The Roaring Twenties

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Chapter 20

• The Roaring Twenties

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• Small group activity.
• Write down 4-5 things that you know about the
  1920s.
• Turn into Etter so that we can make a wordle.

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Is anything normal?

• America is suffering
• Post-war disillusionment
• Bouncy Economy
• Tangled up internationally
• Republican hopeful Warren G. Harding wins the
  Presidency with a promise of normalcy.

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Russian Revolution

• Czar Nicholas II lost popularity from making bad
  decisions.
• Going into WWI which resulted in food shortages,
  casualties, etc.
• Due to riots, weakened protests he was forced to
  abdicate.

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Lenin and the Bolsheviks

• Nov. 6, 1917 took power.
• End to war, all land to peasants!
• They put all private farms, industries, land and
  transportation under Govt ownership.

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More problems for the Russians

• 1918 Russian Civil War (reds vs. whites)
• Lenins supporters reds
• Whites former landowners, govt/army officials
  (backed by Allies)
• 1920 Reds won!
• Became the USSR
• Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

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Four aspects of Communism

• 1.) Govt owned all land property.
• 2.) A single political party controls the Govt.
• 3.) Individuals had no rights that the Govt
• was bound to respect.
• 4.) The Govt vowed to stir up revolution in
• other countries spread communism
• throughout the world.
• This ideology was hostile towards American
  beliefs values (capitalism, 1st amendment).

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1919 The Red Scare

• Puts fear of communism into Americas life!
• Palmer Raids
• Headed up by an army chief of staff.
• 500 immigrants were sent back for being
  subversives, communists spies.

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Strikes galore!!!

• Labor strikes
• Communists were behind the strikes, but really
• 1919 food prices and rent went up.
• 1920 the cost of living increased.
• Cost and Steel Strikes
• Boston Police Strike
• Hadnt gotten a raise since start of WWI.
• Demanded a raise, 19 were fired for union
  activity.
• Coolidge said, there is no right to strike
  against the public safely by anybody, anywhere,
  anytime.
• Gained national attention for this firm stance.

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The Harding Presidency

• Republicans were a solid party.
• They favored business and economic growth.
• He gave some of his buddies jobs.
• Foreign policy reflected isolationism.
• Called for disarmament.
• US grew more nativist.
• Annual immigration quota 350,000 people.
• NO Asian immigration.

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Teapot Dome Scandal

• Strain from rumors of scandal killed President
  Harding.
• 2 of his officers committed suicide when they
  knew they would be caught.
• 1921-2 Hardings Secretary of Interior Albert
  Fall, gave secret oil drilling rights on govt
  fields in Elk Field, California and Teapot Dome,
  Wyoming to two private oil companies.
• He got 300,000 illegal payments and gifts.
• Was Jailed!

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The Coolidge Presidency

• Hardings Vice President.
• Became Pres on Aug. 3, 1923.
• Re-elected in 1924 with the slogan, Keep cool w/
  Coolidge.
• Laissez-faire business policy.

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Kellogg-Briand Act

• Sec. of State Frank Kellogg, did most of
  Coolidges foreign policy.
• 1928, with USs isolationism feeling he made an
  interesting treaty with French foreign minister,
  Briand.
• Kellogg-Briand Act
• 15 nations agreed to not threaten war in dealing
  with one another, 60 eventually joined.
• Dissolved b/c they had no provisions for
  enforcement.
• By 1941, many nations that had signed were at war.

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Election of 1928

• Republican Herbert Hoover
• During after WWI he got praise for how he ran
  programs in Europe to ease hunger.
• Ran against Democrat Alfred Smith.
• 21.4 million to 15 million.
• Hoover won!

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A Business Boom

• Consumer Economy huge growth!
• Depends on a large amount of buying consumers.
• Individuals who use products.
• Buying on Credit.
• Dont pay all at oncepay on aninstallment plan
  pay over a period of time.
• Growth of Electricity
• General Electric picked up T. Edisons business.
• Offered toasters, sewing machines, coffee pots,
  irons, and vacuum cleaners.

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Henry Fords Revolution

• Ford and his famous Model T.
• 1896 1st lightweight gas-powered car.
• 1903 had first auto company.
• 1908 sold 30,000 of an improved type he called
  the Model T.

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Fords Assembly Line

• Ford wanted to democratize the automobile.
• Produced more cars and sell them at prices more
  people can afford.
• Each worker does one specialized task in the
  construction of the final product.
• Didnt invent, but made more efficient.
• Line moved, workers stayed in place.
• 1915 Cars were 390.

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Captain of Industry or Robber Barron?

