The New Era (1920s) Chapter 24
Reading Guide
Section 1: The New Economy (pp. 650-655) DUE______
Sources of Economic Boom
Radio
Commercial Aviation
Early Computers
Genetic Research
Trade Associations
“welfare capitalism”
Organized labor
“pink-collar” jobs
A. Phillip Randolph
Asians in the workplace
Hispanics in the workplace
“American Plan”
mechanized farming
parity
McNary-Haugen Bill
1. Outline the causes of the economic boom of the 1920s. What was the New Era trend in business organization?
2. What were the elements of “welfare capitalism”?
3. To what extent was the lag in union membership due to unions themselves? What were the other causal factors? How did unions serve African Americans and other ethnic minorities?
4. What caused a big drop in farm prices and income in the 1920s? Explain how parity was designed to solve the problem. What happened to parity?
Section 2: The New Culture (pp. 655-665) DUE______
consumerism
social impact of automobile
advertising
mass-circulation magazines
movies & Hollywood
radio
modernist religion
professional women
motherhood
compassionate marriages
birth control
flapper
League of Women Voters
Sheppard-Towner Act
Education
youth culture
self-made man
Charles Lindbergh
disenchanted
Lost Generation
H.L. Mencken
rejecting success
Charles & Mary Beard
Harlem Renaissance
African-American Pride
the Fugitives
the Agrarians
1. Describe the new urban mass consumer culture. How did advertising help shape it??
2. What new attitudes toward work, motherhood, sex, and leisure developed in the 1920s, especially among middle-class women? Was the new women mostly a figure of myth?
3. What social forces combined to alienate the member of the so-called Lost Generation? What did these people attack? Who were the main attackers?
4. What was the Harlem Renaissance? What was its effect?
Section 3: A Conflict of Cultures (p. 665-669) DUE______
prohibition
organized crime
National Origins Act of 1924
the New Klan
religious fundamentalism
Scopes Monkey Trial
Democratic Party
1. What more basic conflict in society did the controversy over the “noble experiment” of prohibition come to symbolize? What were the results of prohibition?
2. How did the resurrected Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s differ from the Reconstruction-era Klan? How influential was the new Klan?
3. Compare and contrast views of the modernists and the fundamentalists. How did Darwinism and the Scopes trial symbolize the conflict between the two? How has the conflict persisted?
4. How were governmental tensions of the 1920s reflected in the Democratic Party??
Section 4: Republican Government (pp. 669-672) DUE______
Warren G Harding
Teapot Dome
Calvin Coolidge
Andrew Mellon
Hoover’s “Associationalism”
1. What features of President Warren G. Harding’s personal background led to his political repudiation? What was the biggest of the various Harding-era scandals?
2. Contrast the personal lives of Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Did their politics and policies differ as much as their personalities?
3. Why did Herbert Hoover push so strongly for the creation of trade associations?