Roaring 20 S = Economic Boom (1921-1929)

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1920’s Overview

Roaring 20’s = Economic Boom (1921-1929)

Mechanization & Mass Production ( ie. Ford)
Development of new industries: cars, airplanes, petroleum, chemicals, Radio, Motion Pictures
Age of the Oligopoly: control of an entire industry by a few giant firms

(ie. Ford, Chrysler, GM = produced 83% of the nation’s cars)

- Banking = 1% controlled over half of the nation’s finances

Corporate consolidation = little public opposition due to efficiency and productivity

Business of Government = Republican control “Less government in business, more business in

government”

President shaped economic policy

- Harding admin. = Commerce Department, Tariff of 1922, Open Shop

Gov’t the Collaborator rather than regulator of business
Corruption = graft / Tea Pot Dome Scandal

Women = 19th Amendment

League of Women Voters: jury duty, equal pay laws, equal rights
Little progress – didn’t vote as a bloc
Flappers

Urbanization = More people lived in cities than country side for the first time

Great Migration = Ghettos
Harlem Renaissance: literature, art, music (ie. Langston Hughes)
Barrios = Hispanic migrants
Suburbia: cars, shopping centers, franchise chains

Mass Culture

Advertising & Consumerism
Leisure & Entertainment (Radio & Film)
Phonograph: music / Jazz
New Morality: Lost Generation

- Rejection of conventional standards

Nativism & Immigration Restriction

- Red Scare = immigrants as radicals, racial inferior, religious subversives, criminals

- National Origins Act = 2% based on 1890 census

- Ku Klux Klan

Prohibition & Organized Crime

18th Amendment
Volstead Act
Profits = organized crime

Religion = Fundamentalist – evolution / ACLU

Rejection of War = Kellogg-Briand Pact – renounced aggression and outlawed war

I. Roaring 20’s (1921-1929)

III. Mass Culture in the Jazz Age

A. Advertising & Consumer Society

1.Consumer brand-names products

a.home became focus of consumerism: housewife’s role as consumer, purchasing goods for the family

b.shifting labor market promoted mass consumption – increasing number of white collar workers = more money to spend

c.consumption displaced traditional values of thrift, prudence, and avoidance of debt

1) refined use of credit developed between 1922-1929: 85-75% of radios, furniture,

and washing machines bought on credit

B.Leisure and Entertainment

1.Movies: set national trends in dress, language, and behavior

2.Radio: helped mold national popular culture

3.Phonograph: allowed families to listen to music of their choice in their own homes

a.dance crazes: Charleston

b.Jazz Age: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington

4.Professional Sports: Baseball – Babe Ruth & the NY Yankees

5.Aviation: Charles Lindberg – solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 Spirit of St. Louis

C.New Morality

1.Consumption and immediate gratification weakened traditional self-restraint and fed desire

for personal fulfillment

a.growing disenchantment with traditional values

b.The Lost Generation: artist who criticized mass society in the 1920’s rejected the materialism and conformity of the age (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway)

c.Sexuality challenged traditional values: birth control & revealing clothing

d.cigarette & boot leg liquor consumption increased

e.“Flapper” – frivolous young women with short hair and skimpy dresses who danced, smoked, and drank in oblivious self-absorption

IV.Culture Wars

A.Nativism & Immigration Restriction

1. Renewed immigration after WWI revived the anti-immigration movement

a.propaganda of the war and the Red Scare years generated public support for more restriction

b.depicted immigrants as radicals, racial inferiors, religious subversives, or criminals

1) Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti = found guilty of murder b/c they were immigrants and radicals

2.Immigration backlash of 1920’s resulted in restriction of the flow of “undesirable” immigrants to

the united States

a.Emergency Quota Act of 1929: reduced immigration by about 2/3rds

b.National Origins Act of 1924

c.Nisei – Japanese children who were American citizens by birth

B.Ku Klux Klan

1.New movement was national not Southern = claimed several million members

a.admitted only native-born white Protestants

b.Trinity River incident in 1922 along with crime and corruption led to the near collapse of the

clan by 1930.

C.Prohibition & Crime

1.1920: 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages

a. Volstead Act – defined forbidden liquors and established the Prohibition Bureau

b.evasion was easy: bootleggers & speakeasies

c.huge profits encouraged organized crime = Al Capone

d.1933: 21st Amendment legalized alcohol

D.Old-Time Religion & the Scopes Trial

1.Protestant fundamentalism – emphasized the infallibility of the bible

a. emerged as a conservative reaction to religious modernism and the social changes brought by

mass immigration and the growing influence of modern science and technology

b.secularization of public education = teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution

2.John Scopes trial: Tennessee biology teacher who was arrested for teaching evolution which

was a violation of the Butler Act.

a.Scopes was defended by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) who pledged to fight laws

which violated the Constitutional separation of church and state.

