The New Era

1
The New Era

• Chapter 24

2
I. The New Economy

• Economic Growth
• Huge economic boom in early 1920s
• output up 60
• per capita income up a third
• Causes
• debilitation of European industry
• technology
• automobiles connected to everything else
• radio
• cheap and readily available energy
• STUFF (home appliances, plastics, synthetic
  fibers, aluminum, aviation, electronics)

3
Economic Organization

• Consolidation U.S. Steel and Little Steel
• Administration and expansion General Motors
• Cooperation trade association
• Limiting competition connected to fear of
  overproduction

4
Labor in the New Era

• Strong economy, but uneven distribution of wealth
• 2/3 lived no better than minimum comfort
• 1/3 of the population subsistence and poverty
• lack of political organization limited power of
  the poor
• Positive Changes for Labor
• rise in the standard of living (STUFF)
• improved working conditions
• many employers wanted to avoid labor unrest
  allowed trade unions
• paternalistic welfare capitalism
• U.S. Steel improved safety and sanitation
• Ford shortened workweek, raised wages,
  instituted paid vacations

5
Labor in the New Era Continued

• Limited / Negative Changes for Labor
• unions feeble
• welfare capitalism survived only as long as
  industry prospered when 1929 hit, the entire
  system collapsed
• limited increase in salary due to large supply of
  workers
• making ends meet with more than one job
• unemployment 5-7
• Union movement looked at as best hope, but weak
• William Green, head of AFL 1924 frowned on strikes

6
Women and Minorities in the Work Force

• increased number of women working pink collar
  jobs
• salesclerks, telephone operators, secretaries
• underpaid
• not represented in unions
• African Americans
• janitors, dishwashers, garbage collectors,
  laundry
• not represented in unions
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters 1925 all
  black union

7
Women and Minorities in the Work Force Continued

• Asians in the West and Southwest
• excluded from Unions
• Chinese Exclusion Acts (Angel Island)
• Japanese success as truck farmers, laws passed in
  response to make it difficult for them to buy
  land
• Filipinos Anti-Filipino riots led to legislation
  in 1934 eliminating immigration from the
  Philippines
• Hispanics in the West and Southwest
• major part of unskilled labor force in the
  Southwest and CA
• ½ million Mexicans entered US in the 1920s /
• total over 1 million
• concentrated in urban cities barrios without
  plumbing or sewage
• no laws to exclude, necessity for ready pool of
• low-paid, unskilled, unorganized workers

8
The American Plan

• Strength of corporations was the principal reason
  for the absence of effective labor organization
• Corporate leaders worked hard to label unionism
  with radicalism
• Protection of the open shop became American
  Plan principal behind harsh campaign of union
  busting
• Government Assistance goes to corporate leaders
• 1921 the Supreme Court declares picketing illegal
  and supported the right of courts to issue
  injunctions against strikers
• 1922 Justice Department quells a strike of
  400,000 workers
• 1924 courts refused to protect members of the
  United Mine Workers when mine owners launched a
  violent campaign to break up a strike
• union membership decreases as a response

9
The Plight of the Farmer

• number of tractors on American farms quadrupled
  in the 1920s lead to 35 million new acres of
  cultivation
• increased production did not increase demand
  result was overproduction
• decline in food prices
• drop in income for farmers
• farmer only made about a quarter of the salary of
  the non-farmer
• 3 million people left agriculture in the course
  of the decade many that remained forced into
  tenancy
• most farmers moderate few demanded govt relief
• American Farm Bureau Federation
• Parity a formula for guaranteeing farmers a fair
  price for their crops regardless of national or
  international fluctuations
• McNary-Haugen Bill vetoed repeatedly by
  conservative presidents

10
Consumerism
II. The New Culture

• society in which people could buy things not just
  out of need, but out of pleasure
• new products electric refrigerators, washing
  machines, electric irons, vacuum cleaners,
  wristwatches, cigarettes, cosmetics and
  automobiles
• how the automobile changed American life
• 30 million cars on American roads
• expanded geographical horizons of millions
• vacations now available to more people
• means of escaping rural isolation
• city dwellers able to escape from city life
• suburbs
• social lives for younger, affluent people

