The 1920

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The 1920s

• 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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Video Clip
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Republican Control

• The decade of the 1920swas controlled by
  Republican Congresses
• The Presidents were generally just rubber stamps
  for the work of the Congress
• The followed a highly pro-business doctrine that
  hoped that the nation as a whole would prosper
  with business

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Warren Harding

• His Presidency was marked by scandal and
  corruption much like the Gilded Age
• The Teapot Dome scandal resulted from the Sec. of
  the Interior accepting bribes for oil leases
• His policies included a reduction of income tax
  and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff

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Calvin Coolidge

• Silent Cal espoused the idea that the business
  of America is business
• In the 1924 election the Progressive Party formed
  around Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin and won 5
  million votes mostly from farm and labor
• Coolidge won and proceeded to cut spending and do
  little else

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Video Clip
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The Election of 1928

• Coolidge declines to run again and the
  Republicans nominate Herbert Hoover
• Hoover had ably run the domestic war effort and
  had a truly upstanding reputation
• His Democratic opponent, Al Smith of New York was
  a Catholic and this created problems for many
  voters

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The Policies of Hoover

• Hoover continued the laissez faire ideas of
  Coolidge
• The gains the Progressives had made against the
  power and control of big business quickly ebbed
• Hoovers government turned a blind eye to
  regulation, cut corporate taxes and raised
  tariffs as a way to aid and abet the growth of
  business
• Increased productivity, new energy technology and
  of course the assistance of government led to
  great economic growth

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Cultural Changes of the 1920s

• The Jazz Age
• The growth of radios and record players made
  music come alive for Americans, especially the
  young
• This was also fueled by Prohibition and late
  night Jazz clubs that served alcohol, often known
  as speakeasies
• Consumerism
• The growth of credit and the availability of
  consumer products was new to the American public
• They spent like drunk sailors on shore leave
• The talkies were introduced in 1927

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Cultural Changes in the 1920s

• Gender Roles
• Women moved from the home to the workplace during
  WWI
• They had seen the fulfillment that was available
  outside the traditional roles of motherhood
• The work of Margaret Sanger spreading information
  about birth control also liberated women in the
  area of sexual freedom, even though still illegal
  in most states
• Divorce laws were also liberalized in the 1920s
  as the womens rights movement grew through the
  efforts of the women of the Seneca Falls
  Convention, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady
  Stanton
• In addition, the right to vote that came about
  with the 19th Amendment was a boon to womens
  rights as they were now a viable voting bloc.

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Modernism vs Fundamentalism

• A religious battle of sorts took place in the
  1920s
• Fundamentalists were clinging to the idea of the
  Bible literal history
• Modernist were looking to the idea that science
  was there to replace religion, or at least to
  complement it
• Revivalists began using the new medium of radio
  to evangelize and begin a new Great Awakening
• This battle was exemplified by the Scopes Trial
  in Tennessee
• Mr. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in
  a public school
• Although his conviction and fine were upheld,
  Fundamentalism took a huge hit as famed attorney
  Clarence Darrow made the Bible as fact crowd
  look silly in the face of science

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Quick Question

• To what extent was the Scopes Trial only about
  competing theories of human origins, and to what
  extent was it a focal point for deeper concerns
  regarding the role of religion and traditional
  moral authorities in American life and the new
  cultural power of science?

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Literature of Alienation

• The literature of the 1920s demonstrated that
  many Americans were disaffected from society
• The Lost Generation of writers included Earnest
  Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and
  T.S. Eliot
• The Great Gatsby was a defining book of the
  period
• The Harlem Renaissance
• WWI had created a migration of blacks from the
  South to the North in search of factory work
• The Harlem Renaissance was an outgrowth of black
  culture on the arts originating in NYC
• Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington and Louis
  Armstrong were famous individuals of the period
• This demonstrated an American irony as these
  talented individuals often performed in front of
  segregated audiences

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Quick Question

• Were the intellectual critics of the 1920s really
  disillusioned with the fundamental character of
  American life, or were they actually loyal to a
  vision of a better America and only hiding their
  idealism behind a veneer of disillusionment and
  irony?

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Nativism and the Klan

• Immigration Quotas were the norm of the 1920s as
  a backlash against the Great War
• Immigration Laws in 1921 and 1924 attempted to
  keep Eastern Europeans and Asians out
• The case of Sacco and Vanzetti highlighted the
  nativist views of the day
• In this case the two men were convicted after a
  trial that was deemed biased. They exhausted
  appeals and were executed in 1927
• The Klan re-emerged in the South starting in 1915
  as a group that was FOR white, protestant
  Americans and AGAINST EVERYONE else including
  Catholics, Jews, foreigners and blacks

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Quick Question

• In what ways did movements such as fundamentalism
  reflect similar anti-modern outlooks, and in what
  ways did they reflect more basic religious
  disagreements?

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Culminating Question

• In what ways is The Dichotomous Decade an
  appropriate term for the 1920s?