V.A New Era in the World

A.War Debts & Economic Expansion

1.U.S. was the world’s dominant economic power in the 1920’s, changed by the Great War from

debtor to a creditor nation.

2.Troubled relations with post war Europe:

a.American insistence on repayment of war debts and high post war tariffs which blocked

European imports caused bad feelings

b.relations improved when U.S. lowered tariffs and loaned money to impoverished Germany to

pay war reparations to England & France (Dawes Plan, 1924)

3.U.S. became world’s leading exporter

a.American companies became multinational corporations to expand markets and avoid

foreign tariffs

b.American gov’t exempted bankers and manufacturers from antitrust laws to exploit foreign

markets (Iraqi oil, central American fruit)

B.Rejecting War

1.Washington Naval Conference in 1921 – held by President Harding to draft a treaty to reduce

battleship tonnage and suspend the building of new war ships for a decade

2.Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1929 – signed by 64 nations, the treaty renounced aggression and outlawed

war, but lacked provisions for enforcement making it meaningless.

C.Managing the Hemisphere

1.U.S. continued domination of Latin America

a.retreat from gunboat diplomacy of the progressive era but continued to maintain troops in

Cuba & Panama

b.widespread hatred of America in Latin American nations

2.Clark Memorandum – receded from the Roosevelt Corollary and helped prepare the way for the

so-called Good Neighbor Policy toward Latin America

VI.Election of Herbert Hoover in 1928

A.Not a politician (never held public office prior to presidency) – but a successful administrator who

championed rational and efficient economic development

1.Conservative and opposed an active government

Great Depression (Chap. 10 / Unit 4)

I.Crash of 1929: Oct. 29 “Black Tuesday”

A.Panicked investors dumped their stocks at any price

1.Slide in the market continued for months then years = hit bottom July, 1932

2.Crash of the market marked the beginning of the Depression

B.Causes of the Great Depression:

1.Weakness of the new era economy

a.unequal distribution of wealth and income – more than ½ of the nation’s people living at or below subsistence level = not enough purchasing power to maintain economy

2.Oligopolies dominated American industries

a. led to “administered prices” – prices kept artificially high (not determined by supply & demand)

b.by not responding to purchasing power = system helped bring on economic collapse

3.Weaknesses in specific industries

a. Agriculture suffered from over production, declining prices, heavy debt

b.Poorly managed and regulated banks

4.International economic difficulties

a. Shut out from U.S. markets by high tariffs

b.European depended on American investments to manage their debts and reparation payments from WWI – Crash of 29’ dried up flow of American dollars to Europe

c.Great Depression spread global

d.Conditions worsened in U.S. due to declining trade

5.Government policies

a.failure to enforce antitrust laws had encouraged oligopolies and high prices

b.failure to regulate banking or stock market permitted financial recklessness

c.Absence of effective agricultural policy & high tariffs reduced markets

II.The Depression Spreads

A.Shut downs and cut backs in industrial production by the early 1930’s

1.High unemployment due to layoffs and shut downs = by 1932 - 1/4th of labor force unemployed

2.“vicious cycle” – shrinking wages and unemployment cut into purchasing power; causing

business to slash production again and lay off workers, thereby further reducing purchasing

power

3.Farming – commodity prices fell by 55% stifling farm income = farmers unable to pay their

mortgages were evicted

4.Hoovervilles: shanty towns built by homeless people in urban centers

a.soup kitchens / “primitive communism”

B.Gender attitudes about work

1.Women were concentrated in low paid service, sales, and clerical jobs

2.Traditional attitudes reinforced opposition to female employment

a.opposition to married women = furthered suffering of families

3.Few men sought work in fields associated with women

C.Families in the Depression

1.Divorce declined (too expensive) but desertion increased & marriages were postponed

2.Birthrates fell

3.Men of the household humiliated and despondent when laid off from work = female headed

households increased

4.Women sewed own clothing, raised and canned their own food, took on extra work at home

5.Parents sacrificed their own well-being for their children (starvation and sickness)

D.Minorities and the Depression “last hired, first fired”

1.Fewer resources and opportunities – racial minorities were less able than other groups to

absorb the economic pain

2.Black unemployment twice the rate of white people – often denied help from government

3.Hispanic Americans – had to complete for agricultural jobs, barred from public works & highway

construction jobs in Southwestern states, deported by the government in the 1930’s

E.Popular protest

1.“bloodless battle of Pleasantville” – 100 women held city council hostage demanding assistance

