Chapter 23

• Teddy’s Death• 1919• Allowed return of Republican “old

guard” (conservatives)• Not laissez-faire government but

limited government regulation

• Booming Business– Recession and Recovery

• After WWI slowdown• 64% rise in manufacturing output

between 1919-1929– Consumer Prosperity

• Electricity = appliances– Automobile

• Ford Motor Company• Stimulated rubber, gasoline and

motor oil, advertising, and highway construction industries

– Capitalism Expansion• Overseas markets• Loaned money to Europe

– Economic Nationalism• High tariffs = no foreign competition• Corporate tax cuts

• Increased Productivity• Scientific management, Frederick

Taylor• Assembly line (Fordist method)

• Energy technologies• Increase in use of oil and electricity• Oil 23% of U.S. energy by 1930

• Ailing Agriculture– New technologies help farmers but

don’t solve problems– Post-war slowdown and surplus

– War kept prices/demand high– Tariff depressed exports

• Fordney-McCumber Tariff 1922• Smoot-Hawley Tariff 1920

– Farm income falls 60% between 1919-1921

– Weak prices– Surplus = lower prices

• Increase in productivity– Frederick Taylor’s studies– Increased use of oil and

electricity– Assembly line

• Fordism• Ford didn’t invent assembly line, he

perfected

• Business consolidation– Corporate giants

• Ford, GM, Chrysler, GE

• Elaborate management systems– Product development– Market research– Employee relations

• Wage policies– Ford

• Higher wages increase productivity• “one’s own employee should be

one’s own best customer”• Union activity decreased

• Distribution– Chain stores– Department stores

• Air conditioning

• Advertising– Albert Lasker (Chicago)– Celebrities

• Credit– New consumer credit– Payment schedules

– Prior to 1920 – personal loans

• Less women working than Pre- WWI– Wage discrimination

• Corporate World– Secretaries– Clerks– Typists– Women not “welcomed”

into professional world• Less women lawyers,

doctors• Employed women lived

in the city

• More women going to college

• Membership falls 20%

• Why?– Overall wages climbed– Industrial changes– Management hostility– Series of unsuccessful

strikes– United Mine Workers

– “open shop” success– Keeping jobs open to nonunion

workers– In south unionization violently

resisted

• Anti-Union Campaign– Welfare capitalism– Cafeterias– Recreational facilities– Improved benefits– Higher wages

Democrats White south and

immigrants

Republicans Accepted limited

government regulation as aid to stabilizing business

Northern farmers, corporate leaders, business people, native, professionals

• Agenda– Tax cuts (income, estate)– Help for big business– America 1st foreign policy– High tariffs– Bureau of the Budget

• Good choices:– Sec. of State: Charles Hughes– Sec. of Commerce: Hoover– Supreme Ct Justice: Taft– Pardoned Eugene V. Debs

• Bad choices:– Charles Forbes (Veteran’s Bureau)– Harry Daugherty (Att. General)

– Took bribes for not prosecuting certain criminals

– Albert Fall (Interior Secretary)

• Scandals– Teapot Dome Scandal

– Fall accepted bribes for granting oil leases near Teapot Dome, Wyoming

– Fall 1st cabinet officer in U.S. History to go to jail

Reduction of income tax

Increased Tariff Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922

Established Bureau of the Budget Government budget

must be voted on by Congress

Died unexpectedly in August 1923

• Assumed presidency in 1923• Re-elected in 1924

• Morality of White House improves– No scandals

• “America’s Business is Business”– Pro-Business climate

• Lower taxes– Supreme Court

• Overturned reform measures– Ex. Child Labor Law

– Opposition to Government Assistance• Mississippi River flood 1927• No obligation to protect

against “hazard of elements”• Vetoed WWI vet bonuses• Vetoed McNary-Haugen Bill for

farmers– Gov’t purchases surplus of 6

basic commodities

• Independent Internationalism– Foreign Policy

• Only pursue what’s in America’s national interest

• Isolationism– Harding’s Achievements:

• Washington Naval Arms Conference

• Dealt with Arms race• Reduced battleship

construction• disarmament

• Respect territorial holdings– Coolidge:

• US now a creditor nation– Dawes Plan 1924» Cycle of payments

• Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928– Renounced aggression– Led by women– Jane Addams wins Nobel

