The American Pageant

Chapter 31American Life in the

Roaring ‘20s

Cover Slide

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Adapted from: Ms. Susan M. PojerHorace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY

Adapted from: Ms. Susan M. PojerHorace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY

An era of prosperity,

Republican power,

and conflict

The Roaring 20’s

Seeing Red• After WWI, America turned inward

– started a policy of “isolationism.” – Americans denounced “radical”

foreign ideas & “un-American” lifestyles.

• The “Red Scare” (1919-20)– Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer

(“Fighting Quaker”) used a series of raids to round up and arrest about 6,000 suspected Communists.

• The Red Scare – Cut back free speech for a period

• hysteria caused many people to want to eliminate any Communists & their ideas

– Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (Italians):• 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were

convicted of murdering a Massachusetts paymaster and his guard.

• = Italians, atheists, anarchists, & draft dodgers – courts may have been prejudiced against

them.• anti-foreignism (or “nativism”) = high.• Liberals & radicals rallied around the two men, • ****but they were executed.

Seeing Red

The Rise of Nativism: The New Klan• Birth of a Nation, 1915

• movie glorifying Reconstruction-era KKK,

• group of southerners gathered to revive the racist organization

• The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s• Harassed Catholics & Jews as well as

blacks• Appealed to both rural & urban people• succeeded in electing hundreds of

Klansmen to public office• Had over 3 million members

• Including women who pursued a political agenda that combined racism, nativism and equal rights for Protestant women

• After 1925 the Klan declined rapidly.– Due to internal problems, not because

of racism

The Ku Klux Klan Great increaseIn power

Anti-black

Anti-immigrant

Anti-women’s suffrage

Anti-bootleggers

Anti-Semitic

Anti-Catholic

Ku Klux Klan Politics and Violence in the 1920s

• Unlike the Reconstruction-era Klan, the Klan of the 1920s was geographically dispersed, achieving substantial strength in the West and Midwest. Although the Klan is often thought of as a rural movement, some of its strongest “klaverns” were in such cities as Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Detroit. The organization's violence included vigilante acts, but small Klan riots also erupted in many communities where ethnic tensions led to confrontations between Klansmen and their opponents.

Ku Klux Klan Women Parade in Washington, D.C.

• The Ku Klux Klan was so well integrated into the daily life of some white Protestants that one woman from rural Indiana remembered her time in the KKK in the 1920s as “just a celebration…a way of growing up.” Perhaps as many as 500,000 women joined the Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) in the 1920s, including these women who paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1928.

The Rise of Nativism: Immigration Restriction

• What is nativism?• Antiforeign sentiment in the

US that fueled a drive against immigration. In the 1920s many native-born white Protestants reacted with bitter animosity to the more than 23 million immigrants who had come to America during the previous 40 yrs.

• Nativist animosity fueled a new drive against immigration• Chinese had been excluded in 1882• TR negotiated the “gentlemen’s agreement” to limit

Japanese immigration in 1908• But it wasn’t until after WWI and heightened suspicion

of “hyphenated” Americans that there were limits on Europeans.

• 1921: Congress passed a bill based on a quota system that limited the number of immigrants entering the U.S.

• Only 3% were allowed from each national group as represented by the 1910 census

• Wilson refused to sign it, but it was reintroduced under Harding and enacted

The Rise of Nativism: Immigration Restriction

• 1924: the National Origins Act • Reduced immigration even further (2%

of each nationality’s representation in the 1890 census)

• After 1927 the law set a cap of 150,000 immigrants per year

• Japanese • immigrants were excluded entirely

The Rise of Nativism: Immigration Restriction

• Puerto Ricans: • After the Jones Act of 1917 ( conferred US citizenship on

Puerto Ricans) they were allowed to go to and from the the mainland w/o restriction.

• They set up communities (colonias) in East Harlem and the Greenpoint section of NYCity

• When hard times hit in the 30s the flow of P. Ricans stopped temporarily

• Mexicans• Loophole in the law allowed unrestricted immigration

from countries in the Western Hemisphere• Over 1 million Mexicans enter the US from 1900-1930• Nativists & organized labor lobbied Congress to close a

loophole in the immigration law that allowed Mexican immigrants to enter America.

