
- But “noble experiment” (of prohibition) not entirely failure.
o Bank savings increased and absenteeism in industry decreased b/c newly sober ways.
o On the whole less alcohol consumed in days before though strong drink still available.
A Golden Age of Gangsterism
- Prohibition led to shocking crimes.
o Profits of selling illegal alcohol = bribery of police.
o Led to violent wars in rival gangs, often in immigrant neighborhoods who wanted to get the rich market of illegal alcohol.
- Gang wars of Chicago had about 500 mobsters murdered.
o Greatest example of lawlessness.
- Very few convictions and arrests.
- Al Capone was murderous booze distributor and began 6 years of gang warfare.
o Got millions of dollars.
o Though branded “Public Enemy #1” could not be convicted of massacre on Valentine’s Day when unarmed members of rival gang.
§ After serving in fed for income-tax evasion, released as wreck.
- Gangsters went to other profitable and illicit activities.
o Prostitution, gambling and narcotics.
o Honest merchants to pay “protection money” and also went as leaders and promoters of local labor unions.
§ Organized crime one of nation’s biggest businesses.
- 1930 “take” of underworld estimated from $12 billion to $18 billion.
- New depths when 1932 kidnapped and murdered infant son of hero Charles A. Lindbergh.
o Caused Congress to pass Lindbergh Law, making interstate abduction in certain cases a death penalty offense.
Monkey Business in Tennessee
- Education ^ in 1920s.
o More states requiring young people to remain in school until age of age of 16 or 18.
o Proportion of 17s in high school or finishing it doubled in 1920s to ¼.
- Revolutionary contributions to educational theory by Professor John Dewey.
o Set forth principles of “learning by doing” that formed foundations of progressive education.
o Believed that “education for life” should be primarily goal of teacher.
- Science also many advances.
o Public health program launched by Rockefeller Foundation wiped out affliction of hookwom.
o Better nutrition and health care = increased life expectancy from 50 – 59 years.
o Subjected to opposition from Fundamentalists.
§ Charged that teaching Darwinist thoughts was against God and destroying faith in Bible.
§ Contributed to moral breakdown of youth in jazz age.
- Attempts made to prevent teaching of evolution and 3 southern states adopted measures.
o One included Tennessee in the heart of the Bible Belt South.
- Monkey Trial when John T. Scopes indicted for teaching evolution.
o Defended by nationally known attourneys while William Jennings Bryan who was Presbyterian Fundamentalist was part of prosecution.
o Charles Darrow part of defendant.
§ WJB was made to appear very foolish and after trial died of stroke.
- Historic clash b/w theology and biology inconclusive.
o Scopes found guilty, fined $100.
o But Supreme Court upheld the law but set aside the fine on a technicality.
- Fundamentalists got at best a hollow victory.
o Increasing numbers of Christians coming to accept some of modern science, but Fundamentalism w/ emphasis on literal reading of Bible still a vibrant force in Amer. Spiritual life.
o Still strong in Baptist Church and in rapidly growing Churches of Christ.
The Mass Consumption Economy
- Prosperity, sustained, real and widely shared part of “roaring twenties”.
o Economy previously faltered in recession of 1920 and 1921, then went forward for nearly 7 years.
§ Recent war and Treasurey Secretary Andrew Mellon’s tax policies favored rapid expansion of capital investment.
o Machines powered by relatively cheap energy from oil fields dramatically increased productivity of laborer.
o Assembly line production reached perfection in Henry Ford’s Rouge River plant when an automobile emerged every ten seconds.
- New industries incl supplying electrical power a giant in 1920s.
- Cars became common where 1930 Americans owned almost 30 million cars.
o Now problems of production were cleared, worried about whether there would be markets for consumption.
- In response came advertising.
o Founder of the “profession” was Bruce Barton who published best-seller The Man Nnobody Knows advocating thesis that Jesus was the greatest adman of all time.
§ Says that every advertiser should study Jesus’s parables (lesson teaching a moral)
- Sports also became big business in consumer economy.
o Home-run heroes incl. George H. (Babe Ruth) better known than most statesmen.
o Fans bought tickets that Babe’s hometown park Yankee Stadium.
o Jack Dempsey heavyweight champion.
- Buying on credit another feature of postwar econ.
o Possess today and pay tomorrow”
o Puritans went deeper into debts to own all kinds of things.
§ Prosperity accumulated on overhanging cloud of debt.
§ Econ increasing vulnerable to disruptions of credit structure
Putting America on Rubber Tires
- Automobile most significant invention during the time.
o New industrial system based on assembly line methods
o Adapted but didn’t invent gasoline engine.
§ Henry Ford and ransom E. Olds developing infant automotive industry.
§ 1910 69 car companies w/ annual production of 180,000 or so cars.
- Early cars not speedy or reliable.
- Detroit became motorcar capital of Amer.
o Growth of new industry largely due to stop-watch efficiency techniques of Frederick W. Taylor who wanted to eliminate wasted motion.
