The Jazz Age

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The Jazz Age
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A Clash of Values

• Nativism resurges After World War I there was
• Economic recession
• Influx of immigrants
• Racial and cultural tensions
• All created an atmosphere of disillusionment and
  intolerance. Fear and prejudice towards Germans
  and Communists expanded to include all
  immigrants.
• During WWI immigration to the US dropped sharply
  but by 1921 it had returned to prewar levels,
  with a majority of immigrants coming from
  southern and eastern Europe.
• These immigrants posed a threat to Americas
  stability and order. They also posed a threat to
  the 4 million service men returning to the
  workforce.

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• Sacco-Vanzetti Case
• Two men shot and killed two employees of a shoe
  company in Massachusetts and stole its 15,000.00
  payroll.
• Police arrested Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco
  and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The newspapers revealed
  that the two were anarchists (people who oppose
  all forms of government) and this created a
  furor.
• Sacco owned the same type of gun used in the
  robbery and it was said that the bullets matched
  those used in the murders.
• With this limited evidence the two men were tried
  and sentenced to death.
• Over the next six years, lawyers filed numerous
  appeals but all failed.
• Aug. 23, 1927 Sacco and Vanzetti were executed,
  proclaiming their innocence all the while.

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• Pseudo-Scientific Racism some Americans
  believed in Eugenics a psuedo-science (or false
  science) that deals with improving hereditary
  traits. It emphasized that human inequalities
  were inherited and warned against breeding the
  unfit or inferior.
• Eugenics fueled the nativists argument for the
  superiority of the original American stock
  white protestants of northern Europe descent.

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• Return of KKK the Ku Klux Klan was at the
  forefront of the movement to restrict
  immigration. The new Klan had new targets that
  included Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and other
  groups believed to represent un-American
  values.
• William J. Simmons founded the new KKK in
  Atlanta, GA in 1915. A former Methodist
  preacher, he pledged to preserve Americas white,
  Protestant civilization. In the 20s, the Klan
  publicly claimed that the organization was
  fighting for Americanism
• They had trouble getting new members until they
  hired public relations entrepreneurs who were
  paid 8 for every 10 initiation fee for a new
  Klan recruit
• The Klan began to decline with scandals and power
  struggles among the leaders. But not before it
  reached 4 million members in 1924.

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Controlling Immigration

• Keep America American became the new plea of
  America after the war
• Even the big businesses that needed cheap labor
  feared the new immigrants as radicals
• 1921 President Warren G. Harding signed the
  Emergency Quota Act, which established a
  temporary quota system, limiting immigration.
  Only 3 of the total number of people in any
  ethnic group already living in the US as
  indicated in the 1910 census, could be admitted
  in a single year. This discriminated against
  people from southern and eastern Europe because
  they were relatively new immigrants and there
  werent many in the US at 1910.
• Eastern immigrants were also associated with
  Communism or the Red Scare.

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Controlling Immigration

• So now Ethnic identity and national origin
  determined admission to the United States.
• National Origins Act of 1924 made immigrant
  restriction a permanent policy and set the quota
  to 2 of each national group residing in the
  country in 1890.

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Controlling Immigration

• A second part of this act also replaced the 1924
  quota with a limit of 150,000 immigrants admitted
  per year.
• The immigration acts of 1921 and 1924 reduced the
  available labor pool in the US. Employers
  desperately needed workers for agriculture,
  mining, and railroad work. The National Origins
  Act of 1924 exempted natives of the Western
  Hemisphere from the quota system so as the demand
  for cheap farm labor in California and the
  Southwest steadily increased, Mexican immigrants
  crossed the border in record numbers.

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The New Morality

• Many groups that wanted to limit immigration also
  wanted to preserve traditional values, they
  feared that a new morality was taking over the
  nation.
• New Morality ideals of the loving family and
  personal satisfaction views popularized in
  magazines and other media influenced popular
  views on relationships. Ideas of romance,
  pleasure, and friendship became linked to
  successful marriages.
• Many single, working-class women held jobs simply
  because they needed the wages for themselves or
  for their families

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The New Morality

• Women attended college and found support for
  their emerging sense of independence.
• The automobile played a role in encouraging the
  new morality as the nations youth loved cars and
  the freedom it gave them. Now instead of
  socializing at home with the family, they could
  use cars to seek new forms of entertainment with
  their friends.

