Title: Essential Question
1- Essential Question
- What led to the economic, social, urban
changes of the Roaring 20s?
2The Second Industrial Revolution
3America in the 1920s
- America was changed by the industrialism of the
Gilded Age the economic boom of WW I - During the 1920s
- The USA was the richest most developed country
in the world - Wages rose, hours declined, Americans had
access to new, innovative consumer goods
4The Second Industrial Revolution
The increase of national name brands (rather than
locally produced goods) linked Americans more
than ever
- From 1922 to 1929, the U.S. had a 2nd industrial
boom - Mostly in consumer durable goods like appliances,
cars, radios, furniture, clothing - Electricity replaced steam power
- Corporations used salaried executives, plant
managers, engineers to increase efficiency
5The Second Industrial Revolution
- To stop the growth of labor unions companies used
welfare capitalism - Offered employees stock, house-purchase,
insurance options - Used an open shop offered non-union workers
the same rights that unions gained - After WW I, the federal government Supreme
Court reverted back to a pro-business stance
6Henry Ford revolutionized the assembly line, the
5-day, new marketing advertising techniques,
annual model changes
The consumer goods revolution was best seen in
the auto industry
The work moves and the men stand still
Henry Fords River Rouge plant emphasized
uniformity, speed, precision, coordination
The auto industry stimulated the steel, sheet
metal, rubber, glass, petroleum industries
7The auto industry led to the construction of
roads new filling stations
8and new suburban shopping centers Kansas
Citys Country Club Plaza was the 1st U.S.
shopping mall (built in 1924)
9Glenwood Stove Ad
1920s consumerism led to luxury living New
appliances like refrigerators, washing machines,
vacuums
101920s advertising
111920s consumerism led to luxury living Radios
movies boomed
100 million Americans went to the movies in 1929
per week
The first talkie
NBC was the 1st successful radio network
12Economic Weaknesses
- The Roaring 20s was not as prosperous as it
appeared - RR, cotton textile, coal industries suffered due
to new competition - Farming boomed during WW I but a decline in
demand after the war deflated farm prices
Farm per capita income was 273 per year vs. the
U.S. average of 681 per year
13Economic Weaknesses
- Union membership dropped due to improved
conditions links to Debs radical socialism - Northern migration of blacks grew but workers
gained menial jobs faced racism - Growth in income was unequal with middle-class
managers, bankers, engineers benefiting the most
from the new affluence
14Social Changes in the Jazz Age
15Women and the Family
- Change ( continuity) for women
- Female workers after WW I were limited to
teachers, nurses, other low-paying jobs - The 19th
- Amendment gave
- women the right
- to vote but few
- women voted
16Alice Pauls National Womens Party (NWP) failed
to pass an Equal Rights Amendment
17Women and the Family
- Flappers rebelled against Victorian customs
- Divorce rates doubled
Butmost women looked forward to lives as a
mother and a wife
The creation and fulfillment of a successful
homecompares favorably with building a beautiful
cathedral. Ladies Home Journal
18Women and the Family
- Families became smaller due to greater access to
birth control - Children were no longer need to work to support
their families - Teens began to discover their adolescence
revolt against their parents by drinking, having
premarital sex, searching for new forms of
excitement
I have been kissed by dozens of men. I suppose
Ill kiss dozens more. character in F. Scott
Fitzgerald novel
19The Flowering of the Arts
- The Harlem Renaissance reflected the explosion of
black culture the New Negro - Jazz Blues expressed the social realities of
blacks Louis Armstrong became very popular - Langston Hughes poetry, novels, plays promoted
equality, condemned racism, celebrated black
culture
20Josephine Baker, internationally renowned
singer/dancer
You could be black proud, politically
assertive economically independent, creative
disciplinedor so it seemed
21Marcus Garvey
- Marcus Garvey was the preeminent civil rights
activist of the 1920s - Oppression in the U.S. necessitated strict
segregation black nationalism - He formed the United Negro Improvement Assoc
advocated a return to Africa
The most dangerous enemy of the Negro
race W.E.B. DuBois
22The Lost Generation
The Waste Land focused on a sterile U.S. society
- The 1920s gave rise to a new class of
intellectuals who condemned the new American
industrial society materialism - Pessimistic Literature TS Eliot, Ezra Pound,
Sinclair Lewis, F Scott Fitzgerald,
Hemingway - Playwrights Eugene ONeill
- Music Gershwin Copeland
Poetry discussed a botched wasteland
Main Streetnarrow-minded small towns
Great Gatsbyhuman emptiness
Romantic individualism violence
Plays of tragic pipedreams
23- Essential Questions
- To what extent did the new economic, social,
urban changes of the Roaring 20s conflict with
the traditional values of rural America? - How did the 1920s change Americans lives?
