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The American JourneyA History of the United States, 7th Edition
By: Goldfield • Abbott • Anderson • Argersinger • Argersinger • Barney • Weir
Chapter
•Toward a Modern
America: The 1920s
24
Toward a Modern America:
The 1920s
The Economy That Roared
The Business of Government
Cities and Suburbs
Mass Culture in the Jazz Age
Culture Wars
A New Era in the World?
Herbert Hoover and the Final Triumph of the New Era
Learning Objectives
What contributed to the economic boom of the 1920s?
What was the relationship between big business and
government in the 1920s?
What factors contributed to the growth of America’s cities
and suburbs in the 1920s?
Learning Objectives (cont'd)
How did new systems of distribution, marketing, and mass
communication shape American culture?
What forces fueled the culture wars of the 1920s?
What rold did the United States play in international
diplomacy in the decade after World War I?
Learning Objectives (cont'd)
What factors contributed to Herbert Hoover’s victory in 1928
over his Democratic opponent, Alfred E. Smith?
In what ways did Hoover epitomize the policies of the New
Era?
Boom Industries
Interrelated forces stimulated the economic expansion of
the 1920s.
Wartime and past war profits supplied investment capital to
mechanize mass production techniques that stressed
standardization of parts and the assembly line.
Boom Industries (cont'd)
The expansion of electricity cuts costs and improved
manufacturing while spurring demand for new home
products.
The automobile industry drove the economy and stimulated
related industries.
The aviation, chemicals, radio, and motion pictures
industries also experienced rapid growth.
Corporate Consolidation
Corporate mergers rivaled those of the turn of the 20th
century.
The spread of oligopoly, the control of an industry by a few
companies, was particularly evident.
The automobile, electric light and power, banking, and
national chain stores led the corporate consolidation.
Corporate Consolidation (cont'd)
Americans accepted the idea that size brought efficiency
and productivity.
Oligopoly
An industry, such as steel making or automobile manufacturing, that is
controlled by a few large companies.
Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism
In the 1920s, business attacked labor seeking the open
shop to break union-shop contracts and collective
bargaining.
Businesses used boycotts, yellow dog contracts, spies and
strikebreakers to weaken unions.
Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)
Welfare capitalism was presented as an alternative to
unions and provided medical services, insurance
programs, pensions, and vacations for workers.
Companies also promoted company unions.
Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)
Union membership fell from 5.1 million in 1920 to 3.6 million
in 1929, partly from business pressures and partly from
conservative union policies that neglected ethnic and
black workers.
Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)
Open shop
Factory or business employing workers whether or not they are union
members; in practice, such a business usually refuses to hire union
members and follows antiunion policies.
Yellow-dog contracts
Employment agreements binding workers not to join a union.
Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)
Welfare capitalism
A paternalistic system of labor relations emphasizing management
responsibility for employee well-being. While providing some limited
benefits, its function was primarily to forestall the formation of unions
or public intervention.
Sick Industries
Not all industries prospered in the 1920s.
Coal mining, textile and garment manufacturing, and
railroads declined as a result of excess capacity, shrinking
demands, low returns, and labor-management conflicts.
Sick Industries (cont’d)
American agriculture never recovered from the 1921
depression with surpluses and shrinking demand forcing
down prices despite improved techniques and
mechanization.
Racial discrimination worsened conditions for Hispanics and
African American in farming.
Republican Ascendancy
Republicans gained control of Congress and the White
House in 1920.
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and Secretary of
the Treasury Andrew Mellon shaped economic policy
throughout the 1920s.
Republican Ascendancy (cont'd)
Hoover worked to expand prosperity by building ties with
leading sectors of the economy and supporting business
efficiency. Mellon pushed for tax reduction on businesses
and the wealthy.
Republicans also curtailed government regulation seeking a
more collaborative relationship with business.
Government Corruption
Harding’s administration witnessed substantial corruption,
including the Teapot Dome Scandal that leased
government oil reserves to oil companies.
Coolidge Prosperity
Coolidge confined government’s role to helping business
and won reelection on the platform of Coolidge prosperity.
The Fate of Reform
Reformers experienced few successes.