11
Advertising
Fake Smile

• advertising grows in response to success of WWI
  propaganda
• no longer just about sharing information now
  about persuasion
• The Man Nobody Knows, Bruce Barton portrayed
  Jesus Christ as a super salesman advertising
  looked at as good business
• new vehicles of advertisement newspapers,
  magazines Saturday Evening Post, Readers Digest
  and Time Magazine

12
The Movies and Broadcasting

• Films
• 40 million had seen films in 1922 / 100 million
  by 1930
• First feature length talkie The Jazz Singer
• 1921 Motion Picture Association to set up
  standards on films
• Will Hays uses broad powers to conform film
  industry
• Rudolph Valentino
• Radio
• most important new communications vehicle
• KDKA first commercial radio station in America
• National Broadcasting Company (NBC) first
  national radio network
• 1923 500 radio stations
• 1929 12 million families owned radio sets
• much less centralized than filmmaking
• self regulation
• more controversial than film industry

13
Modernist Religion

• movement to abandon some literal interpretation
  of the Bible for a belief system that would help
  individuals live more fulfilling lives in the
  present world
• Harry Emerson Fosdick aim of Christian religion
  was not unexamined faith, but a fully developed
  personality liberal Protestantism
• many stopped well short of embracing this new
  religion but pointed to general trend the
  devaluing of religion to a secondary role
• Sunday becoming a day filled with activities and
  entertainments

14
Professional Women

• substantial group of women now combined marriage
  and careers 25 of all women workers married
• continued debate about what were suitable roles
  for women workers
• new professional woman was a vivid and widely
  publicized image in the 1920s but reality was
  different
• most female workers were lower class and
  unskilled most middle class women in the home

15
Changing Ideas of Motherhood

• 1920s redefinition of motherhood
• behaviorist psychology began to challenge the
  idea that women had an instinctive capacity for
  motherhood
• mothers should rely on assistance of experts and
  professionals
• motherhood more connected to institutions outside
  of the family
• women become less likely to allow children to
  intervene with development of marital
  relationship
• focus of sex shifts from procreation to romantic
  expression
• birth control both a cause and an effect of
  this new way of thinking
• Margaret Sanger advocate of birth control
• working class women
• poor communities
• spread to middle class
• Many birth control devices banned in many states
  abortion illegal nearly everywhere

Margaret Sanger
16
The Flapper Image and Reality

• some women believed that the in the New Era it
  was no longer necessary to maintain a rigid,
  Victorian female respectability general
  release from repression and inhibition
• smoke and drink
• dance
• wear seductive clothes and makeup
• attend lively parties
• flapper term used to describe New Era woman
  whose liberated lifestyle found new expression
• dress
• hairstyle
• speech
• behavior
• huge impact on lower-middle class and working
  class single women who were flocking to new
  industrial jobs in the service sector
• despite independent image of flapper, most women
  remained highly dependent on men workplace and
  at home

17
Pressing for Womens Rights

• realization that the new woman was a myth lead
  many women to continue to press for reform
• Alice Paul National Womens Party, continued to
  press for an Equal Rights Amendment
• League of Women Voters
• 1921 Sheppard-Towner Act provided federal funds
  to states to establish prenatal and child
  healthcare programs 1929 program terminated due
  to opposition on many fronts
• 1929 discovered that female vote had done little
  change to electoral votes women divided the same
  way as men thus male politicians felt little
  concern about the consequences of opposing the
  demands of female reformers

18
Education and Youth

• more people going to school than ever before
• high school attendance from 2.2 million to 5
  million during decade
• enrollment in colleges and universities goes up
  threefold from 1900 to 1930
• attendance increasing at trade and vocational
  schools
• emergence of separate youth culture concept of
  adolescence
• influenced by Freudian psychology
• extended period of training and preparation was
  necessary before a young person was ready to move
  into the workplace
• school not just a place for academics, but
  extracurricular activities