The Rise of Nativism: Immigration Restriction

The Prohibition “Experiment”

• The 18th Amendment (and later, the Volstead Act) prohibited:– the sale of alcohol– law never was effectively enforced because so

many people violated it.– Amendment = especially popular in the

Midwest & the South.– supported by women & the Women’s Christian

Temperance Union– posed problems from countries that produced

alcohol and tried to ship it to the U.S. (illegally, of course).

The Golden Age of Gangsterism

• Prohibition led to the rise of gangs – competed to distribute liquor

• Gang wars of Chicago– ~500 people = murdered– captured criminals = rare– Convictions = even rarer– gangsters often provided false alibis

for each other

• most infamous of these gangsters = “Scarface” Al Capone– St. Valentine’s Day Massacre– caught for tax evasion

• Gangs moved into other activities as well: – prostitution, gambling, and narcotics– by 1930, their annual profit = whopping $12-18 billion.

• In 1932, gangsters kidnapped the baby son of Charles Lindbergh– shocking the nation– led Congress to the so-called Lindbergh Law

• allowed the death penalty to certain cases ofinterstate abduction.

The Golden Age of Gangsterism

Monkey Business in Tennessee

• Education reforms:– Led by John Dewey

• professor at Columbia University • “learning by doing” • believed that “education for life”

should be the primary goal of school.

– Now, schools were no longer prisons.– States also began to implement

minimum ages for teens to stay in school.

• Evolutionists clash with creationists• the Scopes “Monkey Trial,”

– John T. Scopes• high school teacher of Dayton, Tennessee,• Charged with teaching evolution.

– William Jennings Bryan• = among those who were against him• one-time “boy orator” was made to sound

foolish & childish by expert attorney Clarence Darrow, & 5 days after the end of the trial, Bryan died.

– trial illustrated the rift between the new and old.

Monkey Business in Tennessee

Legislating Values: The Scopes Trial

• Evolution a religious controversy

• John T. Scopes• Clarence

Darrow• Williams

Jennings Bryan

Darrow legal staff

Scopes “Monkey” TrialEvolution vs. Creationism

Dayton, TennesseeFamous Lawyers

Science vs. Religion

John ScopesHigh School Biology teacher

The Mass-Consumption Economy

• Prosperity took off in the “Roaring 20s” – despite the recession of 1920-21– helped by the tax policies of Treasury

Secretary Andrew Mellons• favored the rapid expansion of capital

investment.• Henry Ford perfected the assembly-line

– His famous Rouge River Plant produced an automobile every 10 seconds.

• automobile =– more freedom, more luxury, & more privacy.

Consumer Economy

The Automobile Culture

• A-U-T-O• Mass production

– Assembly line• Auto production• Car ownership &

suburbs• AAA• Young Americans

• A new medium arose as well: advertising, – used persuasion, ploy, seduction, &

sex appeal to sell merchandise.• new (and dangerous) buying

techniques…they bought – (1) on the installment plan– (2) on credit– Both ways were capable of plunging

an unexpecting consumer into debt.

The Mass-Consumption Economy

Selling Mrs. Consumer (p. 664)

• No other image captures the spirit of the consumer culture of the 1920s more emphatically than the Ford Model T. With the Ford Company in the lead, automobiles revolutionized Americans’ patterns of spending money and spending leisure—with the help fo the rapidly expanding advertising industry. This 1924 ad in the Ladies’ Home Journal, reflects advertisers’ sense of he growing importance of the role of the “ modern”housewife as the family’s purchasing agent.