League of Women Voters
Group formed in 1920 from the National American Woman Suffrage
Association to encourage informed voting and social reforms.
Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921
The first federal social welfare law; funded infant and maternity health
care programs in local hospitals.
Expanding Cities
Urbanization impacted every region.
Older industrial cities of the Northeast and upper Midwest
grew the most, attracting migrants from the rural South
and Appalachia.
Rural Southerners also flocked to southern cities.
Expanding Cities (cont'd)
Western cities grew rapidly, especially Los Angeles that
became the nation’s fifth largest city in 1930.
The population growth altered the urban landscape as land
values soared and developers built skyscrapers.
The Great Black Migration
While southern segregation and violence made migration
attractive to African Americans, northern job opportunities
made it possible.
Over a million and a half African Americans moved to
northern cities in the 1920s where they crowded into
ghettos and worked at jobs that offered salaries less than
those of whites.
The Great Black Migration (cont'd)
Migration brought African American
communities political and
economic power, autonomy, and
increased racial consciousness.
Marcus Garvey’s United Negro
Improvement Association
espoused racial pride and black
nationalism.
The Great Black Migration (cont'd)
Great Migration
The mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the
urban North, spurred especially by new job opportunities during World
War I and the 1920s.
Harlem Renaissance
A new African-American cultural awareness that flourished in literature,
art, and music in the 1920s.
THE MOST FAMOUS PEOPLE OF THE HARLEM
RENAISSANCE
Louis Armstrong.
Musician. It’s a
Wonderful World.
• Langston Hughes. Poet,
Novelist, Playwright.
Weary Blues, The Ways
of White Folks
Zora Neale
Hurston, folklorist,
anthropologist, and
novelist. Their
Eyes were
Watching God.
Claude McKay,
poet, journalist,
novelist. If We
Must Die, Home
to Harlem.
Duke Ellington,
Jazz Musician. Josephine Baker,
Dance, Singer,
Fashion Icon.
Barrios
Hispanic migrants also came to the
city in the 1920s, creating
communities called barrios.
Puerto Ricans migrated to New
York City but Mexico supplied
the most immigrants.
Racism restricted Hispanics to
racially defined districts.
Barrios (cont'd)
In 1929, the League of United
Latin American Citizens
organized to advance civil
rights for Hispanics.
The Road to Suburbia
Suburbs grew twice as fast as cities in the 1920s.
Automobiles created the modern suburb which was
sprawling and dispersed and the single-family home
surrounded by a green lawn became the social ideal.
Many suburbs excluded Jews, African American, Hispanics,
and working-class people.
The Road to Suburbia (cont’d)
The rise of suburbs stimulated highway construction and
with the automobile led to the creation of new industries,
including shopping centers, drive-in restaurants, and fast
food franchises.
Advertising in Consumer Society
Advertising’s focus on consumption helped shape the new
society. Traditional virtues of thrift, prudence, and
avoidance of debt were replaced by consumption.
Via print, skywriting, and new media, advertisers exhorted
Americans to buy a growing number of goods and
services.
Advertising in Consumer Society (cont'd)
Advertisers sought to create a single mass market that
consumed brand-name products.
The home as the focus of consumerism, especially as
electricity spawned new household appliances.
Leisure and Entertainment
Recreation and leisure were important features of the new
mass society.
Elaborately decorated theaters attracted moviegoers.
Movies helped spread common values and helped set
societal trends.
Radio and the phonograph also expanded entertainment
and popular culture.
Leisure and Entertainment (cont’d)
Country, blues, and especially jazz music became popular.
Professional sports also prospered and became more
commercialized. Baseball, boxing, and football drew huge
crowds.
Jazz Age
The 1920s, so called for the popular music of the day as a symbol of the
many changes taking place in the mass culture.
The New Morality
The promoting of consumption and immediate gratification
weakened traditional self-restraint and fueled the need for
personal fulfillment.
Sexual pleasure became an open objective.
The New Morality (cont'd)
Young people embodied the
new morality, embracing
new dances, bootleg
liquor, smoking, revealing
clothing, and sexual
experimentation.
The new morality was not as
widespread or as new
critics and advocates
suggested.
