1929-_____

The Great DepressionEncyclopedia Americana. 2010. Grolier Online. 16 Feb. 2010

<http://ea.grolier.com>.

Prohibition

The term prohibition refers to laws that prohibit, or forbid, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. It is most commonly used in reference to an era in American history (1920-33) when all alcoholic beverages, including beer and wine, were illegal. The ban on alcohol was established by the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. The ban was lifted in 1933 with the passage of the 21st Amendment, which repealed (canceled) the 18th Amendment.

Temperance

The temperance movement in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries was largely a nonurban, Protestant-led drive to promote, by both persuasion and law, abstinence from alcoholic beverages.

The American Temperance Society, founded in 1826, began gathering pledges of abstinence. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874, and the politically potent Anti-Saloon League, established on a national scale in 1895, also favored banning the liquor traffic.

Despite this intense activity and the passage of many liquor laws, the sale and use of alcohol remained widespread. Then during World War I, the temperance movement was unexpectedly aided by the need to conserve grain. In 1917, Congress passed the 18th Amendment, ratified in January 1919; however, it proved unenforceable and was repealed by the 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933.

Thereafter, the temperance movement waned. With the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, attention began to shift to the treatment of alcoholism.

Presidents

Some historians and economists have criticized Coolidge for a lack of forcefulness and political leadership. They argue that his administration was partly responsible for the Great Depression that began in 1929, soon after President Hoover took office. However, during the 1920's most Americans supported Coolidge's policies.

Calvin Coolidge was president during one of the most colorful periods in American history. The 1920's are often called the Roaring 20's and the Jazz Age. It was the era of Prohibition. The Volstead Act, the 18th amendment to the Constitution, had made the sale of alcoholic beverages illegal. But many people ignored this highly unpopular law and purchased liquor from "bootleggers" or in "speakeasies." The most notorious of the bootleggers was a man who helped make the word "gangster" a part of the language--Al Capone.The 1920's were exciting years. The population of the United States grew from less than 106 million to almost 123 million. And for the first time in American history, more people lived in cities and towns than in rural areas. The 19th amendment to the Constitution gave women throughout the United States the right to vote. Charles A. Lindbergh became the first person to fly nonstop and alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

Presidents Herbert Hoover's rise to the presidency of the United States is an American success story. Orphaned at the age of 9, he went on to become an extremely successful mining engineer and a wealthy businessman. His long career in public service began during World War I, when he headed a relief commission that provided food for millions of starving people in Belgium and France. After the United States entered the war in 1917, he served as U.S. food administrator. He later held the post of secretary of commerce, before winning election as president in 1928. His presidency was overshadowed, however, by the economic hard times of the Great Depression, which struck early in his administration and for which he is often unfairly blamed.

Crime and CriminalsBugs Moran Bugs Moran was born to Irish and Polish

immigrant parents in 1893 and grew up in the north side of Chicago. He grew up streetwise and ran with numerous gangs committing more than 20 known burglaries and being imprisoned three times before he was 21 years old. He was soon an important member of Dion O'Banion's North Siders gang. The pair got on well together, both sharing the same sense of sick humor. In fact, Moran's sense of humor made him a celebrity with the newspapers setting him up to be a jolly murderer, always with a joke and a skip in his step. This good press probably put more of the public on the side of the O'Banion gang than their bitter rivals in the 1920's, the Capone Gang.

Moran's later exploits never amounted to much. His crimes turned petty compared to what they had been in the 20's. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years for robbing a bank messenger of a paltry $10,000. He eventually died of cancer in 1957. George 'Bugs' Moran was given a paupers burial in a wooden casket in a potters field just outside the prison.

Crime and Criminals

Al Capone

Alphonse "Al" Capone, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Jan. 17, 1899, d. Jan. 25, 1947, was perhaps the most famous of all American mobsters. He grew up in Brooklyn, acquiring an education in petty crime and the name "Scarface Al" because of a razor slash across his face.