• 1920's collectively known as the "Roaring 20's", or the "Jazz Age"

• Period of great change in American Society - modern America is born at this time

• For first time the census revealed for the 1st time in US history city people outnumbered rural people

Section I: Business-Government

Partnership of the 1920s

• Politics in the Republican “New Era”• The Economy• The Heyday of Big Business• Economic Expansion Abroad• Foreign Policy in the 1920s

Politics in the Republican “New Era”

• Election of 1920 – Harding and Normalcy

• Government-Business Cooperation– Andrew W. Mellon’s tax cut– Republican-dominated FTC– The Department of Commerce

• Harding’s Death– Bad associations

Politics in the Republican “New Era”

• “Silent Cal”• Election of 1924

– Democrats couldn’t agree– Decline in voter turnout

Politics in the Republican “New Era”

• Women in Politics– Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity &

Infancy Act• Americans didn’t want…

The Economy

• In the immediate postwar years:– Federal efforts to halt inflation

produced the recession of 1920-1921 • This was the sharpest short-term

downturn the US had ever faced• 1922

– GDP– Per capita

The Economy

• The federal government was soon recording a budget surplus

• Why was there so much of an increase of output?

• The spending power of many Americans increased…BUT

• Which industries didn’t prosper?

The Heyday of Big Business

• Background– Henry Ford

• Corporate Consolidation and the Managerial Revolution– Oligopolies– Large-scale corporate organizations

w/ bureaucratic structures of authority replaced family-run enterprises.

The Heyday of Big Business

• Working class earns higher wages– And better standard of living

• Unions begin to lose strength– “Welfare capitalism”

• 1920's also brought about great changes for women...

• 1920 - 19th Amendment gave them the federal vote

• after 1920, social circumstances changed too as more women worked outside the home

• and more women went to college and clamoured to join the professions

• women didn't want to sacrifice wartime gains - amounted to a social revolt

• characterized by the FLAPPER/ "new woman"– (bobbed hair, short

dresses, smoked in public...)

The Economy

• The federal government was soon recording a budget surplus

• Why was there so much of an increase of output?

• The spending power of many Americans increased…BUT

• Which industries didn’t prosper?

Farmers• an agri. depression in

early 1920's contributed to this urban migration

• U.S. farmers lost agri. markets in postwar Europe

• at same time agri. efficiency increased so more food produced (more food = lower prices) and fewer labourers needed

• so farming was no longer as prosperous, and bankers called in their loans (farms repossessed)

• so American farmers enter the Depression in advance of the rest of society

African Americans

• African Americans in this period continued to live in poverty

• sharecropping kept them in de facto slavery

• 1915 - boll weevil wiped out the cotton crop

• white landowners went bankrupt & forced blacks off their land

• African Americans moved north to take advantage of booming wartime industry (= Great Migration) - Black ghettoes began to form, i.e. Harlem

• within these ghettoes a distinct Black culture flourished

• But both blacks and whites wanted cultural interchange restricted

Economic Expansion Abroad

• The US was the most productive country in the world

• American companies seek investment opportunities abroad

• Why did American companies invested internationally during the 1920s?

• The U.S. became the world’s largest creditor nation

• European countries had difficulty repaying their war debts to U.S.

• The Dawes Plan of 1924

Foreign Policy in the 1920s

• Isolationism or not?– Latin America

• 1921 Washington Naval Arms Conference

• Kellogg-Briand Pact• A balancing act

A New National CultureSection II:

•A Consumer Culture•The Automobile Culture•Mass Media and New Patterns of Leisure

A Consumer Culture

• Sharing similar daily experiences

• Mass culture wasn’t universal

• How did Americans afford the new consumer goods?– Installment plan

• Electric appliances• Advertising Industry

Mass Media and New Patterns of Leisure:

Moving Pictures• Background

– The Great Train Robbery

• By the end of World War I

• Hooray for Hollywood!

Mass Media and New Patterns of Leisure:

Moving Pictures• Clara Bow, the “It

Girl,” & other “flappers”

• Talkies– The Jazz Singer

(1927)• The Statistics…

• 1920's also brought about great changes for women...

• 1920 - 19th Amendment gave them the federal vote

• after 1920, social circumstances changed too as more women worked outside the home

• and more women went to college and clamoured to join the professions

• women didn't want to sacrifice wartime gains - amounted to a social revolt

• characterized by the FLAPPER/ "new woman"– (bobbed hair, short

dresses, smoked in public...)

Mass Media and New Patterns of Leisure: Jazz

music • What is it?• Where did it come

from? • The Jazz Age• “Jelly Roll” Morton,

Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, & Duke Ellington.