Peace Prize in 1931– Outlawed war unless defensive– Lacked enforcement

• Reform in legislative branch– Business– Prohibition– Adopted in 1920

• 1922 Midterm elections– Labor and farm groups– Conference for political

action

• 1924 Party– Sen. La Follette– Supported by AFL, Socialist

Party

• Women– 19th amendment 1919– Little political power• Only success 1921 with

Sheppard-Towner Act – Party split• Alice Paul and others want

equal rights for women added to the constitution

• Others content with right to vote

• Reforms short-lived

Cities 1920 urban population

surpasses rural Migration of African

Americans

Cars Changes America

Increased mobility Changed social dymanic Standardized transportation

Women, farmers, families, culture, and suburbs

Consumer goods Electricity and gas reduce

household labor

• Electrical use tripled in 1920s

• Coal, oil, an natural gas

• 1929= 20 million cars– Influenced foreign policy

with Mexico– Teapot Dome Scandal– Oil Rush in TX and OK– Lots of waste

• Wilderness– Easier access for vacations– Heavy pressure from

tourists– Hoover concerned– Sierra Club, Audubon, Izaak

Walton League

• Reading– Magazine circulation over

2.5 million• Saturday Evening Post• Reader’s Digest• Book of the month clubs

• Radio– Drew America together

and shared culture– Began 11/02/1920

• Pittsburgh w/ KDKA– By 1922

• 500 new stations, national obession

– Independent ventures led to networks• NBC 1926, CBS 1927

– Advertising

• Movies– Reached all classes– Combined opulence, sex,

and adventure– Celebrities

• Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Cecil B. DeMille

– 1st “talkie” Jazz Singer 1927– 1st movie with sound

– 1st cartoon Steamboat Willie 1928

– Weekly attendance 80 million by 1930• MGM, Warner Brothers

– Shaped youth culture– Less impact in rural

America• Resisted by evangelical

Christians

• New “heroes” replaced heroes of past like T.R., WJB, and Wilson

• Professional Sports– Baseball

• America’s pastime– Played by and for working class

• Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb– Boxing

• Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney– Football

• Collegiate sport– Celebrated for its life lessons

and teamwork• Turned pro with Chicago

Bears– Jim Thorpe

• Media-promoted spectacles– Miss America Pagent 1921

• Decade’s Hero– Charles Lindbergh

• “Lucky Lindy”• Spirit of St. Louis• May 20-21, 1927• Embodied American Spirit

• Modernism– Historical and critical view of

the bible– Accepted Darwin without

abandoning faith

• Fundamentalism• Led by protestant preachers in

rural areas that condemned modernists

– Creationism – Blamed liberals for decline in

morals

• Revivalists– Preached fundamentalism

through radio– Billy Sunday– Aimee McPherson– Attacked drinking, dancing,

gambling

• Radio made Jazz available to public

• Media/Novelistic creation– F. Scott Fitzgerald

• This Side of Paradise 1925• The Great Gatsby 1929

• Not everyone participated

• Bubbling postwar cultural ferment– College Students

• Threw parties, drank, danced the Charleston, went to jazz clubs

• Sexual revolution– Women

• “Flappers”• Challenged “separate spheres”• Smoking, birth control, short skirts,

short hair, drinking• Sexual revolution• Changes in divorce laws• 1 in 8 in 1920• 1 in 6 in 1930

Term coined by Gertrude Stein• Alienated Writers

• Scorned religion as hypocritical and bitterly condemned sacrifices of WWI vets as fraud perpetrated by big business

– Expatriates• Sinclair Lewis

– Critical of Postwar US– The Main Street 1920– Babbitt 1922

• Henry L. Mencken– Baltimore journalist– 1924 The American Mercury

Magazine– Ridiculed small-town America,

Fundamentalism, all politicians• Ernest Hemingway

– The Sun Also Rises 1926– Farwell to Arms 1929– Futility of war

• William Faulkner• Poets

• Ezra Pound• T.S. Elliot

• Created by African-American urban migration• Largest A.A. community in

Harlem, NYC• Population in 1930= 200,000

• Explosive artistic movement– Music

• Duke Ellington , The Cotton Club• Bessie Smith

– Poets• Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen• Claude McKay• James Weldon Johnson

