Unit 8
Prosperity, Depression, and War
Chapter 25: The Roaring Twenties
I.Republicans and the White House
- Harding’s Return to “Normalcy”
- In 1920, Warren G. Harding won the presidential election by a landslide. Republicans led the country for the next 12 years.
- Harding chose the “best minds” of his party for top cabinet jobs. These men followed strong pro-business policies.
a) Secretary of the Treasury - Andrew Melon (millionaire aluminum king) who balanced the budget and lowered taxes.
b) Secretary of Commerce – Herbert Hoover helped American businesses expand overseas.
- The Ohio Gang–President Harding was honest and hardworking. He brought in some friends from Ohio to help with the burdens of running the nation.
a) Charles Forbes, Head of the Veterans Bureau, was convicted of stealing millions in 1923.
b) Harding felt betrayed and became so stressed that he died of a heart attack in August of 1923.
- The Teapot Dome Scandal – After Harding died, new scandals arose.
a) Secretary of State, Albert Fall, had secretly leased government land in California and Teapot Dome, Wyoming to oil companies in return for large bribes.
b) Fall was found guilty and sent to prison.
- President Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge
- Coolidge was different than form Harding; he was tight with money and words.
a) He forced officials involved in scandals to resign.
b) He was reelected in 1924.
- Like Harding, Coolidge believed that prosperity for all Americans depended on business prosperity.
a) He cut government regulations and chose business leaders to run government agencies.
C. Foreign Affairs
- After WW I, most Americans wanted to stay out of European affairs.
a) The United States was now the world’s leading economic and political power.
- Europeans expected the U.S. to play a leading role in world affairs. President Coolidge did want to keep the hard won peace in Europe, but didn’t want to commit the U.S. to the job of peacemaker.
a) Most Americans supported and isolationist policy.
b) 1921 – Harding had signed separate peace treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary.
c) The U.S. sent observers to the League of Nations but would not join.
- The Soviet Unionor USSR–Meanwhile,Vladimir Lenin created the world’s first communist state.
a) Communism – an economic system in which all wealth and property are owned by the community as a whole.
b) The U.S. refused to recognize Lenin’s government.
c) The Soviet Union did away with all private property.
d) American aid saved as many as 10 million Russians from starvation.
4. Latin America – Since Latin America had been cut off from Europe during WW I, trade with the United States increased as a result.
a) At times, the U.S. intervened to protect its interests (investments) in Latin America.
D. Pursuing Peace
1. Many people felt that an arms race in Europe (militarism) had helped cause WW I.
a)The U.S. worked for disarmament, reducing a nation’s armed forces and weapons, in the 1920’s.
- In 1921, the U.S., Britain, and Japan agreed to limit the size of their navies.
a)Kellogg Briand Pact (1928) – signed by the U.S. and 61 other nations, this treaty outlawed war.
- Business Fever
- A Booming Economy
- World War I had helped the economy.
a) Expanded factories became more efficient.
b) Millions of Americans move to cities.
- When soldiers first returned home and began looking for jobs there was a sharp recession, or economic slump.
a) Factories soon switched from producing war good to consumer goods.
b) From 1923 to 1929 the economy grew rapidly.
3. Many Americans began prosper.
a) Factory output almost doubled.
b) Most Americans were making more money.
B. The Auto Industry Fuels Growth
1.The auto industry was the engine of the American economy in the 1920’s.
a)Spurred the growth of related fields such as steel and rubber.
b) Ford’s assembly line led to a drop in the price of autos. Now ordinary Americans could afford to buy them.
c) More roads were paved and new highways were built.
d) Gas stations, restaurants, and motels sprang up across the country.
- New Goods for Sale – Electric refrigerators, radios, phonographs, vacuum cleaners, and many other appliances took their place in American homes.
- With so many new products, Americans often wanted to buy more than they could afford.
a) Businesses allowed installment buying, or buying on credit.
b) This increased the demand for goods.
c) Consumer debt also rose.
- In the 1920’s businesses used advertising to boost sales.
a) Showed happy young couples using new products.
b) Implied your happiness depended on owning shiny new products.
- Stocks Surge
- The economic boom of the 1920’s gave the stock market a big boost.
a)More people invested in the stock market than ever before.
b)Many ordinary people became rich buying and selling stocks.
c)People bought stocks on margin. A practice similar to installment buying, where you could buy stock for just a 10% downpayment.
d)Bull market – a period of increased stock trading and rising stock prices.
.
III. New Ways of Life
- The Noble Experiment
- The experiment was Prohibition, a ban on selling and drinking alcohol anywhere in the U.S. (18th Amendment).
a)Alcoholism and liver disease did decrease during Prohibition.
