A.P.
U.S. History Notes
Chapter 34: “American Life in the ‘Roaring Twenties’”
~
1919 – 1929 ~
I.
Insulating
America from the Radical Virus
1.
After
World War I, America turned inward, away from the world, and denounced
“radical” foreign ideas and “un-American” lifestyles.
2.
The
“red scare” of 1919-20 resulted in Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
(“Fighting Quaker”) using a series of raids to round up and arrest about 6000
suspected Communists.
3.
In
December of 1919, 249 alleged alien radicals were deported on the Buford.
4.
The
red scare severely cut back on free speech for a period, since the hysteria
caused many people to want to eliminate any Communists.
i.
Some
states made it illegal to merely advocate the violent overthrow of
government for social change.
ii.
In
1921, Nicola Sacco, a shoe-factory worker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
a fish peddler, were convicted of murdering a Massachusetts paymaster and his
guard; in that case, the jury and judge were prejudiced in some degree because
the two were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers.
a.
In
this time period, anti-foreignism was high as well.
b.
Liberals
and radicals rallied around the two men, but they died anyway.
II.
Hooded
Hoodlums of the KKK
1.
The
new Ku Klux Klan was anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-black,
anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist,
anti-revolutionist, anti-bootlegger, anti-gambling, anti-adultery, and
anti-birth control.
2.
At
its peak in the 1920s, it claimed 5 million members, mostly from the South, but
it also featured a reign of hooded horror.
3.
It
was stopped not by the exposure of its horrible intolerance but by its money
fraud!
III.
Stemming
the Foreign Flood
1.
In
1920-21, some 800,000 Europeans (mostly from the southeastern regions) came to
the U.S., and to quell the fears of the “100% Americans,” Congress passed the Emergency
Quota Act of 1921, in which newcomers from Europe were restricted at any
year to a quota, which was set at 3% of the people of their nationality who
lived in the U.S. in 1910.
i.
This
really favored the Slavs and the southeaster Europeans.
2.
This
was then replaced by the Immigration Act of 1924, which cut the quota
down to 2% and the origins base was shifted to that of 1890, when few
southeaster Europeans lived in America.
i.
This
act also slammed the door against Japanese immigrants.
ii.
By
1931, for the first time in history, more people left America than came here.
3.
The
immigrant tide was now cut off, but those that were in America struggled to
adapt.
i.
Labor
unions in particular had difficulty in organizing because of the differences in
race, culture, and nationality.
IV.
The
Prohibition “Experiment”
1.
The
18th Amendment (and later, the Volstead Act)
prohibited the sale of alcohol, but this law never was effectively enforced
because so many people violated it.
2.
Actually,
most people thought that Prohibition was here to stay, and this was
especially popular in the Midwest and the South.
3.
Prohibition
was particularly supported by women and the Women’s Christian Temperance
Union, but it also posed problems from countries that produced alcohol and
tried to ship them to the U.S. (illegally, of course).
4.
In
actuality, bank savings did increase, and absenteeism in industry did go down.
V.
The
Golden Age of Gangsterism
1.
Prohibition
led to the rise of gangs that competed to distribute liquor.
2.
In
the gang wars of Chicago in the 1920s, about 500 people were murdered, but
captured criminals were rare, and convictions even rarer, since gangsters often
provided false alibis for each other.
i.
The
most famous of these gangsters was “Scarface” Al Capone, who was finally
caught for (get this) tax evasion.
3.
Gangs
moved into other activities as well: prostitution, gambling, and narcotics, and
by 1930, their annual profit was $12 – 18 billion!
i.
In
1932, gangsters kidnapped the baby son of Charles Lindbergh, shocking
the nation, and this event led Congress to the so-called Lindbergh Law,
which allowed the death penalty to certain cases of interstate abduction.
VI.
Monkey
Business in Tennessee
1.
Education
made strides behind the progressive ideas of John Dewey, a professor at
Columbia University who set forth principles of “learning by doing” and
believed that “education for life” should be the primary goal of school.
i.
Now,
schools were no longer prisons.
ii.
States
also increasingly putting minimum ages for teens to stay in school.
2.
A
massive health care program launched by the Rockefeller Foundation
practically eliminated hookworm in the South.
3.
Evolutionists
were also clashing against creationists, and the prime example of this was the Scopes
Trial, where John T. Scopes, a teacher high school teacher of Dayton,
Tennessee, was charged with teaching evolution.
i.
William Jennings Bryan was among those who were against him, but the
one-time “boy orator” was made to sound foolish and childish by expert attorney
Clarence Darrow, and five days after the end of the trial, Bryan died.
ii.
The
trial proved to be inconclusive.
4.
Increasing
numbers of Christians were starting to reconcile their differences between
religion and the findings of modern science, as evidenced in the new Churches
of Christ (est. 1906).
VII.
The
Mass-Consumption Economy
1.
Prosperity
took off in the “Roaring 20s,” despite the recession of 1920-21, and it was
helped by the tax policies of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellons, which favored
the rapid expansion of capital investment.
2.
Henry Ford perfected the assembly-line production to where this famous Rouge
River Plant was producing a finished automobile every ten seconds.
3.
The
automobile now provided more freedom, more luxury, and more privacy.
4.
A
new medium arose as well: advertising, which used persuasion, ploy, seduction,
and sex appeal to sell merchandise.
i.
In
1925, Bruce Barton’s bestseller The Man Nobody Knows claimed that
Jesus Christ was the perfect salesman and that all advertisers should study his
techniques.
5.
Sports
was buoyed by people like home-run hero George Herman (“Babe”) Ruth and
boxers Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier.
VIII.
Putting
America on Rubber Tires
1.
Americans
adapted, rather than invented, the gasoline engine.
2.
