HIS 112 Chapter 25

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HIS 112Chapter 25

• The 1920s

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1920s

• Consumerism high
• New habits and values taking hold
• Celebrity heroes
• Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel
• Charles Lindbergh flew solo from U.S. to France
• Jack Dempsey a boxer

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• High production really overproduction
• Industrial output nearly doubled from 1922 to
  1929
• Electric motors were responsible for this rise
• So was the assembly line

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• Business consolidation- a few large firms
  controlled a whole industry
• They dominated production, marketing,
  distribution, and financing
• General Motors
• General Electric
• U.S. Steel

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• Membership in business and professional groups
  grew farm bureaus, trade associations, and
  cooperatives

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Decade of Prosperity

• Was shaky at first
• Soldiers were demobilizing
• Government was canceling war contracts
• Business slowed
• Bankruptcies increased
• Unemployment jumped
• Was 2.4 of population in 1919
• Was 19.5 in 1921

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• Recovery began in 1922 when the economy began to
  grow again
• Unemployment fell to 3
• New consumer goods helped with this recovery
  new electrical goods
• Refrigerators, stoves, washing machines
• Vacuums, fans, mixers
• Irons, toasters, radios

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• Hydroelectric plants were built
• Factories began to use electricity
• The car also helped the economy boom
• 1920 -8 million cars on the road
• 1930 23 million cars on the road
• Helped by the use of credit

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• Car
• Accidents led to safety regulations
• 1924 - first traffic light installed
• Symbol of equality
• Helped stimulate oil industry
• 1920 U.S. produced 65 of worlds oil
• 1925 U.S. feared it would become dependent on
  foreign oil

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• Also helped stimulate other industries like those
  in rubber, steel, advertising, diners, motels,
  and tourism
• Road construction became very important
• 1921 Congress passed the Federal Highway Act
  that provided federal aid for state roads
• 1923 Bureau of Public Roads planned a national
  highway system

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• A few corporations began to dominate certain
  industries
• Cars Ford, G.M., Chrysler
• Electricity Westinghouse
• Steel U.S. Steel
• Other companies kept merging to create large
  corporations and pressure smaller businesses out
  of business AP supermarket chain

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Women in this New Economic Era

• Began to drive
• Began to smoke
• Raised their hemlines
• Bobbed their hair
• Were in the workplace
• Secretaries, typists, filing clerks
• Nurses, librarians, teachers
• Social workers, store clerks, telephone operators

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• 8 of female high school graduates in 1920 went
  on to college
• 12 went on to college in 1930
• These college-educated women tended to combine
  marriage and career
• Not many women worked in industry that was
  dominated by men who worked on assembly lines

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Labor Unions

• Faced tough times in 1920s
• Businesses didnt want to deal with unions
• Membership declined from 5 million in 1920 to 3.4
  million in 1929
• Wages rose
• Welfare Capitalism entered the business vocabulary

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Agriculture

• Boomed during World War I when we were feeding
  America and the Allies in Europe
• In 1920s, prices of wheat, corn, and hay fell by
  50
• Europe was recovering and feeding themselves
• We continued to produce too much

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• Agriculture did not significantly recover in U.S.
• Results farmers defaulted on loans, mortgages,
  and many went bankrupt
• Farm subsidies were introduced and passed in
  Congress but vetoed by President Coolidge

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1920s Politics

• Dominated by Republicans who gave feminists and
  progressives a hard time
• 1920 Warren G. Harding was elected President
• Former newspaper editor
• Republican Senator from Ohio
• Gregarious
• Not very qualified for office

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Harding

• Made some good appointments to his cabinet
• Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture
• Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State
• Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury
• Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce
• He also made some bad appointments old pals that
  turned out to be sleazy.

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• Hardings Administration was plagued by scandal
• He had a mistress who gave birth to his child and
  made it public
• Charles Forbes of the Veterans Bureau stole
  veterans funds and fled abroad
• Charles Dougherty, the Attorney General, faced 2
  criminal trials

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• Albert Fall, the Secretary of the Interior,
  leased government oil reserves in Elk Hills,
  California and in Teapot Dome, Wyoming. He
  accepted loans amounting to 400,000 (kickback)
  from these oilmen
• It became known as the Teapot Dome Scandal

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• Seeking escape from all these scandals, Harding
  vacationed in Alaska in 1923 where he had a heart
  attack
• He was taken to California , and it was thought
  he would easily recover
• His wife attended him
• He died on 2 August 1923
• To some it was suspicious

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Hardings time in office, 1921-1923

• Backed important reforms
• Helped streamline the budget
• Supported anti-lynching legislation
• Approved bills assisting farm cooperatives
• Liberalized farm credit
• Generally tolerant on civil liberties issues

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Calvin Coolidge, 1923-1929

• Hardings Vice President
• Form Plymouth, Vermont
• Had a dour, inactive personality
• Pro-business policies
• Balanced the budget
• Reduced government debt
• Lowered income tax rates, especially for rich

