The Roaring Twenties

Or as I like to call it…the second gilded age….

Or as I like to call it…the second gilded age….

Basic things to know…

People wanted a return to normalcy (after war and influenza)

Prohibition Gangsters Consumerism Massive Christian movement Assembly line Inventions Women’s movement Harlem Renaissance & Jazz

“Prohibition is a business. All I do is supply a public demand. I do it in the best and least harmful way I can.” Al Capone

Prohibition

Banned the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol.

18th Amendment

In 1919 - as the result of a long and powerful campaign the 18th Amendment made the manufacture, transport or sale of alcoholic drinks illegal.

The Volstead Act, passed at the same time, declared any drink more than 5% proof 'alcoholic'.

Why Prohibition?

Anti-Saloon League - campaigned that drink hurt families because men wasted money on beer, that it ruined their health and lost them their jobs, and that it led to domestic violence and neglect.

Christian organization – esp. Women's Christian Temperance Union – supported prohibition. (The early 20th century was a time of Christian revival.)

Rural America – scandalized by behavior in the towns – supported it.

Isolationism – it was said that money spent on drink ‘flew away to Germany’ because much of the beer drunk in America was brewed there.

Madness, crime, poverty and illness were seen as caused by alcohol - many (including BOTH my grandparents, 'signed the pledge' never to drink.)

Easy Street – Charlie Chaplin’s comic film (1917) showed how drink damaged, and Christianity nurtured, families' happiness and prosperity.

Prohibition

Led to the rise of speakeasies (illegal bars), bootlegging (making illegal alcohol), rum-running (illegal transportation of alcohol) and gangsters!

Led to more crime and immorality, not less!

Carrie Nation: The Saloon Smasher

Member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Known for bursting into barrooms, wielding a hatchet or hammer, and smashing the saloon.

Between 1900 and 1910, Nation was arrested some thirty times for her aggressive tactics.

The Volstead Act The 18th Amendment

was ratified in 1919 and took effect in 1920.

The Volstead Act clarified the new rules surrounding prohibition.

President Wilson vetoed the Volstead Act on constitutional grounds.

His veto was overridden by Congress.

Special stamps were required for medicinal liquors under the Volstead Act.

Moonshine

A spirit made secretly in home made stills.

Several hundred people a year died from this during the 1920s.

In 1929 it is estimated that 700 million gallons of beer were produced in American homes.

Organized Crime The enormous

profits to be made attracted gangsters who started to take control of many cities.

They bribed the police, judges and politicians.

They controlled the speakeasies and the distilleries, and ruthlessly exterminated their rivals.

Al Capone By 1927 he was earning

between $60 and $100 million a year from bootlegging.

His gang was like a private army. He had 700 men under his control.

He was responsible for over 500 murders.

On 14th February 1929, Capone’s men dressed as police officers murdered 7 members of a rival gang. This became known as the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre.’

Nativism

Nativism is an opposition to immigration which originated in United States politics

Anti-immigration act of 1924 United States federal law that

limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States

As an example:

in the ten years following 1900, about 200,000 Italians immigrated every year.

With the 1924 quota, only 4,000 per year were allowed.

At the same time, the annual quota for Germany was over 57,000. 86% of the 165,000 permitted entries were from France, Britain, Germany, and other Northern European countries.

More examples…

Country QuotaGermany 51,227Great Britain and N. Ireland 34,007Sweden 9,561 Norway 6,453Yugoslavia 671 Syria 100France 3,954Romania 603Turkey 100

Resurgence of the KKK

Anti Immigrant Racism Religious intolerance