§ “Father of Scientific Management”
- Best known of industrial wizards was Henry Ford who had put Amer on car industry.
o Model T cheap, rugged and reasonably reliable.
o Highly standardized
- Made possible a personal empire through mech genius.
o Dedicated to standardization and grasped applied techniques of assembly-line production through Fordism.
o Methods very economical that by mid 1920s selling Ford for price well within purse of thrifty worker.
- 1914 had manufactured 500,000th Model T, and 1930 had risen to 20 million cars.
o Ford very popular that it was people’s choice for presidential nomination.
- By 1929 1 car for every 4.9 Amer. Which were more than rest of the world.
The Advent of the Gasoline Age
- New industry emerged, dependent on steel and displaying steel from its previously dominant role.
o Directly or indirectly employed 6 mil by 1930.
o Major part of nation’s prosperity.
- Many jobs also from supporting industries.
o Incl. rubber, glass, fabrics, highway construction.
o Amer standard of living went very high.
- New industries grew greatly
o Petroleum business had many rises, many in Cali, Texas, Oklahoma.
o Wilderness frontier to become industrial.
- Railroads hard hit by competition and soon to decline.
- Effects incl. speedy marketing of perishable foodstuffs.
o New prosperity in farms as city dwellers provided w/ food at good prices.
o New roads, faster highways = higher taxes on gasoline.
- At first luxury, then autombile was a necessity.
o Token for freedom and equality and self-respect.
o More vacation, women further freed from dependence on men.
- Isolation among sections broke down and lest attractive states lost populations at great rate.
- Autobuses made possible consolidation of schools and some of churches.
o Suburbs spread out from urban core, and more a nation of commuters.
- Had bad effects as well.
o B/c need of speed, 1 / million Amer. 1 mil Amer died in motor vehicle accident by 1951.
o Condemned automobile as house of prostitution on wheels
§ Celebrated crime waves of 1920s, 1930s aided by motorcar.
§ Gangsters = quick getaway
- Contributed to improved air and environ quality (before horses).
Humans Develop Wings
- Gasoline engines allowed flying.
o Wright brothers Orville and Wilbur performed “miracle” at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
- Public becomes increasingly air-minded.
o Used w/ success at Greaet War, but had some deaths.
o Private companies begin airmail contracts and passenger lines.
§ First transcontinental airmail route from NY to San Francisco in 1920.
- Charles A. Lindbergh first solo west to east of Atlantic.
o Flew in Spirit of St. Louis in 39 hours.
o Did much to popularize flying and gave strong boost to aviation industry.
- Airship provided Amer spirit w/ new industry, though accident rate high (though just as much as early RR)
o By 1930s, 1940s, travel by air on regularly scheduled airlines = much safer than highways.
o Railroad receives another setback
- But made isolation harder and would lead to use of air bombs in WWII
The Radio Revolution
- Guglielmo Marconi inventer of wireless telegraphy in 1890s and used for long-range comm. In WWI.
- Then was voice-carrying railroad and in 1920 could be used to broadcast current events.
o Later micracles in trans-atlantic wireless phonographs, radiotelephones and TV.
- Radio programs reached audiences and tech improvements = long-distance broadcasting possiblie.
o National commercial networks made local programming fall.
- Advertising “commercials” = radio another tool by Amer free enterprise as opposed to government-owned systems of Europe.
- Radio drew Amer to home
o Homes gathered around radio, knitted nation together.
o Educationally and culturall made a significant contribution.
§ Sports ^ and politicians had to adjust speeches to new medium, and more heard what they were to offer. Music to be heard
Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies
- Flickering movie partially result of Thomas Edison’s work.
o Real birth of movie in 1903 when first story sequence as movie.
o Was the The Great Train Robbery.
§ Featured in 5 cent theatres called “nickelodeons”.
- Classics emerged incl. The birth of a Nation w/ glorified KKK in Reconstruction days and defamed blacks and Northern carpetbaggers.
- Industry launched through Hollywood in southern Cali.
o Producers featured many things which made public advocate censorship for some.
o Motion picture actually arrived in WWI when used as anti-German propaganda.
- New era began in 1927 w/ first “talkie” The Jazz Singer.
o Theatres began to be wired for sound.
o At around same time, satisfactory color films produced.
- Movies = greatest entertainment in time.
o Movie “stars” w/ great salaries than president of US.
o Many more well known as nation’s leaders.
- Critics protested the vulgarization of popular tastes through radio and motion pictures.
o But brought about decline of parochialism (narrow-mindedness)
o Standardization and decrease of diversity in America.
The Dynamic Decade
- 1920 Americans no longer lived in countryside but in urban areas.
- Women found more opportunities in employment in cities.
o Though tended to be low-paying jobs incl. clerking, office typing which wee “women’s work”
- Organized birth control movement organized by Margaret Sanger for the use of contraceptives.
- Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party 1923 to fight for an Equal Rights Amendment to Constitution.
- To conservatives, thought US had gone mad.
o Fundamentalists lost ground to Modernists.
o Attempted to compete w/ automobiles by using TV as to boost church membership.
- Advertisers all appealed to sexual allure to sell everything.
o Modest maidens now have new professions as flappers.
o More revealing wear.
