Give Me Liberty!

1
Chapter 20
Norton Media Library
Give Me Liberty! An American History Second
EditionVolume 2
by Eric Foner
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I. Decade of prosperity

• Prevalence of business values
• Industrial boom
• Surging productivity and output
• Emergence of new industries
• Central role of automobile
• Consumer society
• Consumer goods
• Proliferation
• Marketing
• Impact on daily life
• Telephone
• Household appliances

3
Decade of prosperity (contd)

• Consumer society
• Leisure activities
• Vacations
• Movies
• Popularity of
• Hollywoods rising dominance of global film
  industry
• Sporting events
• Radio and phonograph
• Celebrity culture
• New values
• Growing acceptance of consumer debt
• Shifting ideas of purpose and value of work

4
Decade of prosperity (contd)

• Limits of prosperity
• Unequal distribution of wealth, income
• Ongoing concentration of industry
• Scale of poverty, unemployment
• Deindustrialization in the North
• Rural depression
• Passing of wartime golden age for agriculture
• Drop in farm incomes, rise in foreclosures
• Decline in number of farms and farmers
• Rural outmigration

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Decade of prosperity (contd)

• Celebration of business
• Themes
• American way of life
• Permanent prosperity
• Christ as business prototype
• Promoters
• Hollywood
• Photographers and painters
• Writers
• Corporate public relationship departments
• Signs of impact
• Idolization of business figures
• Growing trust for business, stock market

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Decade of prosperity (contd)

• Decline of labor
• Postwar business campaign against unions
• Appropriation of Americanism, industrial
  freedom
• Welfare capitalism
• American Plan
• Open shop
• Rejection of collective bargaining
• Depiction of unionism and socialism as sinister,
  alien
• Use of strikebreakers, spies, blacklists

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Decade of Prosperity (contd)

• Decline of labor
• Ebbing of labor movement
• Decline in numbers organized
• Union concessions to employers
• Fading of union strongholds
• Diminishing prospects of labor strikes
• Fragmentation of feminism
• Aftermath of suffrage amendment
• Social and ideological fault lines

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Decade of prosperity (contd)

• Fragmentation of feminism
• Debate over Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
• Terms of ERA
• Feminist support
• Alice Paul, National Womens Party
• Commitment to individual autonomy, equal
  opportunity
• Feminist opposition
• Other leading womens organizations
• Commitment to motherhood, protective legislation
  for women
• Defeat of ERA

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Decade of prosperity (contd)

• Womens freedom in the Twenties
• Mixed legacy of prewar feminism
• Fading of links to political and economic
  radicalism, social reform
• Survival and recasting of call for personal
  freedom
• Themes and images
• Consumer lifestyle
• Sexual freedom as individual autonomy, rebellion
• Youthful flapper Clara Bow
• Modernizing Mothers
• Continued stress on marriage, homemaking as
  ultimate goals

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II. Business and government

• Decline of Progressive-era faith in mass
  democracy
• Themes of disillusionment
• Popular ignorance, irrationality, disengagement
• Shift from public concerns to private (leisure,
  consumption)
• Voices of disillusionment
• Walter Lippman (Public Opinion, The Phantom
  Public)
• Robert and Helen Lynd (Middletown)

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II. Business and government

• Republican era
• Pro-business agenda
• Content of
• Low income and business taxes
• High tariffs
• Support for employer antiunionism
• Business-friendly appointees to regulatory
  agencies
• Support for in Washington
• Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge
• Supreme Court
• Harding administration
• Hardins indifference, lack of dignity
• Rampant corruption Teapot Dome

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II. Business and government (contd)

• Republican era
• Election of 1924
• Coolidge victory over divided Democrats
• Robert La Follettes third-party Progressive
  campaign
• Economic diplomacy
• Retreat from Wilsons foreign policy principles
• Internationalism
• Free trade
• Close interlinking of business interests and
  foreign policy
• Government initiatives
• Diplomatic pressure for access to foreign markets
• Increased tariffs Fordney-McCumber Act
• Military interventions to protect U.S. business
  interests

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II. Business and government (contd)

• Economic diplomacy
• Close interlinking of business interests and
  foreign policy
• b. Private initiatives
• Loans to foreign governments
• Expansion of industrial production overseas
• Acquisition of raw materials overseas

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III. Birth of civil liberties

• Persistence of WWI-era repression, censorship
  into 1920s
• Targets of
• Political dissent
• Sexual themes in the arts
• Agents of
• Mob violence
• Government agencies
• Local crusades
• Self-censorship Hollywood's Hays code
• Disaffection of Lost Generation

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III. Birth of civil liberties (contd)