2. People found ways to get around the law or often broke the law.
a) some made their own alcohol
b) bootleggers – smuggled millions of gallons of liquor from Canada and the Caribbean.
c) Speakeasies, or illegal bars, opened in nearly every city and town. They welcomed women as well as men.
3. Gangsters – Prohibition gave a big boost to organized crime.
a) Gangsters divided up cities and forced speakeasies to buy liquor from them.
b) They bribed policemen, public officials, and judges who “looked the other way.”
4. Repeal –Prohibition reduced drinking, but never stopped it. By the mid 1920s, almost half of all federal arrests were for Prohibition crimes.
a)Most felt Prohibition was undermining respect for the law.
b)In 1933, the 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment.
- The New Women
- The 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, giving women the right to vote.
a)Carrie Chapman Catt set up the League of Women Voters. The league worked to educate voters and still does today.
- Alice Paul, who had been a leading suffragist, called for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923.
a)ERA – equality of rights shall not be denied on the account of sex.
b)Many people felt the amendment went too far, and it never passed.
3. New Freedoms –Women’s lives changed in other ways.
a) More women worked outside of the home. A few even became doctors and lawyers.
b) Ready made clothes and electric appliances such as refrigerators, washers, irons, and vacuum cleaners made housework easier.
C.The Movies – In the late 1800s, Thomas Edison and George Eastman had helped to develop the first moving picture cameras.
1. 1920s – Rising wages and labor saving appliances gave families more money and more time in which to spend it. They looked for new ways to have fun.
a) Hollywood became the movie capital of the world.
b) Millions of Americans went to the movies at least once a week.
c) The most popular actor of the time was Rudolph Valentino.
d) Charlie Chaplin – most popular comedian.
e) In 1927, Hollywood produced The Jazz Singer. It was the first “talkie.”
D. A MassSociety
- Americans from all over were seeing the same movies.
- Radio also became very popular. The countries first radio station started broadcasting in Pittsburg in 1920.
a)By 1929 - An estimated 10 million American families owned radios.
b)Each night people gathered around the radio to listen to popular shows.
3. In the 1920s, Americans traveled to more places and moved more quickly because of the automobile.
a) Many city dwellers moved to nearby towns in the country, which soon grew into the suburbs.
b) People no longer had to live where they could walk or take a trolley to work.
c) In the country, cars brought towns, shops, and movies closer.
IV. The Roaring Twenties
- Fads and Fashions
1. Fads caught on and then quickly disappeared.
a)A fad is a style or activity that is popular for a short time.
b) examples – dance marathons, and Mah-jongg, a Chinese game.
2. No one pursued the latest fads more than flappers, young women who rebelled against traditional ways of thinking and acting.
a)They wore bobbed hair, short dresses, and bright lipsticks.
b)They smoked cigarettes in public and drank alcohol in speakeasies.
c)For many, these fashions symbolized a new freedom for women.
- New Music
- Jazz was a new kind of music that combined African Rhythms with European harmonies.
a)Black musicians in New Orleans and Chicago created jazz from ragtime and blues.
b)Lewis Armstrong was one of the brilliant young musicians who helped create Jazz.
c)New dances – the Charleston, the Lindy, the Shimmy, etc.
- Many older people thought that jazz and the new dances were a bad influence on the nation’s young people.
- Literature - A New generation of American writers earned worldwide fame in the 1920s.
- Young Writers
a)ErnestHemingway wrote A farewell To Arms, a novel about a young man’s growing disgust for the war.
b)Sinclair Lewis wrote Babbitt and MainStreet; he presented small town Americans as dull and narrow minded.
c)F. Scott Fitzgeraldwrote The Great Gatsby, a book about wealthy people who attended parties but could not find happiness.
d)Edna St. Vincent Millay was a poet who expressed the frantic pace of the 1920s.
D. Harlem Renaissance
1. In the 1920s, large numbers of African American musicians, artists, and writers settled in Harlem, New York.
a) Harlem Renaissance – a rebirth of African American culture. For the first time, white Americans took notice of the achievements of black artists.
2. African American Writers
a) Langston Hughes became a leading poet. He denounced violence against African Americans. He also wrote plays, short stories and essays.
b) Zora Neale Hurston collected folktales, songs, and prayers of black southerners and published them in a collection called Mules and Men.
c) Countee Cullen and Claude McKay were poets who wrote about the experiences of African Americans.
