Chapter 23: The 1920s: Coping With Change: 1920-1929 - The Roaring Twenties – The Jazz Age

(Amsco ch 23 pp. 470-485)

APUSH – Cornwell

Readings Schedule:

Mon. 9th

•WWI Exam

•pp. 711-720: A New Economic Order, Harding and Coolidge Administrations

Tues 10th

•pp. 720-726: Mass Society, Mass Culture

•Readings Quiz – pp. 711-720

Wed. 11th

•pp. 726-732: Cultural Ferment and Creativity

Thurs 12th

•pp. 732-741: Society in Conflict and Herbert Hoover

•Scopes Trial

Fri 13th

•1920s M-C Exam

•Roaring 20s note cards due

•Roaring 20s One-Pager due

•EV ch 24 Syllabus

Short Answer Questions:

1.How and why did business and government become allies in the 1920s? How did this partnership affect the American economy?

2.Evaluate and discuss American foreign policy in the 1920s.

3.Discuss the emergence of a mass national culture after World War I.

4.How and why did cultural conflict break out in response to the new secular values of the decade?

5.How and why did intellectuals, writers, and artists react to the postwar era?

Summary:

The American economy generally flourished in the 1920s, driven by innovations in mass production and mass consumption. However, agriculture and several “sick industries” did not share in the general prosperity, and the problems in those sectors foreshadowed the difficulties facing the whole economy in the 1930s. The Republican Party dominated national politics in the 1920s. Most Americans were comfortable with the Republicans’ promotion of business interests and advocacy of limited government. A series of scandals in the mid-1920s was not enough to drive the Republicans from power. The Democrats, as was often the case in the twentieth century, were divided between northern, urban, liberal interests and a southern, rural-conservative wing. The Progressive Party made an attempt to capture the White House in 1924 but was soundly defeated. Women were active in 1920s politics but were unable to achieve any long-term reforms. The problems of minority groups were largely ignored.

The modern corporation was a prominent feature of American life in the 1920s. Most industries were dominated by a few large producers. Business leaders enjoyed enormous popularity and respect compared with most of the politicians of the period. Corporations improved their images in the minds of the public by developing “welfare capitalism.”

The United States was not completely isolationist in the 1920s. It had emerged from World War I as a powerful modern state and could not withdraw from international involvement. Instead, the nation became selectively involved in foreign affairs, usually choosing to do so when American economic interests were at stake.

A new emphasis on leisure, along with innovations in mass communication, gave rise to a mass culture in America. Magazine and radio advertising, automobiles, chain stores, motion pictures, and spectator sports helped to transform American values and consumption patterns. However, not all segments of the population participated in this mass culture.

Not all Americans accepted the secular values that characterized the mass-consumption society of the 1920s. One response to the rapid change in values was nativism. Congress passed strict new immigration restriction quotas that favored northern and Western Europeans and discriminated against Asians and southern and Eastern Europeans. The Ku Klux Klan became popular not just in the South but also in the Midwest and other sections of the country. Protestant fundamentalists gained a large following by challenging scientific thought and modern notions of morality.

Literature and the arts reflected the disillusionment felt by many intellectuals about the direction in which American life and institutions were moving in the 1920s. Many American writers criticized the futility and waste of World War I, whereas others attacked the blandness of middle-class American life. A short-lived but dramatic flowering of black artistic talent occurred in Harlem in the 1920s.

Prohibition was the law of the land in the 1920s, but it was not always enforced. Americans reduced their total consumption of alcohol, but thousands of ordinary citizens became lawbreakers when they drank or served liquor. By the end of the decade, even Prohibition’s most ardent defenders conceded that the law was not working and was encouraging the rise of organized crime. The 1928 presidential election demonstrated that many Americans were not ready to support a Catholic for the presidency. The Republicans won easily, but the election also demonstrated the Democratic Party’s growing strength among urban voters.

Notecards

-Red Scare

-A. Mitchell Palmer (Palmer Raids)

-Sacco and Vanzetti

-Warren Harding

-Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act (1922)

-Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930)

-Teapot Dome Scandal

-Sheppard-Towner Act

-Calvin Coolidge

-Welfare capitalism

-Henry Ford

-Open shop, American Plan

-Dawes Plan (1924)

- 1920s Foreign Policy

-Washington Conference (1921)

-Kellogg-Briand Treaty (1928)

-disarmament

-Consumerism

-Mass Culture

-Mass Media; radio, advertising, magazines

-flappers

-Jazz Age: Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong

-Babe Ruth

-Charles Lindbergh

-Nativism

-Ku Klux Klan

-immigration quota laws (1921, 1924)

-Fundamentalism

-Modernism

-Scopes Trial

-Clarence Darrow

-Scopes “Monkey” Trial

-Prohibition, Volstead Act, 19th Amendment (1919)

-speakeasy

-organized crime

-Margaret Sanger

-Revivialists: Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson

-Lost Generation:

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway

Sinclair Lewis

Ezra Pound

T.S. Eliot

-Frank Lloyd Wright

-H.L. Mencken

-Georgia O’Keeffe

-Harlem Renaissance:

Countee Cullen

Langston Hughes

James Weldon Johnson

Claude McKay

Paul Robeson

-New Negro

-Marcus Garvey

-Herbert Hoover vs. Al Smith (election of 1928)