• B. Wartime formation of Civil Liberties Bureau
• Reaction to Espionage and Sedition Acts
• Predecessor to American Civil Liberties Union
• C. Evolving position of Supreme Court
• Initial blows to civil liberties
• Upholding of Espionage Act (Schneck case) Oliver
  Wendell Holmess clear and present danger
  doctrine
• Upholding of Eugene V. Debs conviction
• Further cases
• Signs of a shift
• Defenses of free speech by individual justices
• Holmes marketplace of ideas doctrine
• Louis Brandeis democratic citizenship doctrine
• Pro-civil liberties rulings

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IV. Culture wars

• Fundamentalist reaction against modern urban
  culture
• Sources of alarm
• Religious and ethnic pluralism
• Urban vice
• Mass entertainment
• Alcohol
• New sexual mores
• Entry of modernist outlook into Protestant
  mainstream
• Manifestations
• Billy Sunday
• Nationwide presence
• Prohibition

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IV. Culture wars (contd)

• Scopes trial
• Clash of traditional and modern perspectives
• Fundamentalism vs. secularism
• Darwinian science vs. scripture
• Moral liberty vs. freedom of thought
• Face-off of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings
  Bryan
• Outcome and aftermath

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IV. Culture wars (contd)

• Resurgence of Ku Klux Klan
• Roots in wartime Americanism obsession
• Profile and influence
• Rapid growth
• Wide following among white, native-born
  Protestants
• Nationwide presence
• Diverse range of targets

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IV. Culture wars (contd)

• Immigration restriction
• Earlier legislative precedents
• 1921 temporary restriction measure
• 1924 permanent restriction measure
• National quotas for Europeans
• Exclusion of Asians (exception for
  Filipinos)Admittance and curtailing of Mexicans
• Emergence of illegal alien classification
• Ideological underpinnings
• Conservative nativism
• Progressive assumptions about race

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IV. Culture wars (contd)

• Pluralism
• Scholarly challenges to prevailing racial thought
• Pioneering voices
• Horace Kallen cultural pluralism
• Anthropologists Franz Boas, Alfred Kroeber, Ruth
  Benedict
• Minimal immediate impact

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IV. Culture wars (contd)

• Pluralism
• New immigrants and the pluralist impulse
• Urban ethnic enclaves, community institutions
• Self-reinvention as ethnic Americans
• Resentment of cultural hostility and coercion
• Claims to equal rights, mainstream acceptance,
  cultural autonomy.
• Antidiscriminatory campaigns
• Antidiscriminatory rulings by Supreme Court,
  federal courts

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IV. Culture Wars (contd)

• Black urban life and Harlem Renaissance
• Ongoing migration from South, West Indies
• Emergence of Harlem capital of black America
• Exotic Harlem vs. real Harlem
• Harlem Renaissance
• Poets, novelists
• Actors, dancers, musicians
• New Negro
• In poltics
• In art Claude McKays If We Must Die, page
  748
• New black assertiveness Henry O. Sweet case

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IV. Culture wars (contd)

• Election of 1928
• Republican candidate Herbert Hoover
• Background and career
• Embodiment of new era of American capitalism
• Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith
• Background and career
• Embodiment of urban, Catholic, Progressive
  outlook
• Outcome and significance
• Hoover victory
• Reflection of culture wars
• Preview of new Democratic coalition

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Map 83
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V. The Great Depression

• Stock market crash of 1929
• Black Thursday
• Onset of Great Depression
• Precursors of Depression
• Frenzied real estate speculation
• Undeveloped land
• Unequal distribution of income, wealth
• Failing banks, mortgage foreclosures
• Rural depression
• Stagnating demand for consumer goods
• Auto, home, household, etc.

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V. The Great Depression (contd)

• Repercussions of crash
• Magnitude
• Scope of devastation
• Business and consumer confidence
• Solvency of investment companies, businesses,
  banks
• 26,000 business failed in 1930
• US Steel 262/22 (1929-1932)
• US Steel 225,000 f/t /0 f/t (1929-1932)
• GM 73/8 (1929-1932)
• Gross national product
• Life savings
• Employment
• Wages
• Persistence of downward slide

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V. The Great Depression (contd)

• Americans and the Depression
• Material hardship
• Hunger breadlines
• Homelessness Hoovervilles
• Meagerness of public relief
• Reversal of movement from farm to city

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V. The Great Depression (contd)

• Americans and the Depression
• Patterns of popular response
• Collapse of faith in big business
• Personal resignation, self-blame
• Stirrings of protest
• Spontaneous incidents
• Bonus March
• Rallies for jobs and relief, against eviction
• Farmers Holiday campaign
• Communist party

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V. The Great Depression (contd)

• Hoover and the Depression
• Hoovers approach
• Acceptance of business cycle
• Aversion to government relief
• Preference for voluntary, associational
  initiatives
• Regular forecasts of recovery
• Perception of Hoover as indifferent, out of touch
• Ill-fated remedies
• Hawley-Smoot tariff
• Tax increase
• Federal Home Loan Bank System Reconstruction
  Finance Corporation