The Roaring Twenties

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The Roaring Twenties
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America The 'Roaring
'20's'
Unit 5 - 20 Century World History
1. Post-war Problems
2. Presidents of the '20's
3. The Economy
4. Fads, Fashions and Flappers
5. Prohibition and 'the Mob'
6. The Ku Klux Klan and the Racial Problem
7. Hollywood - from 'Silents' to 'Talkies'
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• The USA had entered World War One in April 1917.
• Almost 1 million Americans served.
• 50,000 were killed and over 250,000 wounded
• America contributed 32 billion to the cost of
  the war.

Post-war Problems 1918-1920
US troops win Bellau Wood
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Victory came in November 1918
Post-war Problems 1918-1920
The victorious Allied leaders at the Versailles
peace conference, 1919.
Unfortunately Congress rejected Wilsons ideas
and America entered a period of Isolationalism.
President Wilson was disappointed by the outcome
of the Versailles Treaty for Germany but he was
heartened that the European powers had accepted
his idea for an international peace organisation
The League of Nations
President Wilson left America to attend the
peace conference at Versailles, in France.
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Post war problems
1918-1920 unemployment
Women who had taken over mens jobs during the war
now gave them up
Returning soldiers needed jobs
Women were given the vote in 1920
Unemployment brought a fear of communism
This was to lead to new freedoms for American
women
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U.S. Presidents of the '20's
Americas business is business
Back to Normalcy
Warren Harding 1920-1923
Calvin Coolidge 1923-1928
A chicken in every pot and a car in every
garage.
Prosperity is just around the corner
Herbert Hoover 1928-1932
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The Economy 1920-1929
US Gross National Product
Farming during the Twenties did not share in the
general wealth of the period
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Post war problems Immigration
Thousands of people came to America from Europe
to escape from war, poverty and political and
religious persecution.
Most made their way to big cities such as New
York and Chicago
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The Automobile Industry Backbone of the economy
Henry Ford
The Assembly Line
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Importance of the Automobile
The car virtually replaced the horse
The automobile industry stimulated other areas
of the American economy
The car was so cheap to buy that virtually
everyone could afford to have one.
Advertising
Iron tin
Glass
Oil
Rubber
Leather
1928 FIGURES
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50
65
80
7 b
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Advertising and the Press
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Fads and Fashions The Jazz Age
The 20s are often referred to as The Jazz Age
as this was the new and fashionable music of the
period. Older white people thought it was
immoral because it encouraged sexy dancing and
some despised it because the musics origins lay
in the slave songs of the blacks. Young folk
though loved it..
Above Louis Armstrongs Hot Five jazz
band. Below Duke Ellington and his band at the
Cotton Club.
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Fads and Fashions The Flapper Girls
Flapper was the
term given to fashionable young women who shocked
the older generation with their short dresses and
their behaviour drinking, smoking and dancing,
and much else.
New dance crazes The Charleston, Black Bottom
and the Tango.
Police in Chicago arrest bathers for being
indecently dressed, July 1922.
The bobbed hairstyle
Fashionable girls on the subway reading
newspapers. Magazines and newspapers often spread
new ideas they also entertained people with
sensational crime stories.
Dress styles before W.W.1
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Gangsters The Mob v The
G-Men
Al Capone
Bonnie and Clyde
The Mobs mayor, William Hale Thompson of Chicago
John Dillenger
The FBI was formed in 1924 and J. Edgar Hoover,
its first chief, was to remain in charge for
nearly 50 years. The purpose of the FBI was to
root out organised crime.
Eliot Ness, leader of the Untouchables.
J. Edgar Hoover
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Gang Warfare
Gangsters Funeral, a painting by Jack Levine,
Symbolizes the immense power of the underworld.
The Shooting of Frank Yale, liquor boss of New
York and head of Mafia, on orders of Al Capone -
1928
The St.Valentines Day Massacre, a result of
the rivalries between Al Capones Italian gang
and Bugs Morans Irish mob who both wanted
control over the illegal liquor trade
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Prohibition 1920-1932
The Volstead Act 1919
The 18th Amendment (change) to the American
Constitution in 1920 a result of the Volstead
Act in many ways came to symbolise the age of
the 1920s as one of wild living, organised
crime and rampant corruption. Yet its origins had
the best of intenetions.
The Volstead Act banned
Why was the law introduced?
1. The making of alcohol. 2.
Its sale within the USA. 3. Its transportation.
There had been increasing concern in country
districts of the USA, in the years before World
War One, about the effects of alcohol on family
life and productivity. They viewed city-life as
immoral and as weakening to the American national
character.
During the 19th century a powerful temperance
(anti-alcohol) movement had developed in the
USA. These were led by church groups and womens
organisations, such as, The Womens Christian
Temperance Union. They claimed that families
were left impoverished by fathers who spent most
of their wages on drink.
An exaggerated French view of the methods used by
the WCTU.
By 1917 26 states had turned dry.
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The alcohol trade soon fell into the hands of
criminal gangs. The vast profits made by the mob
led to gang warfare between rival groups and led
to widespread corruption of police, judges and
city officials.
Prohibition and the Mob
An illegal whisky still for making moonshine
whisky.
Speakeasies illegal drinking dens
Bootlegging the smuggling of illegal alcohol
into the USA
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Not only were officials corrupted but so, too,
were many ordinary Americans
Prohibition and the Mob
The rum apron used for hiding liquor.
The closing of businesses by Prohibition agents
A speakeasy patron being arrested and led into a
police paddy wagon.
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The end of
Prohibition 1933
Increasing mob violence, reaching its peak with
the St.Valentines Day Massacre (1929). led to
increasing public pressure for an end to
Prohibition. This was achieved in December 1933.
Dutch Schultz shot dead inside a restaurant
The St, Valentines Day Massacre 1929
Capone was arrested in 1931, not for murder,
extortion,etc but for tax evasion
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The Ku Klux Klan
Persecution of the Blacks
The lynching of Tom Shipp and Abe Smith, Indiana
1930
Brandings
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Ku Klu Klan
Organisation and ideas
Imperial Wizard
Chief of the Invisible Empire