19
The Decline of the Self-Made Man

• increase in the beliefs of education and
  adolescence lead to the gradual disappearance of
  this theory
• crisis of self-identification and dependence
  among many American males
• Different outlets for masculinity
• sports
• fraternities
• warfare
• Creation of three heroes all of which
  represented the triumphs of modern technology,
  but did not have formal education
• Thomas Edison inventor of light bulb and other
  technological marvels
• Henry Ford creator of assembly line, one of the
  founders of auto industry
• Charles Lindbergh first aviator to make a solo
  flight across the Atlantic Ocean

Henry Ford
Thomas Edison
Charles Lindbergh
20
The Disenchanted

• generation of artists and intellectuals who found
  new society disturbing
• rather than change society, they tried to isolate
  themselves
• Lost Generation (Whos Lost?)
• belief that modern America no longer provided
  individuals with avenues by which they could
  achieve personal fulfillment
• aftermath of war was shattering war was a fraud
• saddened by repudiation of idealism with
  business as usual
• disgust with materialism and consumerism

21
The Disenchanted Continued

• Ernest Hemmingway, Farwell to Arms
• debunkers writers who wrote savage critiques of
  nearly every aspect of society
• H.L. Mencken why do people go to the zoo?
• Sinclair Lewis
• F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
• many went to live in isolated places and engaged
  in hedonistic lifestyles
• end result was one of the greatest decades of
  American Literature

22
The Harlem Renaissance

• once an affluent white suburb in northern
  Manhattan by the end of WWI one of the largest
  and most influential African American communities
• Harlem Renaissance term used to describe a new
  generation of black artists and intellectuals who
  created a flourishing African American culture
• nightclubs (The Cotton Club) featuring jazz
  musicians (Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton,
  Fletcher Henderson)
• theatres featuring musical comedies
• poetry (Langston Hughes, Claude McKay)
• visual art (Aaron Douglas)
• Brought African American products to the
  attention of larger society
• Some blacks combined there art with radical
  politics

23
The Southern Agrarians

• centered around Vanderbilt University
• questioned modern industry
• Renegades not originally connected to the
  South, but eventually targeted the South because
  it was underdeveloped became Agrarians
• Ill Take My Stand Agrarian manifesto
• Justified segregation
• Critique of industrialization
• backwards South as model for a nation drunk
  with visions of limitless growth and
  modernization

24
Prohibition
III. A Conflict of Cultures

• when passed, huge symbol of progressivism
• within a year noble experiment not working well
• did reduce drinking in some regions of the
  country
• produced growing violations that brought
  integrity of the law into question
• in many places, easier to acquire illegal alcohol
  than it was to acquire legal alcohol before
  prohibition

25
Prohibition Continued

• trade once operated by legitimate businessmen now
  operated by organized crime
• Al Capone, Chicago
• Violent deaths of 250 people between 1920 1927
• rural, Protestant Americans continue to defend
  Prohibition
• saw drinking to be connected with Catholic
  culture
• old stock Americans trying to discipline new
  stock
• wets v. drys
• 1933 repealed during Great Depression
• (21st Amendment)

26
Nativism and the Klan

• again, old stock trying to discipline new stock
• post war ideology immigration associated with
  radicalism
• Spreading Growth
• 1921 immigration act establishing quotas cut
  immigration from 800,000 to 300,000
• National Origins Act of 1924 banned immigration
  from east Asia entirely
• Large communities of foreign peoples, threat to
  older more homogeneous America lead to rebirth of
  KKK

27
Nativism and the Klan Continued

• KKK
• Leo Frank, 1914 Jewish man lynched in Atlanta,
  Georgia
• Stone Mountain, near Atlanta in 1915
• D.W. Griffiths film The Birth of a Nation
  glorified early Klan
• Originally connected to intimidating blacks, but
  after WWI, primary concern shifted to Catholics,
  Jews and foreigners
• Spreading in North (Indiana) and West (Oregon and
  Colorado)
• 1923 3 million members / 1924 4 million
  members
• Systematic Terrorism
• boycott businesses
• threaten families
• public whipping
• tarring and feathering
• arson
• hanging

28
Nativism and the Klan Continued Again

• The Klan didnt just fear racial impurities
  they feared any challenge to traditional values
• Provided poor whites with a sense of community
  and seeming authority
• secret language and excitement
• social sphere for women
• Downfall of Klan 1925
• David Stephenson, Indiana convicted of murder
• He had control of everyone in Indiana with
  written agreements
• However, he breaks all of the rules of KKK (1.
  Prohibition 2. Protecting White Women 3. Acting
  like a Christian)
• Drinking, Rape, Caniballism, and Murder!!!
• Stephenson, individually, helped the rise and the
  FALL of the KKK!