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• Began construction of a national highway system
• Isolationism marked his foreign policy
• Re-elected in 1924

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Cities, Migrants, Suburbs

• Cities continued to grow
• 1920 51.4 of Americans lived in cities
• Blacks were moving to the cities and squeezed
  into overcrowded ghettos from which escape was
  difficult
• Black Nationalism grew through the efforts of
  Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement
  Association

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• Garvey
• Stressed racial pride in parades and mass
  meetings
• Felt blacks should separate themselves from white
  society and return to Mother Africa
• 80,000 blacks joined his association
• He unsettled white, the NAACP, and black churches
  with his oratory

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• 1923 a Federal Court convicted Garvey of fraud
  in connection with the Black Star Steamship
  Company
• He was imprisoned for 2 years and then deported
  to Jamaica in 1927
• His movement fell apart
• He taught his followers that Black is Beautiful

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• Mexicans moved to the Southwest and settled in
  barrios in cities
• Puerto Ricans moved to New York and formed their
  own barrios
• Others moved from the cities to the suburbs that
  were springing up

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Everyday Life

• Life in the 1920s seemed to be increasingly split
  into 3 compartments work, family, and leisure
• There were lower birth rates and higher divorce
  rates
• new labor saving devices meant people spent less
  time on necessary household chores

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• There was an emphasis on cleanliness by doctors
  and advertisers
• There were clubs at school and clubs for other
  members of the family
• Old-age homes started
• More rest and better diets meant Americans were
  healthier life expectancy rose from 54 to 60

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• Changes in values and activities upset many
  groups
• Immigration
• Blacks moving north
• Women smoking and driving in cars
• Some fought to keep America where it had been.
• like the Ku Klux Klan who were against blacks,
  Catholics, Jews, and generally those who didnt
  think like they did.

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• Some wanted to drastically curtail immigration
  because they were convinced that many immigrants
  were violent
• Sacco and Venzetti were two immigrant anarchists
  convicted of murdering a guard and paymaster
  during a robbery
• They were not involved in the robbery, but their
  Italian origins and their political beliefs
  turned people against them

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Immigration Policy

• Quotas were set favoring northern and western
  Europeans
• Emergency Quota or Johnson Act of 1921
• Stated that the annual immigration of any
  nationality could not exceed 3 of the number of
  immigrants from that nation in the U.S. in 1910

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• National Origins Act of 1924
• Set the quota at 2 of each nationality residing
  in the U.S. in 1890
• That would severely limit the number of those
  from southern and eastern Europe
• It was amended in 1927 and the base year was
  changed to 1920 with a total of 150,000
  immigrants a year - total

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Scopes Trial, 1925

• Tennessee law forbade public schools from
  teaching evolution
• John T. Scopes volunteered to challenge the law
  when he acted as a substitute science teacher he
  was arrested, convicted, and fined
• The law was then changed to allow for the
  teaching of evolution

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Age of Play

• In the 1920s, Americans developed an insatiable
  desire for recreation
• Fads mahjongg, crossword puzzles, miniature
  golf, the movies
• Celebrities became heroes Lindbergh, Babe Ruth,
  Rudolf Valentino, and Gloria Swanson
• Spectator sports boomed baseball, tennis

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Prohibition 18th Amendment

• Worked well at first but broke down in cities
  after 1925
• Criminal organizations recognized an opportunity
  in providing alcohol to willing customers Al
  Capone
• In the 1920s people were caught between 2 value
  systems one based in Puritanism and one based in
  the art of play.

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Cultural Currents

• Literature
• Social criticism by leading authors focused on
  middle and upper-class materialism and the
  impersonal modern society
• Social Critics H.L. Mencken, Hemingway,
  Fitzgerald Eliot, Ezra Pound, Faulkner,
  Sinclair Lewis
• They became known as the Lost Generation

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• Harlem Renaissance
• Writers Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Jean
  Toomer
• Musicians Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong,
  Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson
• Jazz had considerable influence on the art of the
  day grew out of black urban culture

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• Boosted the recording industry greatly
• Gave America its most distinctive art form
• Actor Paul Robeson
• Plays Porgy and Bess
• The 1920s were very creative years.

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Election of 1928

• Between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith
• Hoover
• A Republican
• An engineer
• Believed in individual hard work and collective
  action
• Was Secretary of Commerce under Coolidge
• Promoted business

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• Encouraged trade associations
• Sponsored studies to improve production
• Was head of the Food Administration in World War I

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• Al Smith
• Democratic candidate
• Urban politician from New York
• First Roman Catholic candidate of a major party
• Smith carried the nations 12 largest cities in
  the election of 1928

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• Hoover won with 58 of the vote
• Was a self-made man
• For rational development wanted economy to run
  like an efficient machine
• Believed capitalism had broad social obligations
• Approved of welfare capitalism
• Believed in volunteerism, not government handouts

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• Opposed direct government intervention in the
  economy
• This would later come back to haunt him.