• Business was good and bad.
• Lost when Chevy put out different colors
  styles.
• 1914 - 5/day pay rate.
• Double what other factories played at the time.
• Used vehicle to fight unions.
• Didnt want to change his Model T, so by 1936 he
  had slipped to 3rd in the car industry.
• Assembly line could be boring for workers.

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All over the place businesses were growing!!!!

• Steel, car, rubber, motels, campgrounds, gas
  stations, restaurants, freight companies.
• Monopolies grew!!!

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Cultural shifts in the 1920s

• The war ended and the nation prospered.
• Symbol of this the flapper
• New type of woman, young, rebellion, fun loving.
• Shorter dresses, short hair, tight cloths,
  make-up, smoking, drinking, etc.

• How it was
• Single women worked, quit when got pregnant, few
  leadership positions, few voted in 1920.
• How it changed
• Women began to seek office
• Jeannette Rankin, Montana, 1st woman in Congress
• More leadership positions, more began to work.

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Movement for other groups

• Demographic changes
• The statistics that describe a population (date
  on race or income).
• 1920s 6 million moved to cities from country.
• African Americans Great Migration
• Get out of the South, away from Jim Crow Laws.
• Industrial Revolution offered jobs in the cities.
• North wasnt always better.
• Some in the North didnt like the African
  Americans because they didnt want their jobs
  taken away.

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Movement for other groups (cont.)

• Other migrations
• Since European immigration was lowwhy?
• Immigrants from Mexico and Canada were depended
  upon to fill low-paying jobs.
• L.A. needed workers and became a BARRIO.
• A Spanish speaking neighborhood.
• Rise in suburbs
• Came about in part due to Great Migration!
• Cities built transportation (trolleys, railway
  cars, buses, etc.)
• When cars were introduced, these lost customers.

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American Heroes

• Morales were changing in the U.S.
• In the cities there were things going on that
  were badsmoking, drinking, skimpy clothes,
  bright make-up.
• Newspapers ran sensational headlines screaming
  about crime.
• The nation needed heroes to survive.

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Lucky Lindy

• 25 year old Charles Lindberg.
• Spirit of St. Louis his airplane.
• Prize of 25,000 to fly nonstop from NY to Paris.
• 33 ½ hour flight.
• He represented solid moral values of old U.S.

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Amelia Earhart

• Inspired by Lindberg.
• 1932, she flew alone from Hawaii to California.
• 1937, she tried to fly around the world.
• She disappeared somewhere in the pacific ocean.

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Sports Heroes

• George Herman Ruth
• Babe Ruth
• Sultan of Swat
• 714 Home Runs
• Gertrude Ederle
• Freestyle swimming
• Gold in 1926 Olympics
• 1st woman to swim 34 mile wide English Channel.

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Mass Media

• Mass Media
• Print and broadcast methods of communicating
  information to large numbers of people.
• Movies
• Between 1910-1930, the number of theatres rose
  from 5,000 to 22,5000.
• 1927 1st film with sound, The Jazz Singer.
• Nickelodeans

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Mass Media (cont.)

• Newspapers
• 1900 NY Times was only 14 pages long
• Mid 1920-s was 50 pages
• Many companies went out of business, newspaper
  chains brought them up!
• William Randolph Hearst gained control of
  newspapers in more than 20 cities.
• Radio
• Westinghouse took the lead.
• By 1922 500 stations were on the air.

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The Jazz Age

• Features improvisation, musicians make it up as
  they are playing, and has an off-beat rhythm.
• African American roots
• Grew out of Southern music (ragtime, blues).
• 1900 New Orleans bands were mixing the sounds.
• Radio listeners began to hear/like it.
• 1920s became the jazz age.
• Harlem had 500 Jazz clubs.

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Famous Jazz Musicians

• Duke Ellington
• Middle class upbringing.
• Famous jazz composer.
• Excellent on the piano.
• Louis Armstrong
• Trumpet player.
• New Orleans, Chicago, NY
• Focused on soloists

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Other Artistic Movements

• George Gershwin
• Russian, wrote the jazz piece Rhapsody in Blue.
• Georgia OKeeffe
• Painted natural objects
• Flowers, animal bones, landscapes, etc.
• Sinclair Lewis
• Muckraker who tackled American society with
  irony.
• Won Nobel Prize in 1930 for literature.
• Irving Berlin
• Write God Bless America

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The Lost Generation

• Groups of writers in the 1920s who believed they
  were lost in a greedy and materialistic world
  that lacked moral values.
• Left the US for Paris.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Great Gatsby
• They found the rich to be shallow persons.

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The Harlem Renaissance

• The African American cultural center of the US
  was NY Citys, Harlem.
• 1930 200,000 Af Amers lived there.
• Was a national center for Jazz.
• Was the home of African American literary
  awakening of the 1920s.

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The Harlem Renaissance

• James Weldon Johnson emerging writer.
• Alain Locke The New Negro
• Celebrated the blossoming of Af Amer culture.
• Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes were Watching God
• Langston Hughes poet, short story writer
• Career stretched into the 1960s
• Spoke with clear/strong voice about jobs and
  difficulties of being human, American, and black.

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Langston HughesI Too, Sing America.

• Tomorrow,
• Ill be at the table
• when the company comes,
• nobodyll dare
• say to me,
• eat in the kitchen,
• then.
• Besides,
• theyll see how beautiful I
• am
• and be ashamed
• I too, am America.

• I too, sing America.
• I am the darker brother,
• they send me to eat in
• the kitchen
• when the company
• comes,
• but I laugh,
• and eat well,
• and grow strong.

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Prohibitionnever heard of it!

• Many American ignored it.
• Including President Harding, see pg. 622
• Volstead Act Congress passed, 1919.
• To enforce the 18th amendment.
• Ignored by most of east coast.
• 1924 Report found that
• 95 of Kansas obeyed, 5 of NY obeyed.
• Sharpened contrast b/t rural and urban morals.

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Detroit 1929 illegal alcohol being poured out
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Prohibition, smrohibition

• Bootlegging
• Suppliers of illegal alcohol.
• Some smuggled whiskey from Canada or Caribbean.
• Others used alcohol from grain, corn, potatoes,
  etc.
• Speakeasies
• Many bootleggers customers owned these.
• They were illegal bars that flourished in the
  cities.
• Heavy gate usually blocked the door.
• Only opened to people who showed a membership
  card or were recognized by a guard.

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Organized Crime

• In some cities, criminals formed large groups who
  controlled distribution of alcohol.
• Gangs would fight for territory.
• Racketeering
• In the typical racket, local business were
  forced to pay a fee for protection.
• Buy from uswe wont shoot you.

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Al Capone Scarface

• Most notorious gangster in Chicago.
• Here, bootlegging had added immense wealth to
  gambling, prostitution, etc.
• Reached all levels, including Govt.
• 60 mil/yr from bootlegging.
• Finally caught from tax evasion in 1931.
• Prohibition was a problem until 1933.

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Thats it for standard stuff
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1920s Religion

• Problems that separated religions
• Science and technology where do they fit?
• War and widespread modern problems
• Bible was written by humans had mistakes?
• Response 12 pamphlets called The
  Fundametalists
• Traditional Christian ideas, Bible had no error!
• Bible is literally true, all stories actually
  happened.
• Fundamentalism gained power in the 1920s.

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Evolution and the Scopes Trial

• Theory of Evolution
• Fundamentalists felt that it contradicted the
  Bible.
• They worked for passage of laws to prevent public
  schools from teaching it.

• The setting
• Dayton, TN (passed the Ban law)
• John Scopes, science teacher
• Thought law unconstitutional, friend sued him as
  favor.
• The major players
• William Jennings Bryan
• Prosecution, fundamentalist, former Presidential
  candidate.
• Clarence Darrow
• Defense, attorney for the damned.

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Evolution and the Scopes Trial

• The trial July 10-21, 1925
• Carnival atmosphere (reporters, chimps)
• 1st trial ever broadcast on American radio.
• Expert science testimony excluded
• Darrow puts Bryan on witness stand
• To be an expert on the Bible
• Bryan admitted that not even he interpreted the
  Bible fully literally.
• Scopes convicted, fined 100
• Bryan became a martyr for the Fundamentalists
  (died after)
• Jan. 17, 1926 TN Supreme Ct. upheld law,
  overturned conviction of Scopes, no appeal to
  S.Ct.
• The law against teaching evolution remain in
  Tenn, until 1967, but no other teachers were
  prosecuted.

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KKK rise again (remember The Birth of a Nation?)

• 2nd Ku Klux Klan
• 1915Stone Mountain, GA
• William Simmons, 1st Grand Wizard
• Targets Catholics, Jews, immigrants,
  race-mixing
• For prohibition, Imm. Restriction, fundamentalism
• White, native-born, Protestant supremacy
• Popular nationwide5 million members by 1925
• WKKK organized klanswomen (no longer around)

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Klan marches on Washington, August 1925

• This march showed
• The great numbers that
• The Klan had recruited.
• Many Americans believed
• The Klan only wanted to
• Protect its own way of
• Life. So, most did not
• Protest the Klan, until they
• Became so violent.