The Searching Twenties
Many writers rejected the materialism, conformity, and
provincialism of the developing mass culture. Their
criticism made the 1920s a fertile literary decade.
Called the Lost Generation, these writers had responded to
the brutality and hypocrisy of the war with disillusionment
and alienation.
Nativism and Immigration Restriction
After years of campaigning for immigration restriction,
nativists succeeded in passing legislation that imposed a
literacy test on immigrants.
The National Origins Act of 1924 placed strict quotas on
immigration that worked against eastern and southern
Europeans.
Nativism and Immigration Restriction (cont'd)
In western states, Japanese were prohibited from owning or
leasing land and were blocked from becoming citizens.
Filipinos were not subject to the National Origins Act and
migrated in heavy numbers to the United States.
Nativism and Immigration Restriction (cont'd)
National Origins Act
A 1924 law sharply restricting immigration on the basis of immigrants’
national origins and discriminating against southern and eastern
Europeans and Asians.
Nisei
U.S. citizens born of immigrant Japanese parents.
The Ku Klux Klan
A revived Ku Klux Klan attracted several million members
by the mid-1920s.
The Klan had a very public stance, sponsoring public
picnics, parades, charity drives, and other social events.
The Ku Klux Klan (cont'd)
The Klan exploited racial, ethnic, and religious prejudices,
campaigning against alien creeds.
The Klan was rooted in the countryside but attracted many
urban residents.
The Klan showed some political power but scandals and
exposes led to its quick decline.
Prohibition and Crime
To enforce the Eighteenth Amendment, the Volstead Act
was passed to outlaw the manufacture, sale, and
distribution of liquor.
Evasion of prohibition proved easy, especially in urban
areas.
To supply the growing demand for liquor, organized crime
developed elaborate distribution networks.
Prohibition and Crime (cont'd)
Support for prohibition waned throughout the 1920s.
Volstead Act
The 1920 law defining the liquor forbidden under the Eighteenth
Amendment and giving enforcement responsibilities to the Prohibition
Bureau of the Department of the Treasury.
Old-Time Religion and the Scopes Trial
Protestant fundamentalism that stressed the infallibility of
the Bible was challenged by the theory of evolution.
Fundamentalists demanded strict biblical Christianity and
supported efforts to outlaw the teaching of evolution.
Old-Time Religion and the Scopes Trial
John Scopes, a high school biology teacher tested a
Tennessee law leading to a sensational trial where
Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan faced off as
opposing attorneys.
• Fundamentalism was mocked before a national audience
but the issue remained unresolved.
War Debts and Economic Expansion
The United States was the world’s major economic power in
the 1920s. The war had changed it from a debtor to a
creditor nation.
An unstable system of American loans, high tariffs, and
European payments was installed to pay off war debts. A
constant flow of money from the United States kept the
system afloat.
War Debts and Economic Expansion (cont'd)
As exports of manufactured good soared, American
businesses became multinational companies.
The government helped open doors for American
businesses in other nations.
Multinational corporation
Firm with direct investments, branches, factories, and offices in a number
of countries.
Rejecting War
Popular reaction against World War I stimulated a strong
peace movement.
Naval disarmament conferences were held in Washington in
the early 1920s.
In 1928, the United States helped draft the Kellogg-Briand
Pact that renounced war and was signed by 64 nations.
Rejecting War
Kellogg-Briand Pact
1928 international treaty that denounced aggression and war but lacked
provisions for enforcement.
Managing the Hemisphere
The United States continued to dominate Latin America to
support its interests.
The Inter-American Conference denied the right of any
nation to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation.
Herbert Hoover and the Final Triumph of the New
Era
In the 1928 election, Republican Herbert Hoover faced
Democratic candidate Al Smith in a campaign that pitted
rural fundamentalism, anti-Catholicism, prohibition, and
nativism against an urban Catholic opponent of
prohibition connected to an immigrant constituency.
Hoover was elected president in 1928 on the boast of the
final triumph over poverty.
Conclusion
The New Era of the 1920s changed the United States.
Technological and business innovations combined with new
labor patterns, a growing concentration of corporate
power, and government policies to alter the economy.