The 1920s

1
The 1920s

• The clash of modern and traditional

2
The Modern World Arrives

• Starts in Europe
• Rejection of formality, hierarchy, and
  social/cultural/gender barriers of Victorian
  World.
• Embrace of idealism based on science,
  intellectualism, technology, and the industrial
  world.
• Sees universal humanity improving towards these
  ideals

3
Competing Interwar Ideals

• Free Market Capitalism
• Keynsian Economics
• Socialism
• Corporatism
• Nationalism
• Fascism

4
In the U.S..

• The Business of America Is Business
• President Calvin Coolidge

• The Business of Business is America
• Henry Luce,
• Founder of Time Magazine

5
Those Easy Little Payments

• Instead of saving for the entire cost of a house
  or car, it became more acceptable to take out a
  loan and pay off the amount. Broke with a long
  established American tradition of never going
  into debt.
• Allowed for more people to purchase homes and
  other consumer goods.

6
Automobiles

• In contrast to Henry Fords you can have your
  car in any color as long as it is black
• - General Motors offered a variety of types from
  Cadillac to Chevrolet.
• - New styles for each year. Geared towards
  women as consumers.
• - Even offered (gasp!) colors!

7
Other Industries (and the Kansas connection!)

• Petroleum and Natural Gas (Such as in El Dorado
  and Hugoton)
• Aviation (Cessna, Beech, Stearman)
• Electronics and Consumer Goods (Coleman,
  Mentholatum)

8
Hearing the future

• In 1919, the U.S. government lifted a ban on
  private operation of radio sets.
• General Electric and Westinghouse organized the
  Radio Corporation of America.
• By 1929, 80 of American families had radios.

9
The Nervous Generation
10
All that Jazz!

• Into the 1910s, popular music consisted of
  waltzes, marches, the tango, opera, and love
  songs.
• Ragtime and later Jazz challenged that musical
  world by using improvisation, rhythm, and
  syncopation.

11
The Jazz Age

• Originally, Jazz was confined to New Orleans but
  spread to New York, Chicago, and other places in
  the 1920s.
• At first, its association with brothels, alcohol,
  and African American music forms made Jazz
  unpopular among whites, especially older
  generations.
• Became more popular as Jazz musicians adapted and
  popularized the music for a white audience,
  especially the young.

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13
Thats Entertainment!

• Movies became popular in the 1910s but really
  took off in the 1920s.
• Movie industry moved from New York to Hollywood.
• Companies expanded to include production,
  distribution, and theater operation.

14
Stardom!

• To attract moviegoers, the studios promoted stars
  such as Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Charlie
  Chaplin, and Wichita native Louise Brooks (shown
  here)
• The off-camera lives of the stars were promoted
  as much as their film work.
• Some, such as Cecile B. DeMille produced grand
  epics such as Ben Hur.

15
Prohibition

• Nationwide prohibition forced drinking
  underground.
• Venues to drink went by many times such as
  speakeasies and blind tigers.
• Increasingly, organized crime gained a foothold
  in the smuggling of alcohol.

16
Womens roles

• Note the difference between an 1800s woman on the
  right and a 1920s woman on the left in this
  photo.
• Although not all women were like this, the
  stereotypical image of a 1920s woman is the
  flapper with
• Short, bobbed hair
• Short skirts with no corset
• Freedom to smoke and drive.

17
Marriage and Family

• Nationwide, there was a growing belief that
  marriage should be between two people who loved
  each other instead of married for economic or
  social reasons.
• One facet of this was a growing interest in
  romantic love as an ideal to strive for.
• Another result was an increasing divorce rate as
  women and men ended marriages because the
  romantic ideal did not match reality.

18
Childhood

• After World War I, there was an increase in the
  birthrate. There was a greater interest in
  catering to childhood. The idea that childhood
  should be free from work and devoted to play and
  school becomes common. This is the generation
  that grows up to serve in World War II.

19
The New Negro

• The migration of African Americans to northern
  cities in the 1910s included large numbers of
  professionals and small businessmen and women.
  The result were dynamic communities such as
  Chicago or Harlem in New York City. In such
  places Jazz, drama, business, and art thrived.

20
Reaction

• African American communities were still
  vulnerable to white discrimination and violence.
  In 1921, a white mob destroyed the relatively
  prosperous African American neighborhood of
  Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• Some African American leaders advocated a back
  to Africa movement or at least a greater
  awareness and pride in an African identity
  instead of trying to imitate European culture.

21
The Ku Klux Klan

• In the 1910s and 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was
  reconstituted.
• For a while, it became a popular organization.
• Although anti-African American, it was also an
  anti Catholic and anti-immigrant organization as
  well.

22
An odd mix in Wichita

• In 1925 the baseball team from the local branch
  of the Ku Klux Klan played the Monrovians, the
  local Negro Leagues baseball team here in
  Wichita.
• White Catholics were umpires.
• The Monrovians won.