§ Symbolized a yearned for independence in some Amer. Women.
o More females also supported new one-piece bathing suits.
- Justification for new sexual frankness could be through Sigmund Freud’s arguments that sexual repression was responsible for nervous and emotional ills.
o Pleasure and health demanded sexual gratification and liberation.
- More taboos as Freudians, teenagers led way in sexual frontier.
o More expressive.
- Jazz from New Orleans along w/ migrating blacks during WWI.
o Saxaphone became new popular instrument.
- Entertainment industry soon made all-white bands including Paul Whiteman’s.
o White bands = most of profits, though not creative soul of Amer’s native music.
- New native pride in black communities.
o Harlem in NYC one of largest black communities in world.
o Had very creative culture that inspired poets incl. Langston Hughs who wrote The Weary Blues.
§ Harlem also resulted in political leader Marcus Garvey who founded United Negro Improvement Assoc (UNIA) to promote association of Amer blacks in Africa.
· Sponsored stores and other businesses incl. Black Star Line to keep black money in black pockets.
· Most would fail and ended up a failure due to mail fraud.
o But energy inspired 4 mil black followers.
§ Later to inspire the Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) movement.
Cultural Liberation
- By 1920s most of aging genteel (polite) culture had died
o Henry James, Henry Adams, William Dean Howells all died.
- Few novelists who was previously popular still popular = Edith Wharton and Willa Cather.
- But in 1920s new generation of different ethnicity writers.
o New ideals, energy and not Protestant.
- Incl. H.L. Mencken who wrote in American Mercury who assailed marriage, patriotism, democracy and prohibition.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise which became Bible for young.
o Inspired flappers w/ liberal outlook to life.
o Followed success with The Great Gatsby which talked of glamour and cruelty of an achievement-oriented society.
- Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy also talked of same theme of murder of pregnant working girl by her socially ambitious lover.
- Ernest Hemingway among writers most affected by war.
o Responded to propaganda and appeal to patriotism bytelling of disillusioned Amer expatriates in Europe in The Sun Also Rises also wrote about war experience in A Farewell to Arms.
- Sherwood Anderson talked of various fictional personalities in Winesburg, Ohio and found them all affected by cramped psychological surroundings.
- Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street, a woman’s unsuccessful war against provincialism (dedicated to province or ignorance)
o In Babbitt, ridiculed George F. Babbitt who was a vulgar real estate broker who confirmed to materialism of his group. Babbittry used to describe one who conforms to materialism of middle class.
- William Faulkner who wrote went back in history and told of consciousness in constricted Southerners.
- Ezra Pound a poet who proclaimed doctrine “Make it New” who profoundly T.S. Eliot who “In the Waste Land” produced most influential poems of century.
- Robert Frost wrote about adopted New Englands.
- E.E. Cummings who relied on unorthodox diction and peculiar things to add a new layer to poetry?
- Eugene O’Neill advocated Freudian notions incl. Strange Interlude
o Nobel Prize in 1936.
o Came from NY’s Greenwich Village which before and after war would make many writers, painters, musicians, actors, etc.
- Harlem Rennaissance also took root which led to many gifted writers incl. Claud McKay, Langston Hughs, Zora Neale, Hurstone and jazz artists incl. Louis Armstrong and Eurbie Blake.
- Architecture also rose w/ new materialism and functionalism.
o Long-range city planning used.
o Frank Lloyd Wright advancing theory that buildings should grow from sites, not imitate Greek, Romans.
o Machine age led to upward growth i.e. through Empire State Building.
Wall Street’s Big Bull Market
- Signals of failing economy
o 1920s 100s of banks failed annually
- due to real estate speculation esp in 1925 Florida.
- Underwater lots sold to purchasers for expensive suns, then hurricane devastated entire place.
o Stock exchange
- Great speculation
- Boom or bust trading pushed market up
- Became a big gambling place.
o Everyone was buying stocks with small down payment.
- Heard from everyone and had real rags-to-riches.
o Little done to curb speculators.
- National debt previously had peaked in 1921, $23 bil.
- Attempted to reduce financial burden when Repub Congress passed Bureau of the Budget.
o Bureau’s director to assist pres in careful estimates of receipts, expenditures for Congress.
o Hoped to prevent inaccurate appropriations.
- Taxes from war not good to millionaires incl. Secretary of Treasury Mellon
o Thought high taxes = rich invest in securities than factories.
o Argued high taxes = down business, and smaller return to Treasury than moderate taxes.
- Melon would have tax reductions from 1921 to 1926. to help “poor” rich people.
o Repealed excess profits, gift tax, reduced excise, surtax, income tax, estate taxes.
o Shifted much of tax burden from wealthy to middle-income groups.
- Mellon a controversial figure.
o Reduced national debt by $10 bil
o Oppositions said that he should have been more aggressive and take more from country when it had prosperity.
- Accused of indirectly supporting bull market.
o If he had absorbed more of national income, would have had lest money for speculation.
- Refusal to do so = ex of probusiness regime that dominated post-war.
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