Unit 10

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Unit 10 The 1920s

• The Roaring Twenties

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1920s Presidents

• Woodrow Wilson
• Warren G. Harding
• Calvin Coolidge
• Herbert C. Hoover

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The West Between the Wars
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The West Between the Wars
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Charles G. Dawes
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What led to U.S. prosperity

• Effects of World War I
• Industrialization
• Increased production and encouragement of big
  business
• Three limited involvement presidents.
• Warren G. Harding
• Calvin Coolidge
• Herbert Hoover

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What led to U.S. prosperity

• New technology
• War encouraged and produced new technology
• Automobile
• Automobile society
• Big growth in automobile purchases as they became
  cheaper from faster more efficient manufacturing.
• Highway Construction-Federal Highway Road Act of
  1916.

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U.S. Prosperity other changes

• Other technology
• Airplanes
• Chemicals
• New technology and automobile society created a
  society of leisure
• Family vacations
• Road trips

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Growth of Industry

• After the war, industrialization goes from
  military mode to domestic
• Increases in supply of new products
• Growth is made possible through
• Credit ? never really before used on consumer
  goods
• Advertising
• Belief that gap between rich and middle class is
  narrowing because of concept of wealth.

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The Jazz AgeNicknamed The Roaring Twenties
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A Time of Extreme Optimism and a lot
of Changes!

• Americans move to the cities
• Between 1922 and 1929 almost 2 million
  people moved to the cities each year.
• Instead of getting away from the cities, people
  were flocking to them.
• Cities were the place to be.
• They grew more crowded everyday.

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Urban changes

• Small-town people moving to the city had to
  change their thinking and everyday living.
• The city exposed them to new ideas, change, and
  competition.
• Movies, museums, art, immigrants, night clubs,
  sports, newspapers, drinking, gambling, smoking,
  and casual dating.

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Urban changes

• Urbanization created a new way of life that
  usually clashed with the values of traditional
  rural society.

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The Great Clash

• The clash between rural and city values is just
  one example.
• The 1920s is characterized by a clash between
  traditional morals and values and more liberal
  money and fun seekers.

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Cultural Changes!

• Prohibition
• The Flapper
• The Jazz Age
• Harlem
• Renaissance

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Prohibition

• Passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919
• Outlawed making, selling, transporting,
  importing, or exporting alcohol-not drinking it
• The Noble Experiment
• Fought for years by temperance groups
• They saw it as a way of bettering society
• War helped the situation
• Many saw it as a way of hurting German American
  producers and so grain could go towards war
  effort.
• Result Speakeasies, bootlegging, and organized
  crime

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So Why didnt it Work?

• The Volstead Act set up the Prohibition
  Bureau.
• It was underfunded.
• Only 1,550 federal agents and local police to
  enforce the laws
• with 18,700 miles of coastline, inland borders,
  highways, illegal stills, and industries to watch.

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Bootleggers and Speakeasies

• By the mid-1920s only 19 of Americans supported
  Prohibition.
• Alcohol was made illegally and sold illegally at
  bars called speakeasies
• People blatantly broke the law
• Bath tub gin
• Sales for medicinal or sacramental alcohol soar.
• Selling stills in hardware stores
• Magazines and books told how to make alcohol from
  fruit and even potato peelings.
• Bootleggers provided access to alcohol

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Organized Crime develops

• Bootlegging was a profitable business
• Prohibition inspired the development of organized
  crime
• Almost every city had gangs that profited from
  selling alcohol.
• Chicago had one of the most famous criminals - Al
  Capone

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Causing too many problems

• Prohibition caused more problems than it fixed.
• Organized crime and lawlessness grew
• It caused a want to disobey the law
• Alcohol use grew and more people died.
• Prohibition was repealed with the 21st Amendment
  in 1933.

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Science and Religion Clash
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Lets get back to Religion

• Fundamentalism - Protestant movement that
  advocated the literal for the Bible
• Push for going back to church and having
  traditional morals.
• Revivals were held with charismatic preachers.
• Also rejected the notion of Darwin and evolution.
  Thought that this meant denying scripture and
  blaspheming God.