Grand Dragons
Individual Southern States
Cyclops, Titans, Hydras, Furies Regional,
county and local units
Exalted Cyclops Leaders of the local
dens Kludds, Kilgrapps, Klabees Kladds,



Klexters, Klageroes,
Klokanns
First founded in 1866 to maintain white
protestant supremacy in the Southern states
after blacks won their freedom from slavery. The
organisation was disbanded in 1871. The KKK was
revived in 1915 by William Simmons. Not only did,
it seek to continue the persecution of blacks but
also any foreign influences, including
Catholics and Jews. It also retained the strange
costumes and rituals of the original KKK blood
oaths, whispered pass words.. The Klan tended to
attract impoverished farmers and bigoted
religious and racist fanatics, sadists and
perverts. The KKK reached its peak of influence
in the middle of the 1920s when it claimed to
have over 5 million members, and it exerted
considerable influence over local politicians,
police and the courts.
KLAN SPEAK Klodes songs
Klonversation talking Kigy Hello
Ayack Are you a Klansman? Calendar, 4th July
The Dismal Day of the Weeping Week of the
Hideous Month of the year of the Klan LVII.
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Hollywood From 'silents' to
the 'Talkies'
The Jazz Singer
The Silents
The Talkies
First talking movie, 1927
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Hollywood The great Stars
Greta Garbo
The lives of Hollywood stars was avidly followed
by the public through the newspapers and film
magazines. Their lives seemed exotic.
Charlie Chaplin
Jean Harlow
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford
Clara Bow
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The end of the decade
A German cartoon prophesising difficulties facing
the USA at the end of the Twenties.
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The End