Chapter 31 Focus Questions:
Essay question: In what ways did the American society and culture change during the 1920s and what were the causes of the change?
Objective Questions:
1)What provoked the red scare?
2)In what ways did Americans express their disillusionment with the outside world during the 1920s? (4)
3)How did business people take advantage of the red scare?
4)Who was A. Mitchell Palmer and what was his role in the red scare?
5)During the 1920s the KKK grew to unprecedented proportions – who all were they against?
6)The growth of the KKK was a reaction against what in American culture?
7)What activities was the KKK known for in the 1920s? (4)
8)What nativist belief about Northern Europeans caused an increase in immigration restriction during the 1920s?
9)What did cultural pluralists (Horace Kaleen and Randolph Bourne) advocate about immigrants?
10)What groups did the Immigration Act of 1924 discriminate against?
11)One of the primary obstacles to working class solidarity and organization in America was what?
12)What were the neighborhoods like that many American immigrant ethnic groups lived in during the 1920s and after?
13)What was the Volstead Act?
14)With which large groups of Americans was the Volstead Act very difficult to enforce?
15)What religion were almost all Polish immigrants to America?
16)How did most Polish peasants learn about America? (4)
17)The zeal of federal agents in enforcing prohibition laws against liquor smugglers strained U.S. diplomatic relations with what country?
18)What reasons (4) do historians give when they argue that prohibition wasn’t entirely a failure?
19)What charge did they finally find Al Capone guilty of?
20)What city showed the most spectacular example of lawlessness and gangsterism in the 1920s?
21)Besides controlling the illegal liquor industry, American gangsters in the 1920s earned rich profits from what other activities? (4)
22)Who was the “father of progressive education” and what did he believe to be the primary goal of the teacher?
23)What was the issue in the trial of John T. Scopes, who was involved, and what was the outcome?
24)What happened to fundamentalist religion after the Scopes “Monkey Trial”?
25)Explain the impact of each of the following on creating the prosperity of the 1920s: increased worker productivity; assembly line; advertising; credit buying; tariff and income tax policy
26)What was the main problem facing American manufacturers in the 1920s?
27)In response to the need to develop greater and greater mass markets for their products, American business in the 1920s relied especially on what new techniques?
28)During the 1920s, the new system of buying on credit resulted in at least 4 impacts on our society and economy – what were they?
29)The prosperity that developed in the 1920s was usually accompanied by what?
30)Who were your first 2 major figures promoted by media image makers and the new sports industry?
31)How did Frederick W. Taylor and Henry Ford contribute to the economic boom of the 1920s?
32)List several social changes that accompanied the growth of the automobile industry in America during the 1920s.
33)How did car advertisements reach out to women? (4)
34)Who was Charles Lindbergh and what was his significance during the 1920s?
35)How did the American airline industry make most of its early profits in the 1920s?
36)How was early American radio different from European radio and what kind of “commercial” programs were featured?
37)What impact did Automobiles, radios, and motion pictures have on American culture?
38)What did the 1920 census reveal about where people lived?
39)Who was Margaret Sanger?
40)What were job opportunities for women like in the 1920s?
41)Who was Sigmund Freud and how was he involved with changing American attitudes?
42)Who developed Jazz music?
43)Why did the classical film, DW Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation, stir extensive protest by African Americans?
44)What was the Harlem Renaissance?
45)Who was Marcus Garvey?
46)Identify the following: H.L. Mencken; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ernest Hemingway; Sinclair Lewis; William Faulkner
47)After a hurricane spoiled the “get rich quick party” of American investors in the mid-1920s, where did speculators next turn their attention to making a quick buck?
48)What is buying stock on margin?
49)What did the wealthy Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, advocate as tax policy during the 1920s and how did he justify shifting the tax burden away from the wealthy?