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The Fight BeginsThe Scopes Monkey Trial - 1925

• Conflict occurs when John T. Scopes
  teaches evolution.
• Tennessee had passed a law banning the teaching
  of evolution.
• Scopes read a passage about evolution in his
  classroom and was arrested.

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The Trial

• Clarence Darrow defended John T. Scopes
• William Jennings Bryan is on the fundamentalist
  side.
• Trial becomes a national sensation.
• Bryan takes the stand and admits that the Bible
  can be interpreted in different ways.
• Scopes is still found guilty and fined 100.
• This trial is another example of the clashes and
  conflicts in the Roaring Twenties.

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Women in 1920s

• Effects of World War I on womens rights
• 19th Amendment granted suffrage in 1920.

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19th Amendment

• Ratified in 1920
• Gave women the right to vote
• Women proved themselves when they filled the jobs
  of men during WWI
• After WWI, many were forced to give up their jobs
• Women went to polls for first time in November
  1920
• Helped elect Pres. Warren G. Harding

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The Flapper

• Changes for women
• Hair, clothing, makeup, and dancing

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Womens fashions prior to 1920s
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1910 Versus 1920s

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1920s Fashions
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1920s Fashions
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So Whats a Flapper?

• Flapper
• Nickname from a popular picture of a woman with
  her boots unlaced and flapping as she is dancing.
• Despite new social freedoms women were still
  limited and most did not rebel against social and
  religious standards.
• There was a double standard

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Work Opportunities

• After World War I, women still are entering the
  work force.
• Many attend college and enter the womens
  professions
• Teaching, nursing, librarians, social workers
• Big businesses also needed clerical workers
• secretaries, typists, office machine operators

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Not that many opportunities though

• Even though women were in the work force,
  opportunities were limited.
• Earned less than men
• Number of women doctors drops with the quota in
  medical schools.
• Belief that women working was temporary and they
  would leave with marriage.
• Their real job was at home.

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The Changing Family

• Birthrate declines
• Technology makes housework easier
• Children are products of the home not producers.
• They go to school instead of work and spend time
  with children their own age.
• Peers became more important.
• Marriage came to be seen as more of an equal
  partnership

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Fads

• Styles or fashions that become popular for a
  short time.

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Fads in the 1920s-Flagpole sitting

• Shipwreck' Kelly stayed on the pole for 100
  hours in '28

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Other Fads

• PEZ candy becomes popular (not in the head
  dispensers yet)
• Mahjong

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Dance Marathons

• Jazz
• Dancing all night, all week long.
• Charleston, fox trot
• Longest lasted for 3
• weeks!
• Outlawed in some
• places because of
• the dangers

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Slang

• All wet
• Bump off
• Coffin varnish
• Gams
• Hooch
• Juice joint
• Wet blanket

• Incorrect
• Kill
• Illegal Poisonous alcohol
• Legs
• Alcohol
• Speakeasy
• Person who doesnt have any fun

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Baseball - the National pastime!

• Baseball is extremely popular and produces heroes
  for the whole nation to follow!
• Babe Ruth
• New York Yankees
• Record 60 home runs
  in 1927
• Not broken until 1961
• Lifetime batting
  average .342
• 72 games hit 2 or
  more home runs

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The Flight heard round the world

• Charles Lindbergh makes the first transatlantic
  flight
• Greatest hero of 1920s
• Flying from New York to Paris in 33 hours and 29
  minutes

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A Renaissance in the Arts

• Not all agreed with the life seen in
  entertainment and popular culture
• Some thought this to be superficial and shallow
• These include artists, writers, theater, and
  music
• They wanted to expose the negative side of the
  Roaring Twenties, the silliness, and fun

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

• Popular poet
• She expressed the frantic pace of the 1920s
• "My Candle Burns At Both Ends"
• My candle burns at both ends
• it will not last the night,But--ah, my foes! and
  oh, my friends!
• It gives a lovely light

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The Lost Generation

• Many writers wanted to expose the shallowness of
  the times
• One of these writers was F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age

• He coined the term the Jazz Age to
  describe the 1920s.
• He wrote books that portrayed
  wealthy people who
  attended endless parties, but
  could not find
  happiness

