Roaring Twenties

Change! It exhausted America…

• League of Nations debates• Soldiers returned home

– Some were unemployed– Women/Minorities lose their jobs &

status

• The cost of living doubled

• How do people respond to stress?

POSTWAR TRENDS

• Nativism: Prejudice against foreign-born people.

• Isolationism: Pulling away from involvement in foreign affairs.

• The Red Scare (#1): Anti-communist panic

• " The blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order . . . . eating its way into the homes of the American workman, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat . . . licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, . . . burning up the foundations of society."

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer

The Red Scare• Palmer and his assistant, J. Edgar

Hoover hunted down suspected communists or anarchists– Invaded private homes and offices – Jailed suspects without allowing them

legal counsel

• Hundreds of foreign-born radicals were deported without trials

• No evidence of a conspiracy was ever found – political motives of Palmer

J Edgar Hoover

• 1st Director of FBI (1924-1972)

SACCO AND VANZETTI • The two most famous

victims of the nativist attitude

• May, 1920: Arrested and charged with the robbery and murder of two people in South Braintree, MA.

• Pleaded innocence – had alibis

• Circumstantial evidence• Prejudice judge• Found guilty – sentenced

to death!

BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI

• " In all my life I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood. . . . We were tried during a time . . . when there was hysteria of resentment and hate against the people of our principles, against the foreigner. . . . I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian and indeed I am an Italian. . . . If you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already."

“Keep America for Americans”

• No longer a strong need for unskilled labor.

• So why keep allowing immigration?

• Ku Klux Klan• The Emergency Quota Act

of 1921 – Established the maximum

number of people who could enter the United States from each foreign country

Labor Unrest

• Labor and management clashed.

• Raises and unions were frowned upon.– Boston Police Strike– Steel Mill Strike– Coal Miners’ Strike

• John L. Lewis

Politics

• Corruption was everywhere!

• President Warren G. Harding– His Ohio gang– Teapot Dome

Scandal

American Culture

• The average annual income rose more than 35 percent during the period–from $522 to $705

• Henry Ford’s Model T– Roads – Route 66– Independence– Urban sprawl

The City Life

• Rural vs Urban culture• Fundamentalism: Protestant movement grounded

in a literal, or nonsymbolic, interpretation of the Bible– Scopes Monkey Trial

• Prohibition: The manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages is legally prohibited– Speakeasies: hidden saloons and nightclubs – Bootleggers– Organized crime: Moran, Capone, etc.

Role of Women

• In the rebellious, pleasure-loving atmosphere of the twenties, many women began to assert their independence, reject the values of the 19th century, and demand the same freedoms as men. – Flappers vs Reality

– Double Standard

Work and Family• Working opportunities for women changed.• Mostly teachers, librarians, or nurses• Between 1900 and 1930, the patterns of

discrimination and inequality for women in the business world were established.

• Wider availability of birth control information – birth rate?

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