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• Women in the 1920s
• Women bobbed their hair
• Wore flesh-colored silk stockings
• Were called flapper as a young, dramatic,
  stylish, and unconventional woman that
  personified womens changing behavior in the
  1920s.
• Some Flappers pursued social freedoms, others
  sought financial independence by entering the
  workforce, many as salesclerks, secretaries, or
  telephone operators.
• A few made contributions in science, medicine,
  law or literature. Florence Sabins research led
  to a dramatic drop in death rates form TB. Edith
  Wharton received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel
  The Age of Innocence. Margaret Sanger founded
  the American Birth Control League in 1921, which
  became Planned Parenthood in 1940.

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The Fundamentalist Movement

• Millions of Americans feared that the country was
  losing its traditional values. Many of these
  people, especially those in small rural towns,
  responded by joining a religious movement known
  as Fundamentalism
• Fundamentalists believed that the Bible was
  literally true and without error. They defended
  the Protestant faith against those who believed
  that their moral behavior was derived from
  society and nature, not God. They rejected
  Charles Darwins theory of evolution.
• Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson, two
  popular evangelical preachers, stirred
  Fundamentalists passions by preaching
  traditional religious and moral values in very
  nontraditional ways.
• Conflict between modernism and traditionalism

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The Fundamentalist Movement

• Billy Sunday drew huge crowds with his rapid-fire
  sermons and on-stage showmanship.
• McPherson conducted her revivals and faith
  healings in LA

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• The Scopes Trial
• 1925 Tennessee passed the Butler Act, which
  outlawed any teaching that denied the story of
  the Divine Creation of man as taught in the
  Bible.
• The ACLU advertised for a teacher who would be
  willing to be arrested for teaching evolution.
  John T. Scopes volunteered to teach evolution and
  be put on trial.
• 1925 trial William Jennings Bryan was the
  prosecutor, representing the creationists.
  Clarence Darrow defended Scopes. Called the
  Monkey Trial.
• Scopes was found guilty and fined 100, although
  his conviction was later overturned.
• Parts of the trial were publicized on radio and
  did little for the Fundamentalists cause.
  Increasingly they found themselves isolated from
  mainstream Protestantism and their commitment to
  political activism declined.

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Prohibition

• The movement to ban alcohol had been building
  since the late 1800s. By the late 1900s many
  progressives and traditionalists supported
  prohibition
• Many people believed that prohibition would help
  reduce unemployment, domestic violence, and
  poverty.
• 18th Amendment was passed in Jan. of 1920

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Prohibition

• To help enforce the new amendment, Congress
  passed the National Prohibition Act, also known
  as the Volstead Act. This act made enforcing
  prohibition the responsibility of the US Treasury
  Dept. Before this, police powers had usually
  been reserved for the state governments. This
  marked a dramatic increase in federal police
  powers.
• The Treasury Dept. struggled to enforce
  prohibition. During the 1920s they made 540,000
  arrests. But the American people persisted in
  blatantly ignoring the law.
• People flocked to secret bars called
  speakeasies, where they could purchase illegal
  alcohol.

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Prohibition

• In New York city, it is estimated that there were
  over 32,000 speakeasies in existence. But liquor
  was also readily available in rural areas too,
  where bootlegging the illegal production and
  distribution of liquor was common.
• Organized crime specialized in supplying and
  often running these speakeasies. The huge
  profits that could be made supplying liquor
  encouraged some people to become smugglers,
  brining liquor into the US form Canada and the
  Caribbean.
• Smuggling and the consumption of liquor by
  millions helped create an illegal billion-dollar
  industry for gangsters.

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Prohibition

• More than 70 federal agents were killed while
  enforcing Prohibition in the 20s
• Crime became big business and some gangsters had
  enough money to corrupt local politicians. Al
  Capone, one of the most successful and violent
  gangsters of the era, had many police officers,
  judges, and other officials on his payroll.
  Capone dominated organized crime in Chicago,
  where he ran bootlegging and other criminal
  rackets. Elliot Ness, the leader of a special
  Treasury Dept. task force, finally brought Capone
  to justice.

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Al Capone
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• Elliot Ness

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Prohibition

• The battle to repeal Prohibition began almost as
  soon as the 18th Amendment was ratified. The
  ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933
  repealed the 18th Amendment and ended
  federally-mandated prohibition

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