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Writers

• Ernest Hemingway
• One of the most popular writers of the 1920s
• Wrote A Farewell to Arms
• About his experiences as a young ambulance driver
  on the Italian front during WWI
• Sinclair Lewis
• Wrote books presenting small-town Americans as
  dull and narrow-minded
• Babbitt and Main Street

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The Movies

• First movies had no sound
• Clara Bow became a popular movie star by playing
  restless, fun-seeking young women.
• Nicknamed the It Girl

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The Movies

• Rudolph Valentino
• Womens favorite
• The Sheik
• When he died in 1926 at age 31, 100,000 people
  lined up outside the funeral home to mourn

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The Movies

• The Jazz Singer
• The first talkie movie

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Harlem Renaissance
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What was the Harlem Renaissance?

• Great growth and gains by African Americans in
  literature and arts
• Made great contributions in art, music, and
  literature
• Rebirth of
  African
  American
  culture

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Going North

• African-Americans move North to the cities
• Large numbers of musicians, artists, and writers
  settled in Harlem in New York City
• Believing there are more opportunities for jobs
• Left the South because of racial and economic
  discrimination
• The number of African Americans in Northern
  cities doubles

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Where is Harlem?
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African-American goals

• NAACP membership doubles
• National Assoc. for the Advancement of Colored
  People
• Fight for lynching to stop
• Marcus Garvey also offers many hope and someone
  to believe in
• He promoted African American business and set up
  newspapers and stores

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Marcus Garvey

• Garvey was a Jamaican immigrant
• He inspired Black Pride movements
• Believed that African Americans should build a
  separate society
• He promoted African American business and set up
  newspapers and stores
• Encouraged followers to return to Africa
• Back-to-Africa movement is big for a while and
  then dies down

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African American Contributions

• Literature
• Langston Hughes
• Harlem Renaissances best
  known poet
• Denounced violence against
  African Americans
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Most accomplished African American woman writer
  in the 1920s
• Traveled through the South collecting folk tales,
  songs, and prayers of black southerners to
  preserve culture
• Wrote Mules and Men

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Performers

• More doors opened to African Americans in theater
  and music

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Jazz comes from the South

• African American migration to the North brought
  also a new kind of music - Jazz.
• Black musicians from New Orleans and Chicago
  created Jazz from ragtime and blues
• Availability of records and phonographs meant
  that people could play the music whenever they
  wanted
• Becomes extremely popular - thats why the 1920s
  is called The Jazz Age!

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Famous Jazz Musicians

• Louis Armstrong
• Helped create Jazz
• Trumpet player who became the single most
  influential musician in the history of Jazz
• Jazz spread from Chicago to Kansas City, Los
  Angeles,
• New York, and became the most popular music for
  dancing.

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U.S. and Foreign Affairs

• After WWI, U.S. is worlds leading economic and
  political power
• Europe expected U.S. to take leading role in
  world affairs
• Dawes and Young Plan
• Isolationism (stay out of worlds affairs)
• Most Americans (including Harding Coolidge)
  didnt want to commit U.S. to job of keeping
  world peace

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Washington Conference 1921

• U.S., Great Britain, and Japan agree to limit
  size of navies
• Disarmament
• Reducing a nations armed forces and weapons of
  war

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Warren G. Harding 29th President of U.S.

• 1 term 1921 - 1923
• Republican Party
• Back to normalcy
• Teapot Dome Scandal

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Teapot Dome Scandal

• Albert Fall
• Secretary of the Interior under Pres. Harding
• Secretly leased land in Teapot Dome, WY to oil
  companies
• First cabinet official ever sent to prison

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Warren G. Harding Administration

• Harding appointed William H. Taft to
  Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

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Warren G. Harding 29th President of U.S.

• Ohio Gang
• Political friends
• Charles Forbes
• Head of Veterans Bureau
• Convicted of stealing millions from Veterans
  Bureau
• Harding died of heart attack in August 1923
• Many blamed friends scandals

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Calvin Coolidge 30th President of U.S.

