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The Roaring Twenties
LIFE CHANGED AFTER WW1
Disillusionment of Youth• 9,000,000 soldiers had died• Young people lost faith in leaders
Suffrage• Women finally got the vote in 1920• This was only the beginning – equality takes a long time
Social /Racial Conflict• As a result of all the changes there was a backlash
Disillusionment of Youth
• Fighting in the war had seen awful things
• Corrupt powers divided spoils
• No faith in League of Nations
• Turned away from idealism and politics
• Age of hedonism captured by Scott F Fitzgerald
Suffrage
• Women finally got vote in 1920’s (19th amendment – 1920)
• Frequently did men’s jobs in war
• Now more options open than teaching and nursing.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
• Tin Lizzies -• Flying Machines –• Radio • New Freedom for
women• Shorter work week –
down from 60 hrs to 40 – more money to spend
• Mass production in factories
Tin Lizzies
• Henry Ford’s Model-T• Put America on wheels• First affordable auto• $260• Results: Increased crime Growth of cities
Mobility
Social and Racial Conflict
African Americans wanted more say
Had fought in war Went North70 lynchings in 1920 Prejudice against emigrants
created backlash – Sacco and Vanzetti trial
Flying Machines
• Charles Lindberg Spirit of St. Louis 1927 NY to Paris
• Amelia Earhart First woman to fly across the Atlantic
• Passenger planes 150 mph hour
Radio
• First Radio Station 1921 • By 1926 – 700 stations • Covered sports,
elections• People lined up to buy
them• By 1930 60% in US had
one• Spawned new industry
New Freedom For Women
• New “mod cons” (appliances) freed women from drudgery
• Freed women of traditional roles
• Helped them emancipate
Prohibition
• 18th amendment in 1920 outlawed alcohol
• Bootlegging – illegal sale of alcohol
• Speakeasy – illegal place to drink
• Defiance of the law• Police raided them
Prohibition Causes CrimeOrganized crime results • Huge money from
bootlegging• 215 unsolved murders
between 1929 to 1933• Notorious gangsters Al
Capone Lucky Luciano Bugsy Siegel Meyer Lansky
Corruption Police and officials bribed
21st amendment - 1933 Repealed Prohibition – States controlled alcohol.
Politics in the 1920’s - Republican
• Warren Harding and “Ohio gang” in White House 1920 -Republican
• Laissez faire policy - letting business alone
• Slashed taxes, limited immigration
• Scandals, corruptions Harding died ashamed by friends’ betrayals in 1923
• “Less government in business, more business in government”
Calvin Coolidge - Republican
Calvin Coolidge, Republican V.P. succeeded in 1923
• Inactive – silent – also laissez faire – letting business alone
• Boom years – factories – people earning good wages – industrial growth sensational change in lifestyle
• Not interested in changing status quo
• Period known as “Coolidge Prosperity”
Herbert Hoover - Republican
• Herbert Hoover -1928
• He had campaigned in 1928 saying, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land."
• Unfortunately, he was wrong.
• After the crash believed the responsibility for caring for people should be local and voluntary – not government
The Rich Get Richer
• All presidents helped business –disliked regulation and government “interference”
• “The business of the United States is business” – Coolidge
• Tax breaks for rich, (Mellon) high tariffs for imported goods (protection), subsidies
• Rising salaries – people spending a lot.• Big Business – companies merged and smaller
ones disappeared – The rich got richer
Farmers Began Having Problems
• Farmers struggled Expanded after WW1 – bought equipment on credit
• Falling prices after war and all decade
• Couldn’t repay loans – lost farms to banks
• Coolidge refused to help – vetoed all bills
Unions Did Badly in Twenties
• Organized labor did poorly – state governments almost always took company’s side
• Injunctions to force workers to end strikes
• Police at picket lines• Reversed 2 child labor
laws
Rebellion
• Writers and artists rebelled – T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound Ernest Hemingway Scott Fitzgerald William Faulkner
• Respected overseas – yet seen as traitors of “true values” – Power came from conservatives and rural areas
Reaction
• Quota system for emigrants – to keep out people from Eastern Europe–
• Rise or the Ku Klux Klan – Klan at peak in 1925 with 50,000 members
Fads of the Twenties
• Mah-jong
• Crossword puzzles
• Dance Marathons
• Sitting on flagpoles
The Jazz Age
• The Jazz Age – Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, George Gershwin
• An American phenomenon
• Chicago Jazz• Cotton Club, Harlem• New Orleans
The Arts
• Poets - Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg,
• Writers – Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald
• Entertainers – Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson
• Art deco movement – geometric designs – clean lines.
The Arts
Art Deco