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AMERICA IN THE 1920s

The 1920s represent a decade of many faces and extremes, with a whole lot in between.  Nevertheless, there are several themes:

 

(1)          Foreign Policy – A return to Isolationism (sort of)

(2)          Domestic Policy – Pro-business

(3)          Rise of consumerism—more time, more disposable income

(4)          Trials and Scares – Americanism, Sensationalism

(5)          Renaissance in art, music and literature – “The Lost Generation”

 

Republicans Control the White House (1921- 1933)

        *Warren G. Harding (1921-23):  nice guy, corrupt administration, dies in

office

*Calvin Coolidge (1923-29):  straight-faced, “pro-business,” slept a lot,

popular

*Herbert Hoover (1929-33):  intelligent, progressive, wrong place-wrong

time, unpopular

 

General Trends

(1)          FOREIGN POLICY—isolationist (sort of)

àU.S. stayed out of the League of Nations

àinvolved in the World Court

àinterventionist in Latin America

àfinancially bound to Europe due to loans and reparations from the war

[Prescription for Disaster # 1]

 

    *Washington Naval Conference (1921)

    *Kellogg-Briand Pact (1929)

 

(2)          DOMESTIC POLICY—Pro-business

à Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon’s “trickle-down economics”

    *Lower taxes on the wealthy and on big business

    *Higher taxes on the middle class

    *Higher tariffs [Prescription for Disaster # 2]

 

à Prohibition—the law, but not exactly enforced

    *Bootlegging and speakeasies are big business

    *Makes multi-millionaires out of mob figures like Al Capone

    *Loses steam when the Great Depression breaks out in 1929

 

(3)          SOCIAL LIFE—very diverse

à the stereotype of the “Jazz Age” and “Roaring 20s”

    *Some tossed aside traditional morality and convention

    *Jazz, speakeasies, “flapper girls”

    *Mostly urban areas

 

à Others continued to adhere to a more conventional worldview

    *Work, family, and faith

    *Mostly rural areas

 

Both types existed during the 1920s, creating a conflict that manifested itself in numerous ways (as we shall see)

 

Americanism and Nationalism

(1)          The Red Scare (1919-1920)—Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s crusade against “communist” and “subversive” organizations

*Primary targets:  “foreigners,” labor unions, etc.

*5000 arrests and over 600 deportations—“Red Raids”

*Collapsed when Palmer’s prediction of a communist revolution on May

1, 1920 failed to happen

*American Civil Liberties Union grows in influence due to crisis

 

(2)          Rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan

*Started in 1915 by Col. William J. Simmons, an Atlanta minister/shoe salesman and all-around loser

*Used KKK due to its renewed popularity in literature and film

*Unrelated to the KKK of the 1860s and 1870s…except symbolically

*Big publicity drive began in 1920, using a pyramid-marketing scheme

*over 5,000,000 members by 1925

*Flexible intolerance/hatred:  blacks, Catholics, Jews, bootleggers, adulterers, abusive husbands…all things “un-American”

*Primary tools:  lynching, beatings, intimidation, and politics

*KKK strongest in the Midwest, particularly urban areas (Indiana, Michigan, Ohio)

*Controversies, criminal acts, and bad publicity (combined with the Great Depression) silenced the KKK…until the 1950s

 

(3)          Immigration Restriction Legislation

*Chinese, Jews, and Eastern Europeans were the primary targets

*Non-WASPs viewed as incapable of integration and a threat

 

(4)          Controversial Court Trials

*Leopold and Loeb

*Sacco and Vanzetti

 

The New Consumerism

The rise of new industries forever changes the American “lifestyle”

 

(1)          Transportation—the USA becomes a nation “on wheels”

*bicycles

*subways and electric trolley cars

 

à Automobiles

*Ford’s “Model T”

*the “big 3” automakers (Ford, GMC, Chrysler) in place by 1930

*Auto industry becomes the single largest manufacturing industry

*Impacts other industries:  petroleum, synthetics, housing construction,

highway construction, hotel industry, etc.

 

(2)          Electrical Utilities—primarily urban areas

*70% of American homes have electricity by 1930

*adds to the “lure of the sleepless city”

*fuels the stereotype of the “Jazz Age” city

 

(3)          Radio Industry

*banned until 1919 (national security concerns)

*RCA formed in 1919

*First radio station—KDKA, Pittsburgh (November 2, 1920)

*1924—RCA forms NBC

*1926—CBS is founded

Changes:  entertainment, education, literacy, isolation, etc.

 

(4)          Aviation

*Postal Service using airmail by 1925

*First commercials flights begin in 1926 after the passage of the Air Commerce Act

*Charles Lindbergh’s flight (1927)—the man, the myth, the symbol

 

(5)          Motion Picture Industry

*Invented by Thomas Edison (1896), nickelodeons by 1905

* “moving pictures” now more sophisticated

*black and white/silent films

*Movie palaces (not theaters)—many of them modeled after cathedrals

*Nationalizes American culture and social standards

*Creates “movie stars”

*40,000,000 tickets sold per week in 1922

 

(6)          Advertising Industry

*The rise of “Madison Avenue”—professional advertisers

*Use psychological and sociological methods to sell, sell, sell!!

*Learned a lot from the CPI of the war years

 

Culture Wars and Cultural Legacies

(1)          The “Lost Generation” and Modernism

*artists, poets, writers, musicians create an artistic revolution

*Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.L. Mencken

*Lamented the loss of life’s meaning caused by excessive science, the war, and “inhuman” consumerism AKA “Modernism”

*Classic 1920s stereotype—“eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”

*Disenchanted, but reveling in the debauchery

 

(2)          Fundamentalism

*A religious-cultural attitude that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

*Took their name from a series of books—The Fundamentals

*Rejected Darwinian science and what they saw as a world on a fast track to Hell

*Dispensational theology becomes popular (world gets worse, rapture, seven year Tribulation, Second Coming of Christ, Millennial reign) and remains dominant among Fundamentalists today (Left Behind series)

*Often viewed as narrow-minded and ignorant—an unfair, false image

 

Famous centerpiece of the conflict between Mods and Fundys:

        à The Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925

        *Is it constitutional to bar the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public

schools?

*Darrow vs. Bryan

*Image vs. reality

 

The 1920s in America had many faces.  The notion of a “roaring 20s” is an oversimplification.  Whatever the case, it was all about to fall apart…