THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE

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CHAPTER 21
The 1920s

• THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE

CREATED EQUAL JONES ? WOOD ? MAY ? BORSTELMANN ?
RUIZ
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Go to Florida, Where enterprise is enthroned.
Where you sit and watch at twilight in the fronds
of the graceful palm, latticed against the fading
gold of the sun kissed sky.

• Promotional ad, about 1925

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TIMELINE

• 1919 Volstead Act (Prohibition Bureau)
• 1920 Sacco and Vanzetti arrested for murder
• KDKA radio broadcast of Harding presidential win
• (1920s) Klan membership estimated at 5 million
• (mid-1920s) Film industry grosses 80 million
  per week
• 1921 Emergency Quota Act
• 1923 Alice Paul, the National Womans Party,
  begin work on ERA
• Approximately 500 radio stations in U.S.
• 1924 Johnson-Reid Act (cuts in immigration)

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TIMELINE continued

• 1925 The Scopes Trial, or Monkey Trial
• The Man Nobody Knows by Bruce Barton
• 1927 The Jazz Singer, the first talkie
• The National Broadcasting Company established
• The Great Flood
• 1929 (October) The Stock Market crashes and the
  Great Depression begins

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THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE Overview

• The Decline of Reform
• Hollywood and Harlem National Cultures in Black
  and White
• Science on Trial
• The Business of Politics
• Consumer Dreams and Nightmares

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THE DECLINE OF REFORM

• Womens Rights in the Aftermath of Suffrage
• Prohibition The Experiment That Failed
• Reactionary Impulses
• Marcus Garvey and the Persistence of Civil Rights
  Activism

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Womens Rights in the Aftermath of Suffrage

• The League of Women Voters
• Promotes social and political reform opposes ERA
• National Womans Party (Alice Paul)
• Campaigns for ERA for women
• Sheppard-Towner health education for women and
  infants
• Divorce rate doubled from 1900 to 1920 and
  continued to rise

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Prohibition The Experiment That Failed

• 18th Amendment prohibits sale or making of
  alcohol. Volstead Act of 1919
• Enforcement difficult and gangsters on the rise
• Protection monies bootlegging

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Reactionary Impulses

• Anti-immigrant sentiments
• Sacco and Vanzetti
• Emergency Quota Act of 1921
• 800,000 immigrants to 300,000 in a year
• Johnson-Reid Act of 1924
• Cut immigration from 3 to 2

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Marcus Garvey and the Persistence of Civil Rights
Activism

• Universal Negro Improvement Association
• Nation-state in Africa
• Encourages establishment of black-owned
  businesses.
• Black Star Line Corporation and black investment
• Garvey convicted of mail fraud
• Gravey deported to Jamaica after 5 years in
  prison
• Inspired many blacks

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HOLLYWOOD AND HARLEM NATIONAL CULTURES IN BLACK
AND WHITE

• Hollywood Comes of Age
• The Harlem Renaissance
• Radios and Autos Transforming Leisure at Home

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Hollywood Comes of Age

• The Great Train Robbery, first feature length
• The Jazz Singer, the first talkie
• Foreigners on screen
• Greta Garbo, Dolores del Rio, Lupe Valez, Ramon
  Navarro, Rudolph Valentino

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The Harlem Renaissance

• European, as well as African American influence
• Writers Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes
• Dancers Josephine Baker
• Singers Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters
• Filmmakers Oscar Micheaux

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Radios and Autos Transforming Leisure at Home

• By 1923, there were about 500 radio stations in
  the U.S.
• By 1930, Americans owned 30 million cars

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Trains and Automobiles, 1900-1980
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SCIENCE ON TRIAL

• The Great Flood of 1927
• The Triumph of Eugenics Buck v. Bell
• Science, Religion, and the Scopes Trial

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The Great Flood of 1927

• Confidence in levees shattered in March, 1927
  when torrential rains drown prime farmland, force
  900,000 from their homes and cost 100 million in
  crop loss and 23 million in livestock loss
• Refugee camps set up by Department of Commerce,
  National Guard and the Red Cross

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The Triumph of Eugenics Buck v. Bell

• 1924 The Rising Tide of Color Against White
  World Supremacy, Stoddard
• Social Darwinists
• Eugenic laws

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Science, Religion, and the Scopes Trial

• William Jennings Bryan
• The Butler Act
• John Thomas Scopes and the ACLU (Dayton,
  Tennessee)
• Religion versus Science?
• Aimee Semple McPherson
• Guilty verdict overturned by The Tennessee
  Supreme Court. Never makes it to the U.S.
  Supreme Court

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THE BUSINESS OF POLITICS

• Warren G. Harding The Politics of Scandal
• Calvin Coolidge The Hands-Off President
• Herbert Hoover The Self-Made President

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Warren G. Harding The Politics of Scandal

• Harding machine-made, 1920 Presidential
  Election
• Albert Fall, Secretary of Interior went to prison
  for taking 400,000 from oil companies in
  exchange for leases
• Charles Forbes, Veterans Bureau, and 200
  million in hospital supplies
• Superintendent of Prisons Hardings
  brother-in-law

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Calvin Coolidge The Hands-Off President

• Inherits Presidency from Harding in 1923
• Hands-off attitude towards big business
• Progressive Party forms
• Cool Coolidge wins the Presidency in 1924

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Herbert Hoover The Self-Made President

• Elected President in 1928
• Quaker orphan raised in poverty
• Stanford University graduate, mining engineer
• Won over Irish Catholic Al Smith from New York

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CONSUMER DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

• Marketing the Good Life
• Writers, Critics, and the Lost Generation
• Poverty Amid Plenty
• The Stock Market Crash

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Marketing the Good Life

• Advertising is to business what fertilizer is to
  farms.
• 1925 The Man That Nobody Knows, Bruce Barton
• The shopping center
• The Florida real estate boom and collapse

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Writers, Critics, and the Lost Generation

• Sinclair Lews Babbitt, 1922 Main Street, 1920
• F. Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise
  (1920) The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) The
  Great Gatsby (1925)
• Gertrude Stein The Autobiography of Alice B.
  Toklas (1933)

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Poverty Amid Plenty

• Southern sharecroppers, black and white
• Latinos work for the company store
• Asian immigrants and domestic work
• Industrial workers

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Americans on the Move, 1870s-1930s
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The Stock Market Crash

• Black Tuesday October 29, 1929
• Stocks fell in value 14 billion, down 50
• By 1932 74 billion lost
• Industrial production halved, businesses
  bankrupt, banks fail
• Little relief from government agencies
• Felt globally
• The gap between the rich and the poor