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
(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)
(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
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
(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…
