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The 1920s
© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.
Chapter 24Chapter 24
Prosperity
• WWI good for U.S. economy– Brief period of difficulty in moving from war economy
• 1922-1929: American economy was vigorous and prosperous
• GNP rose at 5.5% annual rate– From $149 billion to $227 billion
• Unemployment never exceed 5%• Real wages rose 15%
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
A Consumer Society• 1920s: growth of consumer goods
– Cars, tractors, washing machines, electric irons, radios, vacuum cleaners
– “Consumer durable”
– Fresh fruits and vegetables
• Number of cars purchased in the U.S. increased– Paved roads extended beyond the city
– Gas stations, hot dog stands, motels
• Greater number of Americans bought into the stock market, especially middle class
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Growth of Six Leading Grocery Chains
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
A People’s Capitalism
• Capitalists claim economic inequality not an issue with 1920s prosperity
• Middletown– Robert and Helen Lynd
• Consumer credit– Capitalists won’t raise wages, workers unorganized to
force it
• People’s capitalism reality mainly middle class
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
The Rise of Advertising and Mass Marketing
• General Motors and annual model change• Advertising appealed to consumer desires
– Professional advertising firms– Beauty products, cigarettes, fashion
• Advertisers believed they were helping Americans achieve self-improvement and personal pleasure
• Advertising aimed at middle class
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Expenditures on Advertising, 1915-1929
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Changing Attitudes Toward Marriage and Sexuality
• Modern husbands and wives were encouraged to share and pursue sexual and recreational satisfaction together
• “Flappers” : independent-minded young, single females
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
An Age of Celebrity
• Mega-events and mass marketing
• George Herman “Babe” Ruth
• Charles Chaplin
• Rudolph Valentino
• Charles A. Lindbergh– Spirit of St. Louis
• Role of media hype in celebrity
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Celebrating Business Civilization
• Bruce Barton– The Man Nobody Knows (1925)
• Welfare Capitalism
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Industrial Workers
• Skilled workers higher wages, more benefits• Semiskilled and unskilled industrial workers
contended with labor surplus• New machines sometimes replaced workers• 40% of workers remained in poverty• Coal and textile workers suffered the most through the
1920s• Sidney Hillman• Unions lost significant ground in the 1920s
– “Yellow dog” contracts
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Value of Regional Cotton Textile Output, 1880-1930
Women and Work
• Women were excluded from skilled craftsmen• Women were often relegated to areas of “women’s
work” within an industry• Received less pay for equal work of a man• Opportunities grew for white-collar work
(secretaries, typists, file and dept. store clerks)• Social services and teaching • Amelia Earhart
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
The Women’s Movement Adrift
• Expected changes from women’s voting did not occur
• Some success– Sheppard-Tower Act– League of Women Voters
• Internal division– Equal Rights Amendment– Protective labor legislation
The Politics of Business
• 1921-1933: Republican presidents governed the country
• Blend of Gilded Age mediocrity and Roosevelt style state building
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Harding and the Politics of Personal Gain
• Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)– Harry M. Daugherty– "Ohio Gang“: Harding’s drinking and womanizing
cohorts
• Albert Fall– Teapot Dome and Elk Hills– Harry Sinclair– Edward Doheny
• Charles R. Forbes– Veterans’ Bureau
• Harding dies in 1923(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Coolidge and the Politics of Laissez-Faire
• Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)– Revenue Act (1926)– Curtailed FTC ability to regulate industry
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Hoover and the Politics of “Associationalism”
• Herbert Hoover Secretary of Commerce (1921-1929)
• Economy built on trade associations
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
The Politics of Business Abroad• Hoover wanted Commerce Dept. to control U.S.