E. Heroes and Heroines – Radios, movies, and newspapers created heroes and heroines across the country.
1. Some of the most famous heroes of the decade were athletes.
a) Bobby Jones – golf champion
b) Bill Tilden and Helen Willis - tennis champions
c) Gertrude Earle (only 19)–the first women to swim across the English Channel
d) College football drew large crowds
e) Baseball was the most popular sport.
f) Babe Ruth – “The Sultan of Swat” played for the New York Yankees
2. The greatest hero of the decade was an aviator.
a) Charles Lindbergh, or Lucky Lindy, flew from New York to Paris in May 1927.
b) It took him 33 ½ hours in his plane, The Spirit of Saint Louis.
V. Signs of Trouble
A. The Other Half
1. Many Americans did not share in the boom of the 1920s.
a) Workers in the clothing industry were hurt by changes in women’s fashions
(shorter skirts).
b) Coal miners also hurt as oil replaced coal.
c) Railroads suffered as cars and trucks cut into profits.
2. Farmers were hit the hardest. During the war, demand for farm products from Europe drove up farm prices. Many farmers took out loans to buy more land and tractors.
a) After the war European demand fell, causing a sharp decline in prices.
b) Farmers had trouble repaying loans.
3. Labor Unions Suffered. During the war, unions had worked with the government to keep production high.
a) After the war, workers demanded higher pay and employers refused.
b) The government didn’t help unions and management crushed strikes.
c) Strikes turned the public against labor unions.
d) Laws were passed to limit the rights of unions.
B. Fear of Radicals
1. During the war, America had been on alert for spies and sabotage. This led to a growing fear of foreigners. The rise of communism in the Soviet Union made it worse.
a) anarchists – people who oppose organized government.
b) A group of anarchists plotted to kill well – known Americans like John D. Rockefeller.
2. The government took harsh actions against both communists (Reds) and anarchists.
a) During the Red Scare, thousands of radicals were arrested and jailed.
- Closing the Golden Door
1. Sacco and Vanzetti –trial of two Italian immigrants in Massachusetts. This trial came to symbolize the nativism in the 1920s.
a) They were arrested for robbery and murder.
b) They admitted they were anarchists, not criminals.
c) Evidence was limited and the judge was openly prejudiced against immigrants.
d) In the end, they were convicted and sentenced to death.
- Limiting immigration – After WW I, Europe lay in ruins. Millions of Europeans hoped to escape to the United States.
a)American workers feared the arrival of new immigrants would cause wages to fall.
b)They also worried that communists and anarchists would invade the U.S.
c)Emergency Quota Act (1921) - set up a quota system that allowed only a certain amount of people from each country to enter the U.S.
d)The quota system favored immigrants from Northern Europe, especially from Great Britain. In 1924, more laws were passed to further limit immigration.
e)Japanese were denied entry.
f)Latin Americans and Canadians were not included in the quota system.
D. The Scopes Trial
1. John Scopes, a young biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, violated state law by teaching his students Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
a) Darwin’s Theory – claimed that all life had evolved or developed from simpler forms over time.
b) Many churches condemned the theory.
c) Scopes was convicted and fined.
d) The law stayed on the books, although it was never really enforced.
E. The New Clan – Fear of change gave new life to an old organization.
1. Ku Klux Klan – wanted to preserve the U.S. for native born white Protestants.
a) new targets – immigrants, Catholics, and Jews.
b) Burning crosses, whippings, and lynching were used to terrorize people.
c) Because of large membership, the Klan gained political power.
d) Membership declines - scandals surfaced that Klan leaders were stealing money from members.
- Responding to Racism
1. African Americans hoped the sacrifices of WW I would lesson racism.
a) The South segregated (Jim Crow Laws).
b) In the North, racial prejudice was widespread.
2. During and after the war many African Americans moved to northern cities.
a) Only the lowest paying jobs were available.
b) People in many neighborhoods refused to rent to them.
c) Many wanted to live near eachother – large black populations grew.
d) Workers in the North felt threatened.
e) Racial tensions grew and riots broke out.
3. Marcus Garvey, a popular black leader, organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
a) He helped to promote unity and pride among African Americans.
- The Election of 1928
1. By 1928, Republicans had led the nation for 8 years.
a) Herbert Hoover (R) – a self made millionaire from the West, he won the support of ruralAmerica and businesses.
b) Alfred E. Smith (D) – The former governor of New York, he was the first Catholic to run for President. City dwellers and immigrants supported him.
c) Smith won the 12 largest cities, but rural and small town voters supported Hoover and he won by a landslide.
d) Many hoped Hoover would keep the country prosperous.
Chapter 25Notes 1