23
Revival!

• The 1920s saw the rise of a number of major
  traveling evangelists including Billy Sunday.
• Amiee Semple McPherson was the first major female
  evangelist.

24
Religion and Science

• The 1910s and 1920s saw a growth in both
  scientific research and a movement among some
  religious figures to maintain the inerrancy of
  the Bible, including the creation accounts of
  Genesis.
• J. Frank Norris and others help found the World
  Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919.
• Some states, such as Tennessee, passed laws
  against teaching evolution.

25
The Scopes Trial

• John Scopes was a high school teacher who was
  charged with teaching evolution. The result was a
  trial in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925
  sometimes known as the Scopes Monkey Trial.
• The two leading attorneys were Clarence Darrow
  for Scopes and William Jennings Bryan for the
  prosecution.
• Bryan dies before he can make his final speech.
  The court rules in favor of the state against
  Scopes. However, the negative publicity of the
  trial tarnished the image of literalists as
  backward and foolish. Biblical literalists would
  not recover from this stereotype until after
  World War II.

26
The Lost Generation

• Many of the popular authors at the time were
  disillusioned with the conformity and
  traditionalism of popular culture.
• Included writers such as H.L. Mencken, F. Scott
  Fitzgerald, and Sinclair Lewis.
• Several artists and writers chose to live abroad
  in Paris because they felt the city was open and
  cosmopolitan.

27
The Red Scare

• In the wake of the Russian Revolution and
  communist activity elsewhere in Europe, there was
  a fear that communist revolutionaries would try
  to undermine the United States as well.
• Socialists expelled from New York assembly in
  1920
• Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
  arrested for the murder of a paymaster at a shoe
  factory in Massachusetts in 1920. Executed in
  1927 even though many felt they were convicted
  more for their anarchist views than an actual
  crime.

28
Immigration and Immigrants

• Coincided with an anti-immigrant sentiment that
  resulted in immigration restrictions in the
  mid-1920s. After that, each country had a quota
  of immigrants allowed in, with countries from
  eastern Europe and Asia having lower quotas than
  western European countries.
• Immigrants and their children struggle to balance
  identities.

29
Politics

• A deceptively stable landscape

30
Canadian Stability

• Liberal William Lyon MacKenzie King becomes PM
  in 1921 and remains in office until 1930 with a
  brief exception of 1926.

31
Government in Mexico Caudillos and Cristeros

• Revolution is institutionalized under with the
  creation of a national political party, now
  called the PRI. Faced strong resistance from both
  the far left but primarily from the far right.
• Included the religious-oriented Cristero movement
  (their slogan was Cristo Rey!) along the Pacific
  Coast, attempting to create a rebellion against
  the government.
• In 1927, a Cristero group dynamited the Mexico
  City-Guadalajara train, killing 100 people.
• President Plutarco Calles attempts to establish a
  strong law and order version of the Revolution.
• In 1928, Obregon runs for re-election and wins
  but is killed by a young Catholic activist. Some
  suspected Calles was behind the murder but he did
  not attempt to retake the presidency but
  continued to exercise a controlling influence
  behind the scenes.

32
U.S. Politics

• Represented a shift away from Progressive Era
  idealism in favor of laissez-faire pro-business
  stances.
• The presidents were pro-business Republicans. It
  was often in their political opponents where
  major trends in social and political attitudes
  were the most visible.

33
The Presidency

• Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) Republican
• Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) Republican
• Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) Republican

34
Scandal The Harding Administration

• The Harding Administration became infamous for
  its scandals.
• The best known involved Albert Fall, Secretary of
  Interior.
• Fall got Navy oil reserves such as Teapot dome in
  Wyoming to be transferred to the Department of
  the Interior. Fall then leased the land to
  Mammoth Oil Co. and the Pan American Petroleum
  Co. Fall had been bribed to do it. Fall was
  convicted of bribery in 1929.

35
The 1924 Election

• Election between Republican Calvin Coolidge and
  Democrat John Davis.
• Progressive Robert La Follette made important
  showing as well as a third party candidate.
  Represented the last major gasp of Progessive Era
  activism in politics

36
The 1928 Election

• Herbert Hoover (Rep.) vs. Al Smith (Dem.)
• From New York, Al Smith was the first major
  presidential candidate to be of immigrant stock
  and Catholic. Although he lost, the election was
  relatively close and represented the start of a
  shift in the Democratic Party from dominance by
  white Southerners towards a greater influence of
  northern, immigrant, labor perspectives.
• Congressional elections, too, started showing a
  greater labor/liberal Democratic presence, a
  presence that Franklin Roosevelt would later
  cultivate.

37
From the 1928 election
38
We are nearer today to the ideal of
the abolition of poverty and fear from the lives
of men and women than ever before in any land.

• Herbert Hoover - 1928