He moved to Chicago and worked his way upward in the crime syndicates. His domination of the bootleg liquor traffic (see bootlegging) brought him an income of more than $20 million a year by the end of the 1920s.

Capone survived the Chicago gang wars of the 1920s by killing his rivals; in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (1929) his gunmen, dressed as policemen, executed seven members of the "Bugs" Moran gang.

The federal authorities finally succeeded where the Chicago police could not: on Oct. 17, 1931, Capone was fined $80,000 and sentenced to 11 years in prison for income-tax evasion. He was released in November 1939, terminally ill with syphilis, and died on his Florida estate.

Crime and Criminals

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

One of the bloodiest mob executions in the 20th century, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre occurred on Feb. 14, 1929, in Chicago. Precipitated by territorial disputes about gangland bootlegging activities, the slaughter took place in a North Clark Street garage that had been used as a headquarters for the George "Bugs" Moran gang.

Dressed in police uniforms, members of the Al Capone gang entered the garage, lined up six members of the Moran gang and a visitor, and, firing machine guns, murdered all seven. The massacre, which basically destroyed the Moran gang, represented to many the unrestrained violence of organized crime in prohibition-era Chicago.

Crime and Criminals

Dillinger was born in Indianapolis, Ind., on June 22, 1903. He spent nine years in a reformatory and prison for a youthful crime and emerged, embittered and schooled in crime by professionals, to become, in 13 hectic months, the most notorious bank robber since the James brothers. He was captured twice, escaped jail twice, and fought his way out of numerous traps. Finally he was shot down, on July 22, 1934, outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, by federal agents tipped off by his girlfriend's landlady, "the woman in red."

Dillinger, John (1903–1934), American criminal. He was representative of a new kind of criminal that appeared in the United States, particularly in the Midwest, as the depression of the 1930s deepened.

Dillinger’s getaway car

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Transportation

Hupmobile Locomobile

Hupmobile built cars from 1908 to 1941. Robert and Louis Hupp were its founders.Their cars finally had electric lights installed in 1914. Balloon tires were added in 1925, the year when Hupmobile began to build an 8-cyclinder engine. The car cost about $1,295.00.

The Locomobile Company of America was founded in 1899, the name coined from locomotive and automobile. Locomobile soon became known for well built and speedy luxury cars. The 1908 Locomobile 40 Runabout was a 60hp (44.7kW) two-seater and sold for US$4750. (nearly $100,000 in 2006 dollars)

TransportationThe Terraplane was a car brand and model built by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan between 1932 and 1939. In its maiden year, the car was branded as the Essex Terraplane; in 1933 the car became simply the Terraplane until 1936 when it was brought fully into the Hudson line-up. The Terraplane was an inexpensive yet powerful vehicle that was used in both town and country, as both cars and trucks bore the Terraplane name. The car was also produced in a convertible version.

The Terraplane Eight had an in-line eight-cylinder engine. The Terraplane 8 had a longer chassis, hood, and front fenders to accommodate the bigger engine and was

distinguished by having vent doors on the hood as opposed to the shorter six-cylinder version that had stamped hood louvers. Reportedly, a 1933 Terraplane 8 coupe set a

record for the Pikes Peak hill climb that remained unbroken for over twenty years.

Barnstorming

Barnstorming is a form of aerial showmanship that reached its peak in the 1920s. In the years preceding World War I, flying-exhibition teams thrilled spectators at carnivals, county fairs, and flying meets across the United States. After the war, when thousands of surplus military planes were sold at bargain prices, ex-military pilots earned money by taking adventurous passengers up for a ride. Many also entertained at fairs and air shows, demonstrating wartime aerobatics, parachute jumps, wing-walking, and other stunts.

Heroes—Soldiers

Decoration Day

Troop Trains

The U.S. holiday Memorial Day, originally known as Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in the nation's service.

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HeroesShirley Temple

Heroes

Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis