The 1920s

1
The 1920s

• Chapters 12/13

2
Republican Administrations

• Warren G. Harding (1920)
• Return to normalcy
• Ohio Gang
• Teapot Dome Scandal
• involved the leasing of government-owned oil
  deposits to private companies
• Dies in 1923 from food poisoning
• Death spared him from public disgrace (corruption
  affairs/booze)
• Calvin Coolidge
• Congress should lead the direction of the country
• Friend of business / Reelected in 1924
• Herbert Hoover wins in 1928

3
Social Changes in 1920s

• The decade of the 1920s was one of prosperity and
  optimism for some Americans, doubt and despair
  for some Americans, and frivolity and loosening
  of morals for others.
• Youth Culture
• Majority of teenagers in high school for the
  first time
• Teenagers start to work less, spend more time
  with peers, college enrollment increases
• Known as the Roaring Twenties the Jazz Age
  a revolution in manners and morals

4
The New Moralitythe flapper

• Revolution in the way women live, dress, and act.
  (Against Victorian morality)
• Ex. Smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, profanity,
  heavy makeup, short skirts, driving cars,
  sexually active, sensuous dancing (Charleston),
  rebel against restraint.

5
Entertainment Radio Movies

• Impact rises greatly
• Radio becomes commercial (National radio
  networks ABC, CBS, etc.)
• Birth of a Nation (1915) 3 ½ hours, silent,
  different camera angles
• Movies are in full gear by 1920s (sound in 1927)
• Weekly movie attendance 100 million / 120 million
  lived in U.S.

6
City

• Becomes focal point of America
• The Booming Construction Economy
• Mass Culture (national culture)
• Nationally circulated magazines, chain stores,
  syndicated news features, motion pictures, brand
  names, and radio programs.
• City culture shaped by Prohibition (1920)
• speakeasys, bootlegging, broad disrespect for the
  law (Al Capone)

The Empire State Building
7
The Roaring Economy

• Revolution in Production
• Manufacturing rose 64 percent
• The sale of electricity doubled
• Consumption of fuel oil doubled
• Between 1922 and 1927 the economy grew by 7
  percent a year the largest peacetime rate ever.
• Welfare capitalism
• Improved working conditions, increased pay,
  softball leagues, cafeterias, etc.

8
The Roaring Economy

• Technology and Consumer Spending
• Steam turbines and shovels, electric motors, belt
  and bucket conveyors, and countless other new
  machines became commonplace at work sites.
• Machines replaced 200,000 workers each year
  however, demand for consumer goods kept the labor
  force growing.

9
The Roaring Economy Spend! Spend!

• More consumer products appeared on store shelves
• Cigarette lighters, wristwatches, radios, film.
• Improvements in productivity helped keep prices
  down.
• Goods once available only to the wealthy were now
  made accessible to the general public
• washing machines, refrigerators, electric ranges,
  vacuum cleaners, cameras.
• The purchasing power of wage earners jumped by 20
  percent.

10
The Roaring Economy A Growing Consumer Culture

• Average Americans went on a buying spree
• Consumption ethic replaces Protestant work ethic
• Impulse buying was seen as a positive
• Easy Consumer credit
• By the late 1920s, Americans achieve highest
  standard of living in the world

11
The Roaring EconomyWarning Signs

• For all the prosperity, a dangerous imbalance in
  the economy developed.
• Most Americans were putting very little of their
  savings into the bank.
• Personal debt was rising two and a half times
  faster than personal income.
• Business profits double/ workers wages rise 30

12
The Roaring Economy

• The Booming Construction Industry
• Residential construction doubled as people moved
  from cities to suburbs.
• Road construction made suburban life possible and
  pumped millions of dollars in the economy.
• States began implementing taxes on gasoline.
• Construction stimulated other businesses
• Steel, concrete, lumber, home mortgages, and
  insurance.

13
The Automobile

• Provided market for steel, glass, rubber,
  textiles, oil
• Automakers change styles
• Roadside economy (gas stations, motels)
• Break in rural isolation
• Helps aid this new freedom of youths
• Revolutionizes dating / premarital sex increases

• Henry Ford
• democratize the automobile by making it
  affordable.
• 1903 Ford Motor Company founded
• 1916 1 million cars
• 1920 8 million cars
• 1925 Model T (290)
• 1929 23 million cars (1 in 5 Americans)

14
Advertising

• 1915 - 1.3 billion spent on advertising
• 1925 - 3.4 billion
• 1920s Advertisers pushed lifestyle rather than
  product
• New themes in advertising
• Diversity new models, new look,
  color-coordinated
• Association new product new lifestyle
• Social fear want to fit in consuming things
  is good and will improve your life

15
Tension and Response

• Tension old rural culture (work ethic) vs. new
  city culture (consumer culture
• Responses
• Acceptance (young people and city dwellers)
• Opposition
• Division (most Americans)
• Torn between new lifestyle and traditional values
• This issue will be put on shelf during 1930s
  (trying to eat), 1940s (trying to fight WWII),
  but Americans come back to this issue in late
  1940s

16
Defenders ofthe Faith

• Fundamentalists
• Things are getting out of control want to get
  back to basics/ basic values Bible is without
  error against evolution
• 1925 John Scopes Trial in Dayton Tenn.
• DefenseClarence Darrow
• Prosecutor --- William Jennings Bryan
• Radio carries trial
• People lose faith in Fundamentalism even though
  they win

17
Nativism and Immigration Restriction

• Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
• Two Italian aliens and admitted anarchists
• 1921, sentenced to death for a shoe company
  robbery and murder in Mass. Executed in 1927
• World reaction A symbol of American bigotry and
  prejudice.
• National Origins Act (1921 1924)
• East Asian immigration stopped
• Limit on immigrants 350,000 per year / 150,000
• Quota of 3 percent of each nationality already in
  the U.S. as of 1910. Later pushed back to 1890.
  Bias toward old immigrants
• Coolidge--- America must be kept American

18
Nativism and Immigration Restriction

• Ku Klux Klan resurfaces to preserve old order
• 1915 at Stone Mountain, Georgia
• Devoted to 100 Americanism
• Targets blacks, Roman Catholics, Jews, and
  immigrants
• Membership
• restricted to native born, white, gentile
  (Protestant) Americans.
• 3 million members by the 1920s
• Not confined to the South
• Headquarters became Indianapolis, Indiana by the
  1920s

19
The Noble Experiment

• Eighteenth Amendment (1920)
• Outlawed the sale of liquor.
• Consumption was reduced by half.
• Enforcement was underfunded and understaffed.
• Speakeasys (city) and moonshine (rural stills).
• Consequences of Prohibition
• Reversed the prewar trend toward beer and wine.
• Helped to line the pockets of gangsters like Al
  Capone.
• Cities erupted in a mayhem of violence.
• Repealed by the 21st Amendment (1933)

20
The Election of 1928

• Hoover elected over Al Smith (Dem.)
• A vindication of Republican prosperity.

21
The Great Bull Market

• The idea grew that American business had entered
  a New Era of permanent growth.
• Led to get-rich-quick schemes.
• Florida real-estate boom
• Federal Reserve lowers interest rates people
  begin borrowing money to put in stock market
• 1925 27 billion in stock market
• 1929 80 billion in stock market (speculative
  bubble)
• Market continues to rise despite economic
  warnings (excessive confidence and greed)

22
The Great Crash

• Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the stock market index
  dropped almost 13 percent.
• From 1929 to 1932, Americans personal incomes
  declined by more than half.
• The crash had revealed the economys structural
  problems. (symptom of larger problem)

23
(No Transcript)
24
The Causes of the Great Depression

• Overexpansion and decline in mass purchasing
  power
• Business had done too well
• Consumer debt and the uneven distribution of
  wealth
• Wages did not rise fast enough to consume
  products
• Banking system (banks crashU.S. loses savings)
• Funds used for speculative investments
• Low money supply because of gold standard

25
The Causes of the Great Depression

• Corporate Structure and public policy
• No government agency monitored the stock
  exchanges
• Tax cuts meant that businesses did not have to
  borrow money
• Sick Industries
• Decline of farm prosperity
• Textiles, coal mining, lumbering, and railroads
• Economic Ignorance
• High Tariffs in U.S. hurt Europe / Europeans
  could not buy U.S. goods
• Everyone ought to be rich

26
Significant Events
? 1903 First feature length film released
? 1914 Henry Ford introduces moving assembly
line
? 1916 Marcus Garvey brings Universal Negro
Improvement Association to America
? 1919 Eighteenth Amendment outlawing alcohol
use ratified
? 1920 First commercial radio broadcast
? 1921 Congress enacts quotas on immigration
? 1923 Time magazine founded
? 1925 John T. Scopes convicted of teaching
evolution in Tennessee
? 1929 Stock market crashes