international economic relations• Washington Conference
– Charles Evans Hughes– Five-Power Treaty– Hoover shut out
• Dawes Plan– Charles G. Dawes
• Kellogg-Briand pact (1928)• Continued intervention in Latin America
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Farmers, Small-Town Protestants, and Moral
Traditionalists
• Not all Americans enjoyed prosperity of the 1920s
• Farmers suffered due to overproduction
• Moral-traditionalist white Protestants in small towns– Fear and suspicion of foreigners
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Agricultural Depression
• Slump for farmers after the wartime boom
• Tractor enabled over-production– Produce market flooded– Prices fell dramatically
• Many farmers lost, sold, or abandoned their farms
• McNary-Haugen Bill
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Price of Major Crops, 1914-1929
Cultural Dislocation
• Majority of farmers saw themselves as ‘backbone of the nation’– White, Protestant, Northern-European, hard-working,
honest, God-fearing
• 1920 Census: urban areas vs. rural areas• Fears of rural whites manifested in their support of
– Prohibition
– The Ku Klux Klan
– Immigration restrictions
– Religious fundamentalism
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Urbanization, 1920
Prohibition• Eighteenth Amendment: prohibited manufacture
and sale of alcohol– January 1920– Difficulty of enforcing the law– Speakeasies and bootleggers
• Prohibition effect: encouraged law-breaking more than abstinence
• Al Capone– Liquor trafficking and violence– Chicago
• Urban supporters rethink Prohibition, confirms racist views of rural supporters
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
The Ku Klux Klan• William Simmons• D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation• Hiram Evans• Hatred of members extended beyond Blacks to include Jews,
Catholics, foreigners• 1924: 4 million Americans were members of the KKK,
many outside the South– Women’s Auxiliary group: Women of the KKK
• In many ways, Klan was also typical fraternal organization• Klan hate speech often sexually themed, reaction against
changed attitudes toward sexuality
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Immigration Restriction
• Many white Protestants responded to Klan style nativist arguments
• Johnson-Reed Act (1924)– Limits and quotas on immigration – Western hemisphere exempt
• Border Patrol• Limitation quotas spread to other areas
– Ivy League colleges
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Fundamentalism vs. Liberal Protestantism
• Protestant fundamentalism– Bible as God’s word
– Bible as the source of all “fundamental” truths
– Took opposition to liberal Protestantism and the discoveries of science
• Fundmentalists anti-urban• Liberal Protestants believe that religion had to
adapt to modernism, including skepticism and scientific discoveries
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
The Scopes Trial
• Fundamentalists pass law prohibiting teaching of Theory of Evolution in Tennessee (1925)
• ALCU and other worried it could be start of new wave of restrictions of Free Speech
• John T. Scopes– William Jennings Bryan vs. Clarence Darrow– Bryan’s rejection of Darwin partly reaction of Populist
defender against Social Darwinism
• Publishers, afraid of Fundamentalist backlash, remove Darwin from textbooks until the 1960s
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Ethnic and Racial Communities
• Government policy discouraged “new immigrants”
• Continued migration within the United States– African Americans moved from the South to the North
– Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande into the Southwest
• Creation of vibrant subcultures• Surge in religious and racial discrimination in the
Jazz Age
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
European Americans• “Americanization campaigns”• Many Americans responded by strengthening their
ethnic and religious identities and cultures through organizations and associations
• Use of the vote: Democrats• Split in the Democratic Party between
– Urban-ethnic forces: Smith– Rural-Southern forces: McAdoo
• Election of 1928– Alfred Smith– First Catholic nominated to presidency
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
African Americans
• African-Americans continue to migrate north• Harlem: the “Negro Capital”
– A Black ghetto
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters– A. Philip Randolph
• Jazz– Willie Smith– Count Basie– Duke Ellington– Louis Armstrong
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
The Harlem Renaissance
• Harlem Renaissance: create works in rooted in African culture not imitations of white culture
• "New Negro“• White owned Harlem Jazz Clubs refused to
admit African-Americans• Charlotte Mason
– Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Mexican Americans• Johnson-Reed Act, 1924
– Mexican-Americans became primary source of immigrant labor 500,000 Mexicans came to U.S. in 1920s
– Most settled in Southwestern, U.S.• Texas, California• Dominated agriculture and construction jobs• Exploited and discriminated against
• Californios• Los Angeles to Mexican-Americans what Harlem
was to African Americans• corridos
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
The “Lost Generation” and Disillusioned Intellectuals
• Alienated White artists• Sinclair Lewis
– Main Street (1920)– Babbit (1922)
• T.S. Eliot-- The Waste Land (1922)• F. Scott Fitzgerald-- The Great Gatsby (1925)• Eugene O'Neill’s plays• Ernest Hemingway-- A Farewell to Arms (1929)• William Faulkner--The Sound and the Fury
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Democracy on the Defensive
• Alienated intellectuals begin to distrust democracy
• H.L. Mencken: democracy “the worship of jackals by jackasses”
• Walter Lippmann
• John Dewey: Faith in democracy
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved
Conclusion
• Consumerism and mass production• Society seemed somewhat more egalitarian
– However, many groups did not benefit from economic prosperity of the 1920s:
• Working-class, rural Americans
• Democratic party– Tensions between traditionalists and new populations
• Alienated intellectuals• Republicans take credit for prosperity
(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved