America in the Roaring Twenties

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America in the Roaring Twenties
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Palmer Raids, 1919
Attorney General of USA, A. Mitchell Palmer

• Arrested 6000 radicals after bombings in 8 cities
• Galleanists There will have to be murder we
  will kill, because it is necessary
• Palmers own home in DC was damaged by a bomb
• 249 communists and anarchists deported to
  Russia, 1919

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• Exiled, imprisoned, escaped
• Promised We will dynamite you! after passage of
  Anarchist Act
• Published bomb-making manual, The Health is In
  You!

Anarchist Luigi Galleani, deported to Italy 1919
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Emma Goldman deported, 1919

• J. Edgar Hoover led Department of Investigation
  (later the FBI)

• Subscription list of Mother Earth provided govt
  with names during Red Scare

Alexander Berkman
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Red Scare

• Anarchist Act, 1920
• State laws against Criminal Syndicalism
• Prosecution of Industrial Workers of the World
  (Wobblies)

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Sacco and Vanzetti Case, 1927

• Charged with murder of paymaster and security
  guard in armed robbery
• Braintree, MA 1921
• Italian immigrants, draft dodgers, anarchists
• Executed 1927 after high-profile trial
• Radicals claimed political frame-up

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American Legion

• Patriotism
• Veterans Rights and Benefits, especially the
  Bonus
• Conservatism
• Law and Order
• Anti-radicalism

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Revival of Ku Klux Klan
Invisible Empire

• Anti-foreign, anti-black, anti-Catholic
• Strong in Midwest and South
• 5 million dues-paying members
• Powerful in Democrat Party
• Led parade of 40,000 in Washington, DC 1925

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Immigration Quota Act, 1924

• New laws limited a countrys immigration to 3
  of the number who had been in the US in 1910
• Intended to cut back on those coming from Eastern
  Europe
• Changed to 2 of those in 1890 census, 1924
• Total exclusion of Japanese
• No quotas for Canadians or Latin Americans

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Prohibition the Noble Experiment

• Popular in South and Midwest, not in big cities
• Difficult to enforce
• Corruption, bribery
• Bootleggers, smugglers, moonshiners
• Gangsterism, organized crime worth 12 billion

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Al Capone aka Public Enemy 1
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Scopes Monkey TrialDayton, TN 1925

• John Scopes was fired for teaching evolution,
  illegal in Tennessee
• Fundamentalists vs Darwinists
• Wm J. Bryan vs Clarence Darrow
• H.L. Mencken wrote about the trial, ridiculing
  Bryan and his followers
• Inherit the Wind is based on this case

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Economic Prosperity

• Cheap fuel, coal and oil
• Electrification of cities
• Automobile
• Household appliances refrigerators, washers,
  vacuums, radios
• Advertising
• Credit buying, installment plan, buy now, pay
  later
• Mass entertainment spectator sports, movies
• High profits and wages

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Auto Industry

• Assembly line, mass production techniques
• Industry leaders Ford, Sloan, Olds
• Detroit became the Motor City
• 500,000 Model Ts by 1914
• Rubber, glass, fabric, repair, gas stations,
  travel industries grew rapidly
• Freedom, tourism, leisure
• Growth of suburbs
• 6 million jobs by 1930

Henry Ford with Tin Lizzie
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Charles Lindbergh Spirit of St. Louis
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Jazz Age

• Hollywood movie industry first talkie was The
  Jazz Singer
• Jazz bands popular in New Orleans, Chicago, New
  York
• Widespread popularity of radio programs news,
  sports, music, drama, religion
• Harlem Renaissance displayed black musicians,
  singers, dancers, artists, writers

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A typical Flapper
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Movie Stars of the 1920s
Clara Bow
Charlie Chaplin
Rudolph Valentino
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George Herman Babe Ruth
The Bambino The Sultan of Swat
New York Yankees
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Louis Armstrong, Satchmo
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Jazz Band, Harlem 1920s
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Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
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Marcus Garvey

• Jamaican immigrant
• Black Nationalist
• Favored black-owned businesses, racial pride and
  unity
• Universal Negro Improvement Association
• Popular among working-class blacks in Harlem
• Back-to-Africa Movement
• Black Star Steamship Co.
• Convicted of fraud, deported

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The Lost Generation

• F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises
The Great Gatsby
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Cynicism, alienation, pessimism

• H.L. Mencken

• Sinclair Lewis

Baltimore Sun American Mercury
Main Street Babbitt Elmer Gantry
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The Politics of Boom and Bust
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The Politics of Boom and Bust

• Warren G. Harding
• Republican from Ohio
• Back to Normalcy
• Easygoing, amiable, intellectually flabby
• Not a bad man, just a slobAlice Roosevelt
• Pro-business, anti-reform
• Appointed Taft as Chief Justice
• Pardoned Eugene Debs
• Poker-playing whiskey drinker
• Enjoyed socializing with his cronies, the Ohio
  Gang
• Died of a stroke, 1923

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Presidential Election of 1920
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Eugene Debs received pardon from Harding, left
federal prison
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Hardings Cabinet
Andrew Mellon, Secretary of Treasury
Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State
Albert Fall, Secretary of Interior
Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce
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Republican Foreign Policy

• IsolationismNo membership in League of Nations
• Negotiations for oil drilling rights in Middle
  East
• No diplomatic relations with communist govt of
  Russia
• Disarmament Conference reduced size of naval
  fleets
• Kellogg-Briand Pact renounced war, declared it
  illegal
• Tariffs raised, reducing world trade, causing
  retaliation, hurting Europes ability to
  repay debts from WW I
• Left problems such as Japans invasion of
  Manchuria to a weak League of Nations

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Teapot Dome scandal leads to bribery conviction
of Albert Fall
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Calvin Coolidge, 1923-1929

• Honest, frugal, hard-working, laconic Silent
  Cal
• Favored lower taxes, reduction of public debt
• The business of America is business
• Sworn in as president after sudden death of
  Harding
• Conservative Republican from Massachusetts
• Enforced Prohibition
• Kept Mellon as Sec of Treasury
• Allowed loans to Germany, which paid Br and Fr,
  who repaid USA

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Presidential Election, 1924
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Herbert Hoover, 1929-1933

• Coolidge said I do not choose to run in 1928
• Republicans nominated Hoover, a Quaker engineer
  from Iowa, former Sec of Commerce and Food
  Administrator in WW I
• Rugged Individualism
• Isolationism, small government, low taxes, free
  enterprise
• Signed Hawley-Smoot Tariff, his worst mistake

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Presidential Election of 1928
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Stock Market Crash October 1929
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5000 Banks Failed
4 million unemployed in 1930 12 million
unemployed in 1932
Soup Kitchens fed jobless men
Hooverville
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• Hoovers Policies
• Govt loans to railroad, banks, rural credit
  corporations Reconstruction Finance Corporation
• Public Works like Hoover Dam
• Encouragement of private charity and local
  government to provide direct relief
• Norris-LaGuardia Act to help labor unions no
  yellow-dog contracts, no court injunctions
  against strikes and boycotts
• Optimistic speeches Prosperity is just around
  the corner
• Hawley-Smoot tariff

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Bonus Army veterans protest in Washington, 1932
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Douglas Macarthur led troops to expel Bonus
Marchers from DC, 1932