2.Communist organized the jobless

3.violent clashes in Baltimore and the Midwest

III.President Herbert Hoover & the Depression

A.Believed in voluntarism – private action was preferable to federal intervention

1.Secured business leaders pledges to maintain employment & wage levels – but most business

owners repudiated these pledges

2.Created the President’s Organization for Unemployment Relief = help raise private funds for

voluntary relief agencies

a.He believed that charities and local authorities should help the unemployed, and that federal relief would expand government power and undermine the recipients character

3.He vetoed Congressional attempts to aid the unemployed (1/4 of population unemployed by

1932) – opposing deficit spending

4.As the Depression worsened = Hoover persuaded Congress to cut taxes to boost consumers’

buying power & he increased the public works budget (personal income dropped by more than

half)

a.RFC: Reconstruction Finance Corporation (est. Jan. 1932) lent federal funds to banks, insurance companies, and railroads – so recovery could “trickle down” to ordinary people.

IV.Repudiating Hoover: Election of 1932

Bonus Army: unemployed veterans of WWI who gathered in Washington demanding payment of service bonuses not due until 1945.

Hoover refused to meet with them & Congress rejected their plan
Gen. Douglas MacArthur – exceeded Hoover’s order’s to remove them, using tanks and cavalry to forcibly remove them
The event confirmed Hoover’s public image as harsh and insensitive.

Election of 1932: Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Hoover & Democrats gained control of Congress as the majority party.

FDR – “pledged a new deal for the American people”

V.Launching the New Deal

A.The First New Deal

1. 1ST hundred days of the New Deal: Congress passed many important laws (graph pg. 666)

2. Roosevelt’s program reflected a mix of ideas: FDR’s, diverse group of advisors (academic experts “brain trust”), politicians, and social workers, principles from the Progressive movement,

precedents from the Great War mobilization, plans from the Hoover admin.

Emergency banking Act: extended government assistance to sound banks and reorganized the weak ones
Fireside chat: FDR’s nightly radio addresses to the nation to reassure the public and restore confidence in the banks
FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) – established to guarantee bank deposits up to $2,500
SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) – created to regulate the stock market

Creating Jobs

FERA: Federal Emergency Relief Administration – furnished funds to state and local agencies

Spending $3 billion to develop new programs to provide work for the unemployed

CWA: Civil Works Administration – hired laborers to build roads, teachers to staff rural schools, singers to give public appearances
PWA: Public Works Administration – provided works relief and stimulated the economy by building schools, hospitals, courthouses, airports, dams, and bridges
CCC: Civilian Conservation Corps – employed 2.5 million to work on reforestation, flood control projects, build roads & bridges in national forest and parks, restore Civil War battle fields, and fight forest fires

Helping Farmers

AAA: Agricultural Adjustment Administration – est. to combat the depression in agriculture caused by crop surpluses and low prices

Subsidized farmers who agreed to restrict production to boost farm prices to parity
Restricting production in hard times caused public outrage
Agricultural conditions improved – prices rose, but the AAA harmed poor farmers while aiding larger commercial growers.
Supreme Court declared the AAA unconstitutional in 1936, but new laws est. the farm subsidy program for decades to come
Increased mechanization and scientific agriculture kept production high and farmers dependent on gov’t intervention

Flight of the Blue Eagle

New Deal attempted to revive American industry with the National Industrial Recovery Act

NRA: National Recovery Administration – sought to stop the slide of prices, wages, and employment by suspending antitrust laws & authorizing industrial trade associations to draft codes setting production quotas, price policies, wages, and working conditions, and other business practices.
Director of the NRA: Hugh Johnson – persuaded business leaders to cooperate in drafting codes & the public to patronize participating companies indicated by the Blue Eagle insignia
Corporate leaders used the NRA to advance their own goals and to discriminate against small producers, consumers, and labor
Supreme Court declare the NRA unconstitutional in 1935

Critics Right & Left

Conservatives: complained the expansion of government activity and its regulatory role weakened the autonomy of American business
Left: some radicals argued the New Deal had forgotten the forgotten man

Worker strikes demanded rights
Employers moved to crush strikes – using complaisant police and private strike breakers

Popular discontent was mobilized by 4 prominent individuals:

1) Representative William Lemke of North Dakota: agrarian radical leader who objected the New Deal’s limited response to farmers (AAA – restriction of production)

Sought government financial aid for farmers

2) Francis Townsend (Ca. physician) – called for government pension to all Americans voer the age of 60

3) Father Charles Coughlin – weakly radio show demanding social justice and financial reform

4) Senator Huey P. Long – wanted more comprehensive social welfare policies

Share Our-Wealth Society: plan to end poverty and unemployment through confiscatory taxes on the rich to provide every family with as decent income, health coverage, education, and old-age pensions