THE ROARING TWENTIES

CONSERVATIVE PRESIDENTSLIMITED GOVERNMENT – PRO BUSINESS

Warren G. Harding “Return to Normalcy” Presidency filled with scandal “Teapot Dome” – Harding’s Secretary of the

Interior agreed to secretly lease out government oil reserves to his friends

Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge “The business of the American people is

business” Limited regulation, encouraged buying and

spending Result is a decade known for prosperity and

consumerism – the Roaring Twenties

CONSUMERISM

Buy Buy Buy Buy Buy Buy Buy Buy Buy Buy Wages rose for most workers New ways to buy on credit including

installment plans New products (like electrical appliances)

became available Advertising evolved to include catchy slogans

and lure Americans into more buying Most Americans thought the prosperity

would never end

CHANGE (LIBERALS)

Women More Freedom, new jobs New Style – Flappers

ENTERTAINMENT

Radio Silent Movies Sports (Babe Ruth) Heroes (Charles Lindbergh) Fads – flagpole sitting

REACTION TO CHANGE (CONSERVATIVES) Christian Fundamentalism – belief in all parts

of the Bible, skeptical of scientific knowledge Evangelists like Billy Sunday Scopes Monkey Trial (Clarence Darrow versus

William Jennings Bryan)

PROHIBITION

18th Amendment banned alcohol – the Volstead Act enforced this law

Speakeasies (hidden bars) and bootleggers (liquor smugglers) got around the laws

Organized crime – Al Capone Prohibition was ended in 1933 when it was

repealed by the 21st Amendment

REACTION TO CHANGE (CONSERVATIVES)

Red Scare After the Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution in

Russia, radical Communist parties formed in the US

Palmer Raids against Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, and foreign born Radicals

Sacco and Vanzetti trial The Red Scare fueled anti-immigrant feelings

(nativism), a growth of the KKK, and marked a return to isolationism and limits on immigration (quotas)