TRANSITION TO THE MODERN ERAAFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY

DIVISIONS AND CULTURE WARS

The Twenties

Paradox of the Twenties

Economics

Consumption Productivity Technological

developmentsAdvertising and

marketingConsolidation Energy

consumption

Oligopoly Maldistribution of

wealth Standard of living Per capita income Benefit to MC & UCUniformity &

standardization

Auto Production

Normalcy in Economics

Welfare Capitalism – open shop American Plan - anti unionRepublican Formula

Increase tariff – Fordney-McCumber Decrease taxes

PaternalismTrickledown Economics – Mellon“Progressivism dissolved”

Weaknesses/Economic Instability

RR – over investment; poor managementTechnological unemployment Agriculture

McNary Haugen Bill ---ParityLabor unrest

1919 strikesMarket saturation –consumer

dependenceIncreased speculation

Strikes

Post-war labor unrest: Coal Miners Strike of 1919

UMW – Lewis; injunction; arbitration Seattle General Strike 1919

Ship yards – general support -Marines sent in Steel Strike of 1919

No negotiations; violence; troops Boston Police Strike of 1919

“no right to strike”; fired police

Anti-Labor

Coal Miners’ Strike

Boston Police Strike

Boston Police Strike

Normalcy in Politics

Republican leadership Return the Laissez Faire Strong ties business and gov’t

Deference to businessHarding – scandals

Teapot DomeCoolidge – business

gov’t & business togetherHoover – associationalismIncrease size of fed. gov’t

Election of 1928

Increase power of cities Values clash wet-dry/urban-ruralRadio

Civil Liberties

Supreme Court – 1920s – court begins to change direction and affirm civil liberties – striking down censorship – press/speech

Some affirmation of pluralism – Meyers v Nebraska 1922

ACLU is formed 1920

Social/Cultural IntellectualShared

Mass Culture – technologyMobility – auto = symbol Radio and Movies Materialism & consumption Increase in leisure time and activities “Individualism sacrificed to conformity.”

Ads

Consumerism

Consumer goods – electricity created new demands- refrigerators, vacuums, washing machines – but not frequent purchases

Automobile & supporting industries – Hwys, motels, service stations

Chain stores Credit purchases Status and popularity

New Heroes - Sports

New Heroes

Movies

Values Clash/Culture Wars

Secular - Modern Scientific Urban Impersonal & separate “Times yet to come” Freud – sexuality Einstein – relativity Heisenberg –

uncertainty principle Revisionist history –

Beard Cultural relativity – Boas

TraditionalReligiousRural, small town Face to face &

connected“Times gone by”“Americanism” Fundamentalism Anglo Saxon

superiority

Nativism/Xenophobia

Red Scare IWW headquarters

Palmer Raids

Red Scare: Extension of War

Tuttle

“The Red Scare was an extension of the atmosphere of war, with its cult of patriotism, its generalized climate of violence and its need for an enemy.”

Overlapping of anti-German & anti- radical sentiment

Tuttle

“The structure of society in 1919 was as conducive to the Red Scare as to the Red Summer. Bolstered by the force of law and the nation’s mores, ‘the search for the inner enemy’ as sociologist George Simmel observed ‘became institutionalized after WWI; and then instead of being disapproved by members of one’s group for being prejudiced, one was punished for not being prejudiced’”

Red Scare

1919 - 3rd. International goal --> promote worldwide communism.

Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer (The Case Against the Reds)40 bombs sent 1919

Palmer Raids – 1920 “Soviet Ark” – deportation But also new concern for

civil liberties because of abuse

IWW in effect destroyed

Palmer raids

Nativism/Xenophobia

Emergency Quota Act 1921 3% of 1910 census to 357,000

National Origins Act 1924* 2% of 1890 census By 1927 limited to 150,000 from Asia and S & E

Europe (excluded Far East – Japan & China) Canadians and Latin Americans exempted

500,000 Mexicans immigrated to the US

Immigration legislation = most lasting and significant effect of the counter attack & concerns about “Americanism”

Changes in Immigration

Sacco & Vanzetti

Vanzetti “My conviction is that I have suffered for

things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical; and indeed I am a radical. I have suffered because I am an Italian; and indeed I am Italian. If it had not been for these things, I might have lived my life among scorning men. I might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph.” Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding for man, as we do now by accident.”

Racism 1919 Race Riots – Red Summer

Red Summer and Red Scare

Tuttle

“The Red Summer was obviously consistent with the nation’s history of racial violence. Yet the accentuated climate of violence in 1919 helps to account for the exorbitant number of race riots that year. It is not coincidental that the summer of 1919 also marks the beginning of the xenophobia and hysterically antiradical Red Scare.”

“Racial violence was a national problem.”

Omaha

Racism

Growth and Tactics

Simmons – marketing – 5 millionAppeals to nativism and post war fears Targets labeled as “unamerican” and

threats to values (flappers, drinking)Blacks, Jews, Immigrants, Catholics Created sense of community and

belonging – incorporated familiesPolitical involvementQuick decline

Jazz

Sexual Mores

New WomanFlappers & Sheiks“Flaming Youth”

Feminism

Impact of suffrage Alice Paul –ERABirth controlRomantic love“Teenager”

Prohibition

18th Amendment Volstead Act – enforcedDecreased drinking ---butIncreased disrespect for the law

MC fashion

Boost to organized crime – bootlegging Capone

Religion - Fundamentalism

Literal interpretation of the bible Inerrancy, virgin birth, miracles,

creation, divinity of Christ, second coming –the “old time religion” – Billy Sunday

New marketing – McPherson -radioHostility toward any other belief Focus = the teaching of evolution – a

challenge to biblical creation storyLitmus test for AmericanismBilly Sunday – Aimee Semple McPherson

Scopes Trial

1925 – PR for Dayton Scopes and ACLU Darrow and BryanBryan – fear of social DarwinismSelf defeating victoryMencken

Race and Evolution

Values tensions Urban contempt“learned

ignorati” “Boobosie”

Literature – Lost Generation

Alienation DisillusionmentDisenchanted

Mencken Fitzgerald Hemingway Pound ElliotLewisStein

ArtHopper “Night Hawks”

“Woman in the Automat”

Motley – “The Jazz Singers”

O’Keefe

Harlem Renaissance

New Negro Hughes McKay Cullen Hurston

My People

The night is beautiful So the faces of my people The stars are beautiful So the faces of my people Beautiful also is the sun Beautiful, also, are the souls of my

people.

I, too Sing America

I, too, sing AmericaI am the darker brother,They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes.But I laughAnd eat well, And grow strong

Tomorrow,I’ll be at the tableWhen company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” then

Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed.

I, too, sing America

Langston Hughes, 1925

“The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame…..And we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.”

The New Negro

“If We Must Die” –Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot While round us bark the mad and hungry

dogsMaking their mock at our accursed lot …Like men we’ll face the murderous cowardly

pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Ossian Sweet – defense of home

Garvey - UNIA

Separatism Black nationalism

and pride Black Star Lines