24The Rural Counter-Attack
25City Life in the Jazz Age
The shift in focus from the countryside revealed
that urban life was different traditional ties
of home, church, schools were absent
- The 1920 census revealed for the 1st time that
more Americans lived in cities than the
countryside
The New York City skyline in 1930
Skyscrapers gave cities a unique architectural
style
26The Rural Counter-Attack
- Rural Americans identified cities with saloons,
whore houses, communist cells, immorality - The 1920s saw an attempt to restore a
Protestant culture in America an attack on
any un-American behavior like drinking,
illiteracy, immigration
27Prohibition
- In Jan 1920, Congress passed the Volstead Act to
enforce the 18th Amendment (1917) - 26 states had already banned alcohol, but the
real conflict came when prohibition was applied
to urban ethnic groups - Rural America became dry urban consumption
dropped but was severely resisted
A rural, Protestant attack on the social disease
of drunkenness
28Per capita consumption of alcohol (1910-1929)
29(No Transcript)
30The Ku Klux Klan
- The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 (Stone
Mt, GA) was aimed at blacks, immigrants, Jews,
Catholics, prostitutes - The Invisible Empire sought to ease rural
anxieties in the face of changing cultural
attitudes - Used violence, kidnapping, murder, politics to
affect change
31The KKK provided a sense of identity to its
members Womens Order, Junior Order for boys,
Tri-K Klub for girls, Krusaders for assimilated
immigrants
Klan violence met resistance membership
declined by 1925
32The Fear of Radicalism
- The most dramatic rural reaction was the Red
Scare (1919-1920) - A general workers strike in Seattle, police
strike in Boston, series of mail bombs led to
fears of anarchy socialism - Deportation without due process, searches without
warrants, imprisonment of innocent people was
initially backed by the American people
Including the bombing of Attorney General
Palmers house in 1919
33Palmers Soviet Ark
The solution is simple S.O.S.ship or shoot
Place the Bolsheviks on ships of stone with
sails of lead
Stand them up before the firing squad and save
space on our ships
34Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco Bartolomeo
Vanzetti were executed for armed robbery murder
without evidence
The judge in the case even referred to Sacco
Vanzetti as those anarchist bastards
35Immigration Restriction
This act still allowed over 500,000 immigrants
mostly from South East Europe
- Many feared mass immigration to the U.S. among
Europeans escaping post-war rebuilding - The Immigration Act (1921) placed a cap on
European immigration to 3 of each ethnic groups
U.S. population - The National Origins Quota Act (1924) limited
U.S. immigration to 150,000 total Allocated most
spots to British, Irish, Germans
Immigration restrictions (unlike the Red
Scare, Prohibition, or the KKK) lasted beyond the
1920s (into 1960s)
36The Fundamentalist Challenge
Pentecostals, Church of Christ, Jehovahs
Witnesses all grew in membership
- The most long-lasting reaction of rural America
was a retreat to Christian beliefs - Aggressive fundamentalist churches provided a
haven for rural American values - The Scopes Monkey Trial revealed the rural
attack on evolution in schools
37Conclusions
- Urban America came to define all of the United
States in the 1920s - Radio, movies, advertising reflected urban
culture - Consumer goods were made in American cities
- Small-town whites, blacks, immigrants moved to
cities - But, conservative rural Americans (religious
fundamentalists KKK) attacked these new, urban
ideas