• Phonograph • As a form of

Expression

“Jelly Roll” Morton

Louis Armstrong

Bessie Smith

Duke Ellington

The 20’s is The Jazz AgeThe Flappers

make upcigarettes

short skirts

MusiciansLouis ArmstrongDuke Ellington

WritersF. Scott FitzgeraldErnest Hemingway

Mass Media and New Patterns of Leisure: Journalism and the

Radio• Magazines• Tabloid Newspapers• Radio

– Amos ‘n’ Andy

Mass Media and New Patterns of Leisure: Leisure and Sports

• More time = More Leisure

• Baseball• Charles Lindbergh

CelebritiesBabe Ruth &Ty Cobb

Jack Dempsey

Charles Lindbergh The Spirit of St. Louis

Section III: Dissenting Values and

Cultural ConflictThe Rise of Nativism

Legislating Values: The Scopes Trial and Prohibition

Intellectual CrosscurrentsCultural Clash in the Election of

1928

The Rise of Nativism

• Background– City v. rural communities

• 1920 census:• Mass media• New Technology• Urban residents’ concerns

• A SIMPLIFIED URBAN-RURAL DICHOTOMY MISREPRESENTS THE COMPLEXITY OF THE DECADE'S CULTURAL AND ETHNIC CONFLICTS

Map 23.1 The Shift from Rural to Urban Population, 1920–1930 (p. 681)

• Despite the increasingly urban tone of modern America after 1920, regional patterns of population growth and decline were far from uniform Cities in the South and West grew most dramatically as southern farmers moved to more promising areas with familiar climates. An important factor in the growth of northern cities such as New York and Chicago, was the migration of southern blacks set in motion by World War I.

Patrolling the Texas Border (p. 685)

• These Border Patrol officers in Laredo, Texas, in 1926 were deputized to stop illegal immigration from Mexico. Their guns, military uniforms and stern expressions did not present a warm welcome to immigrants arriving from south of the border.

Legislating Values

• Tensions erupt over religion– Modernists v. Fundamentalists

Legislating Values: Prohibition

• Passage of the XVIII Amendment– Decline of drinking– Noncompliance

• Speakeasies• Repealing the XVIII

Amendment– Wets– Drys

• Passage of the XXI Amendment

Prohibition

18th Amendment

Volstead Act

Gangsters

Al Capone

Intellectual Crosscurrents

• Dissenters & Disillusionment• "The Lost Generation“• The modernist movement• Literature of the 1920s• An End to the Renaissance

Intellectual Crosscurrents: The Harlem Renaissance

• What was the Harlem Renaissance– “New Negro”

• Vitality of the Harlem Renaissance was short-lived

• Significance

Intellectual Crosscurrents: Marcus Garvey and the

UNIA• Who was Marcus

Garvey?– Back to Africa

• What was the UNIA?• What happened to

the Black Star Line Company?

Cultural Clash in the Election of 1928

• The 1924 Democratic National Convention

• Democrat Alfred E. Smith• Republican Herbert Hoover• Democrats lose the election…but:• The Claim of Prosperity• Despite cultural conflicts & workplace

issues, as Hoover began his presidency in 1929, Americans were generally optimistic & expected prosperity & progress to continue.

Map 23.3 Presidential Election of 1928 (p. 692)

Chapter 23:Modern Times(The 1920s)

• Map 23.1 The Shift from Rural to Urban Population, 1920–1930 (p. 681)• Map 23.2 Ku Klux Klan Politics and Violence in the 1920s (p. 685)• Map 23.3 Presidential Election of 1928 (p. 692)• Figure 23.1 American Immigration after World War I (p. 684)• Selling Mrs. Consumer (p. 664)• The Amazing Talking Machine (p. 674)• All That Jazz (p. 677)• Lucky Lindy (p. 683)• Patrolling the Texas Border (p. 685)• Ku Klux Klan Women Parade in Washington, D.C. (p. 687)

Figure 23.1 American Immigration after World War I (p. 684)

The Amazing Talking Machine (p. 674)

All That Jazz (p. 677)

Lucky Lindy (p. 683)