29
Religious Fundamentalism

• American Protestantism divided into two camps
• Modernists mostly urban, middle-class people who
  had attempted to adapt religion to modern science
• Traditionalists largely rural, fighting to
  maintain the centrality of religion in American
  life fundamentalists
• i. strongly opposed Darwin
• ii. literal interpretation of the Bible
• Tennessee March 1925 adopted a law making it
  illegal for any public school teacher to teach
  evolution opposed to creation

30
Religious Fundamentalism Continued

• American Civil Liberties Union founded in 1920
  by citizens who were alarmed with the repressive
  legal and social climate of the war and its
  aftermath (Jane Addams, Norman Thomas and Helen
  Keller)
• offered free council to anyone willing to defy
  the law
• 24 year old biology teacher, John T. Scopes
  agreed to have himself arrested
• Trial pitted two famous lawyers against each
  other
• Clarence Darrow famous defense attorney
• William Jennings Bryan important fundamentalist
  spokesman
• Judge refused expert testimony by expert scholars
• Scopes was fined 100, case later dismissed in a
  higher court
• Bryan put on the stand as an expert on the
  Bible!
• Scopes Trial huge setback for fundamentalists
• Who were the real winners???

31
The Democrats Ordeal

• suffered in response to fractions between urban
  and rural factions
• on one side prohibitionists, Klansmen, and
  fundamentalists
• on the other side Catholics, urban workers, and
  immigrants
• 1924 Primary 103 Ballots! Split between Alfred
  E. Smith (urban Catholic) and William McAdoo
  (rural)
• 1928 Alfred E. Smith secures party nomination
  and secures total division in Democratic party
  (the next and last Catholic to receive a major
  party nomination would be JFK)
• Herbert Hoover took office widely believed to be
  one of the most capable and well equipped to take
  office.

32
Harding and Coolidge
IV. Republican Government

• two men who characterized the nature of 1920s
  politics passive
• Warren G. Harding
• undistinguished
• easily controlled
• lacked the strength to abandon interests that
  made him president
• Scandal! Secretary Fall convicted of bribery for
  selling govt oil preserves one year in prison
  (TeaPot Dome Scandal)
• died of heart attack
• Calvin Coolidge
• main advisers were from the advertising industry
• built a reputation as a simple man defending
  country virtues but was thoroughly urban man of
  modern sensibilities
• conviction that govt should interfere as little
  as possible
• He aspired to become the least President the
  country ever had. He attained his desire
• Silent Cal but not governor of Massachusetts
• Written statement I do not choose to run for
  president in 1928

33
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
34
Government and Business

• despite ineptness of presidents, much govt was
  working effectively to adapt public policy to the
  widely accepted goal of helping business and
  industry operate with maximum efficiency and
  productivity
• Business continued to work with govt but in
  altered form which was contrary to progressive
  ideals
• Business Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon cut
  taxes on corporate profits
• Herbert Hoover believed public institutions had
  a responsibility to create a new, cooperative
  order
• William Howard Taft Chief Justice 1921
• Lochner v. New York struck down a law limiting
  the number of hours bankers in New York could be
  required to work.
• Bailey v. Drexel Furniture struck down federal
  legislation regulating child labor
• Adkins v. Childrens Hospital nullified a
  minimum wage law for women
• Sanctioned trade unions as being hurtful to
  competition, but allowed U.S Steel to continue
  its monopolistic practices

35
Government and Business Continued

• Remaining progressive reformers lacked the power
  to overthrow presidential vetoes
• Some progressives were encouraged with the
  election of Herbert Hoover widely regarded as
  the most progressive member of the Harding and
  Coolidge administrations but he would have
  little opportunity to prove himself