• 1 term 1923 - 1929
• Republican Party
• Silent Cal
• Forced officials involved in scandals to resign
• Helped restore peoples faith in government
• 1924 election
• Keep Cool with Coolidge

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Signs of Trouble

• Farmers suffer after WWI
• Rebirth of Ku Klux Klan
• Setbacks for Labor Unions

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Signs of Trouble

• Setbacks for Labor Unions
• Helped win WWI
• High production
• Wages did not keep up with prices during war
• Wave of strikes turned public against labor
• Workers demand higher wages
• Employers refuse
• Government did nothing
• Management crushed strikes

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Fear of Radicals

• During WWI, Americans on alert for spies and
  sabotage
• Growing fear of foreigners
• Rise of communism in Soviet Union
• Lenin called on workers everywhere to overthrow
  their governments
• Anarchists People opposed to organized
  government
• Many Americans saw labor union strikes as the
  start of a communist revolution
• Red Scare

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Fear of Radicals

• Growing fear of foreigners
• During the Red Scare
• Many foreigners were deported
• Limits on immigration
• Emergency Quota Act of 1921
• Set up a quota system allowed only a certain
  number of people from each country to enter U.S.
• Sacco and Vanzetti trial

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Fear of Radicals

• Sacco and Vanzetti trial
• Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
• Two Italian immigrants
• Arrested for robbery and murder in 1920
• Both admitted they were anarchists, but not to
  committing a crime
• Prejudiced judge
• Convicted
• Many Americans felt the
  trial was unfair
• Appeals unsuccessful
• Executed in 1927

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Kellogg-Briand pact

• 1928
• 63 nations signed the Kellogg-Briand
  Pact, a treaty pledging to renounce war as an
  instrument of national policy
• (outlawed war)
• Nothing was said about what would be done if
  anyone violated the pact
• (no way to enforce)

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U.S. Secretary French foreign
of State minister
Frank B. Kellogg Aristide Briand
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Herbert C. Hoover 31st President of U.S.

• 1 term 1929 - 1933
• Republican Party
• 1928 Election
• Won by a landslide
• 1929 Stock Market Crash

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New Goods for Sale

• Americans wanted to buy things they could not
  afford
• Buy now, pay later ? credit
• Businesses allowed installment plans
• Buying on credit
• Small down payment
• Monthly installments
• Plus interest
• Increased demand for goods

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Stocks Surge

• Corporations sold stocks to investors
• Shares of ownership
• In 1920s, more people invested in stock market
  than ever before
• In late 1920s, stock prices rose so fast that
  some people became rich almost overnight by
  buying and selling stocks

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Stocks Surge

• The soaring market was called the bull market
• People bought stocks on margin
• Similar to installment buying
• A person could buy a stock for a 10 down payment
• The buyer held the stock until the price rose,
  then sell the stock for a profit
• The system worked as long as stock prices kept
  rising

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Stocks Surge

• In 1928 1929, prices of many stocks rose faster
  than the value of many companies
• A few experts warned that the Great Bull
  Market would end
• Most investors ignored the warnings

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Stock Market Plunges

• In August 1929, a few investors began selling
  their stocks
• In September 1929, more people began selling
• The rash of selling caused stock prices to fall

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Herbert C. Hoover 31st President of U.S.

• President Hoover reassures nervous investors
• The business of the country is on a sound and
  prosperous basis.
• But selling continued and prices tumbled

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Stock Market Plunges

• Brokers asked investors who purchased stock on
  margin to pay the money they still owed for stock
• Investors who could not pay had to sell their
  stock
• This caused prices to drop even more
• October 24-29, desperate people tried to unload
  millions of shares of stock

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Stock Market Plunges

• Tuesday, October 29, 1929
• A stampede of selling hit the New York Stock
  Exchange
• Prices plummeted because there were no buyers for
  the stock
• Previously valuable stocks became worthless
  pieces of paper

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Stock Market Plunges

• Tuesday, October 29, 1929
• Black Tuesday
• Millions lost their fortunes overnight

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Severe Depression

• Following the stock market crash, the economy
  slid into a severe depression
• The crash did not cause the depression, but it
  did shake confidence in the economy
• Many people who invested their savings in stocks
  suddenly had little or nothing left