– Authors• Zora Neale Hurston

– Art• Aaron Douglas

• No Equality….. Yet.– Still segregated– But promising step

• Architecture– Skyscrapers

– Form follows function

• Art• Painted impact of new

technology and urban life in stark paintings

– Thomas Hart Benson• Celebrated mythic past

– Edward Hopper• Faded towns, lonely cities

– Georgia O’Keefe• Congestion and allure of city

• Music– Jazz

• From New Orleans• Brought to New York City• Embraced by white composers like

George Gershwin• Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong

• Return of “Nativism”

• Immigration– Preservation of a “white” nation– Quota Law of 1921

– Limited immigration to 3% of # of foreign-born persons from a given nation counted in the 1920 census

– Max of 357,000 persons– National Origins Act 1924

• Restricted to 2% of 1890 census• Limit 161,000• “America must be kept American”• Focused on Southern and Eastern

Europeans– Supreme Court reinforcement

• Ozawa v. U.S. 1922– Citizenship request from Japanese born

student a Univ. of Cal- B• Upheld in 1923 Cali law limiting right of

Japanese to own land

• Hispanics– No restrictions on Latin America– Migratory workers, seasonal – Discrimination

• Nativism– Xenophobia continues

after WWI– Palmer Raids– “hysteria”, red scare• Attorney General Palmer

reacting to bombs• Led to deportations of

radicals• Led to creation of F.B.I.

• Sacco- Vanzetti Case– Anarchists charged with

murder and robbery in 1920

– Judge called them “anarchists bastards”

– Guilty, Electrocuted 1927– Protested by liberal artists

and intellectuals– Appeals for six years

• Fundamentalism v. Religion– Scopes Trial 1925– Teacher ( John Scopes)

arrested for teaching evolution in Tenn. classroom– Clarence Darrow (defense)– William J. Bryan (prosecution)– Found guilty– Later overturned

– Captured the interest of US• Long-lasting effects• Darrow successful in

discrediting fundamentalists• Embarrassed W.J.B on stand

• KKK – Revived in 1915

• Stone Mountain, Georgia• Glorified by “Birth of a Nation”• Strong political influence• Supported in low-to middle class

cities/towns

– 1920 membership drive– Used advertising

– Targeted• African-Americans, Jews, Catholics,

Aliens, and Communists

– Promise• Restore nation’s purity• Defend white womanhood

– Collapse• David Stephenson, rape charges

• Garvey Movement– “Back to Africa”– Negro Improvement Association

1916– Gain political and economic independence outside

white society– Encouraged message of racial pride and self-respect

– Convicted of fraud 1925

Race Riots Tulsa 1920

Black show shiner arrested for sexually assaulting a white woman Whites gathered outside courthouse African Americans came to protect shoe

shiner from white mob and being lynched Shots fired, chaos Mob of 10,000 whites went wild

120 homes burned Mass graves, 300? Died

Rosewood 1923 Just like Tulsa 6 African-Americans killed Entire community burned to the

ground

• 18th amendment– Would boost production

and eliminate crime and lift nation’s morality

– Volstead Act– Passed to enforce

amendment

• Failure– Speakeasies• Not just criminals• Willingness to break the law

led to wider decline in standards and morals

• President served alcoholic drinks!

– Organized crime• Al Capone• Bootleggers, rumrunners

– Repealed in 1933• Only amendment to be

repealed

Social issues on the forefront prohibition, immigration, religion, and clash of urban and rural values

Democrat Nominee Al Smith

Governor of NY Supported by progressives Campaigned cross-nation Catholic Against quotas Opposed prohibition

Republican Nominee Herbert Hoover

Self-made millionaire Served three presidents

Secretary of Commerce Brilliant but aloof

Boring campaign Pro-prohibition Used “Coolidge prosperity” Image of morality, efficiency,

service and prosperity “Rugged Individualism”

• “Great Engineer”– Rags to riches

• “Rugged Individualism”– Disapproved of cutthroat

competition– Demanded corporate

cooperation– Economy = efficient

machine– Volunteerism, welfare

capitalism– Individual Self-reliance– industrial self-management– limited federal government

• Early Months seemed promising