People
like Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds (famous for Oldsmobile) developed the
infant auto industry.
3.
Early
cars stalled and weren’t too reliable, but eventually, cars like the Ford Model
T became cheap and easy to own.
i.
In
1929, when the bull market collapsed, 26 million motor vehicles were registered
in the United States, or 1 car per 4.9 Americans.
IX.
The
Advent of the Gasoline Age
1.
The
automobile spurred 6 million people to new jobs and took over the railroad as
king of transportation.
i.
New
roads were constructed, the gasoline industry boomed, and America’s standard of
living rose greatly.
ii.
Cars
were luxuries at first, but they rapidly became necessities.
iii.
The
less-attractive states lost population at an alarming rate .
iv.
However,
accidents killed lots of people, and by 1951, 1,000,000 people had died by the
car—more than the total of Americans lost to all its previous wars combined.
2.
Cars
brought adventure, excitement, and pleasure.
X.
Humans
Develop Wings
1.
On
December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first
airplane for 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet.
2.
Aviation
slowly got off the ground, and they were used a bit in World War I, but
afterwards, they really took off (pun not intended) when they became used for
mail and more functions.
i.
The
first transcontinental airmail route was established form New York to San
Francisco in 1920.
ii.
At
first, there were many accidents and crashes, but later, safety improved.
3.
Charles
Lindbergh became the first person ever to fly across the Atlantic Ocean when he
did it in his Spirit of St. Louis, going from New York to Paris.
XI.
The
Radio Revolution
1.
In
the 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi had already invented wireless telegraphy
and his invention was used for long distance communication in the Great War.
2.
Then,
in November of 1920, the first voice-carrying radio station began broadcasting
when KDKA (in Pittsburgh) told of President Warren G. Harding’s
landslide victory.
3.
While
the automobile lured Americans away from home, the radio lured them back, as
millions tuned in to hear favorites like “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and listen to the
“Eveready Hour.”
4.
Sports
were further stimulated while politicians had to adjust their speaking
techniques to support the new medium, and music could finally be heard
electronically.
XII.
Hollywood’s
Filmland Fantasies
1.
Thomas Edison was one of those who invented the movie, but in 1903, the real birth
of the movie came with The Great Train Robbery.
i.
A
first full-length feature was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation,
which glorified the KKK of the Reconstruction era.
2.
Hollywood, California, quickly became a hot spot for movie production, due to
its favorable climate and landscape.
i.
The
first movies featured nudity and heavy-lidded female vampires called “vamps”
until a shocked public forced codes of censorship to be placed on them.
3.
Propaganda
movies of World War II would really boost the popularity of movies.
4.
Critics,
though, did bemoan the vulgarization of popular tastes wrought by radio and
movies.
i.
These
new mediums led to the loss of old family traditions, like the telling of an
old story by a grandparent.
XIII.
The
Dynamic Decade
1.
For
the first time, most Americans lived in urban areas, not the countryside.
2.
The
birth-control movement was led by fiery Margaret Sanger, and the National
Women’s Party began in 1923 to campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment
to the Constitution.
3.
The
Fundamentalists of old religion even lost ground to the new Modernists,
who liked to think that God was a “good guy” and the universe was a nice place.
4.
A
new fad that shocked many conservative older folk (who labeled it as full of
erotic suggestions and totally inappropriate) arrived, and the youths who
practiced it were called “flappers.”
i.
They
danced new dances like the “Charleston” and dressed more provocatively.
ii.
Sigmund Freud said that sexual repression was responsible for most of society’s
ills, and that pleasure and health demanded sexual gratification and
liberation.
5.
Jazz
was the music of “flappers,” and Blacks like Handy, “Jelly Roll”
Morton, and Joseph King Oliver gave birth to it.
6.
Black
pride spawned such great leaders as Langston Hughes (famous for The
Weary Blues, which appeared in 1926) and Marcus Garvey (founder of
the United Negro Improvement Association and inspiration for the Nation
of Islam).
XIV.
Literary
Liberation
1.
By
the dawn of the 1920s, many of the old writers (Henry James, Henry
Adams, and William Dean Howells) had died, and those that survived,
like Edith Wharton and Willa Cather were popular (well, some of
them were).
2.
Many
of the new writers, though, hailed from different backgrounds (not Protestant
New Englanders).
i.
H.L. Mencken, the “Bad Boy of Baltimore,” found fault in lots of things in America.
a.
He
wrote the monthly American Mercury.
ii.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby, both
of which captured the society of the time as it was.
iii.
Theodore Dreiser wrote An American Tragedy and dealt with the same theme of the
glamour and cruelty of an achievement-oriented society.
iv.
Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, and Farewell to Arms.
v.
Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio, and wrote about small-town life.
vi.
Sinclair Lewis disparaged small-town America in his Main Street and Babbitt.
vii.
William Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay
Dying all were very famous.
3.
Poetry
also was innovative, as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot were two great
poets.
4.
Eugene O’Neill was an actor in plays like Strange Interlude, and he came from
New York.
5.
Other
famous writers included Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston.
6.
Architecture
also made its marks with the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.
i.
The
Empire State Building debuted in 1931.
XV.
Wall
Street’s Big Bull Market
1.
There
was much overspeculation in the 1920s, especially on Florida home properties
(until a hurricane took care of that), and even during times of prosperity,
many, many banks failed each year.
i.
The
whole system was built on fragile credit.
ii.
The
stock market made headline news.
2.
Secretary
of the Treasury Mellon reduced the amount of taxes that rich people had to pay,
thus thrusting the burden onto the middle class.
i.
He
reduced the national debt, though, but he has been accused of indirectly
encouraging the Bull Market.
3.
Whatever
the case, the prosperities of the 1920s was setting up the crash that would
lead to the poverty and suffering of the 1930s.
