The Roaring Twenties

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The Roaring Twenties
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The Roaring 20s

• An era of prosperity,
• Republican power,
• and conflict

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Roaring Twenties

• Women had right to vote
• Fashion more liberal
• Alcohol was banned
• Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh
• Movies
• Jazz

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Prosperity/Politics

• Return to Normalcy
• From 1922 economy soared
• Mass production/Competition drops as corporations
  gain more control
• Few unions/wages rise slowly
• Minorities /women bottom of pay scale

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Civil Unrest

• Red Scare
• Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
• Palmer Raids
• Sacco - Vanzetti Case

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Decade of Prosperity and Play

• Unemployment was low
• 60 of wealth with just a few families
• 27,500 wealthiest had as much as 12 million
  poorest

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Desire to return to normalcy but

• High prices
• Increased demand for goods
• Wages low
• Labor strikes Boston Police, steel workers,
  (both unsuccessful)

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• 1920's collectively known as the "Roaring 20's",
  or the "Jazz Age"
• a period of great change in American Society -
  modern America is born at this time

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Age of Prosperity

• Economic expansion
• Mass Production
• Assembly Line
• Age of the Automobile
• Ailing Agriculture

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Republican Power

• President Harding
• Elected 1920
• Legacy of Scandals
• Teapot Dome
• Died in office

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ELECTION of 1920

• Republican
• Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge
• Return to Normalcy
• Isolationism, Laissez -faire
• Landslide victory for Republicans

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Warren G.Harding1921-1923

• Popular, good looking
• Wife , Florence King DeWolfe ran his campaign
• Golfed, Played poker, had a mistress
• Poor judge of character

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Harding

• Has heart attack and dies
• Country was saddened as he was popular. His poor
  presidency doesnt come to light until later

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Warren G. Harding

• Teapot Dome Scandal
• Govt. oil reserves sold for business interests
• Sec. of Interior Albert Fall
• Naval Limitation Treaty
• Immigration Legislation

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Harding

• I have no trouble with my enemies, but my
  friends keep me walking the floor at night
• Many took bribes, many caught

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POLITICAL SCANDALS

• Teapot Dome Scandal
• Albert Falls oil rich public lands set aside for
  the Navy
• Secretly leased to oil companies for cash and
  cattle

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POST WAR ECONOMY

• Assembly line (Henry Ford) increases
  productivity by 40
• Corporate mergers
• Oligopolies Fix prices, lead to chain stores
• Advertising
• Installment-buying plans

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Consumer Economy
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• Consumer Good
• new consumer goods most readily to city dwellers
• new electrical appliances transform household
  duties
• the department stores of food industry--supermarke
  ts and commercial bakeries--spring up during this
  period

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ORGANIZED LABOR

• Organized labor membership falls
• Managers offer benefit plans
• Wages rise slowly

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POST WAR ECONOMY

• Inflation
• Caused by wartime shortages
• 1919 - 3,600 strikes
• Boston Police Strike
• Steel and Coal Strikes

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LABOR under HARDING

• American Plan
• UnAmerican to join a Union to get a job
• Employees offered benefits, wage increases, stock
  options to show unions were unnecessary
• Harding pardoned many Union leaders

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President Coolidge The business of America is
business.

• Fordney-McCumber Tariff
• Smoot-Hawley Tariff
• No help for farmers
• Foreign Policy

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CALVIN COOLIDGE

• 1923-1929
• Republican
• VP Charles Dawes
• Silent Cal
• Business of America is Business

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Coolidge

• Slept 10 hours/day
• Upon the death of Harding, woke up, was sworn in,
  then went back to bed
• Widened the gap between rich and poor
• Very inactive president

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Gov. Calvin Coolidge

• There is no right to strike against the public
  safety by anyone,anytime, anywhere!

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Prohibition
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Prohibition

• Ban on Alcohol
• Eighteenth Amendment
• Bootlegging

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PROHIBITION

• Volstead Act Enforce
• Criminal acts
• 1933 21st Amendment to repeal

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SPEAKEASIES
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• Moonshiners
• Made illegal alcohol from grain
• Shipped from Ireland Canada
• Speedboats delivered liquor faster than Coast
  Guard ships

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• Souped up cars out ran government agents
• Early beginnings of NASCAR
• Speakeasies
• Illegal clubs

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Criminal Gangs

• Al Capone
• Gang violence

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• Organized Crime
• Al Capone
• Racketeers
• Made businesses pay protection money

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• Finally convicted on White Collar crime not
  violent crime
• Income Tax evasion landed Capone in jail

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African American Migration

• Reached millions
• Racial Prejudice everywhere
• Marcus Garvey
• W.E.B. Dubois
• KKK
• Immigration laws Quota System

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SOCIAL VALUES

• Women
• Divorce 1-17 1-6 now 1-2
• Religion suffered decline
• Scopes Monkey Trial
• Darwin v Creation
• Fundamentalism

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SOCIAL VALUES

• Fundamentalism
• Bible contained no contradictions or errors
• Supported Bible is literally true
• Every story actually took place as written

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A Society in Conflict

• Anti-immigrant
• National Origins Act
• Discrimination
• Sacco-Vanzetti Trial
• Italian immigrants
• Unfair trial

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• for immigrants the point of origin had shifted
  to S E Europe and new religions appeared
  Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic
• N. European immigrants of early 19c. feared this
  shift and felt it would undermine Protestant
  values
• this fear was known as NATIVISM
• many wanted Congress to restrict immigration,
  leading to a quota system that favoured n. areas
  of Europe
• fear of immigrants (from SE Europe) led to a
  sentiment known as the Red Scare (fear of comm.
  post-Bolshevik Rev.)
• basic comm. advocates a int'l revolution by the
  proletariat/workers - fears that this ideology
  could find its way into the U.S.

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• at this time, W. Wilson was gravely ill following
  a stroke
• his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, wanted
  to take a shot at the presidency - he used fears
  of both immigrants and communism to his advantage
• he had J. Edgar Hoover round up suspected
  radicals, many of which were deported (Palmer
  Raids)

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SOCIAL VALUES

• Scopes Trial
• Evolution vs. Fundamentalist
• Tennessee passed
• Illegal to teach Evolution

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Scopes Monkey Trial
Evolution vs. Creationism
Science vs. Religion
Dayton, Tennessee
Famous Lawyers
John Scopes High School Biology teacher
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SOCIAL VALUES

• John T. Scopes challenged law
• Trial combatants
• William Jennings Bryan
• Clarence Darrow

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Prohibition
18th Amendment
Volstead Act
Gangsters
untouchables
Al Capone
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SOCIAL CHANGES

• Civil Rights
• Riots
• 25 cities summer of 1919
• Chicago hard hit
• Rock fight

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SOCIAL CHANGES

• 17 year old African American was struck and
  killed while swimming
• Several days of rioting broke out

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SOCIAL CHANGES

• Revival of KKK
• Colonel William J. Simmons revived
• Not only in South
• Indiana had lad the largest membership

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The Ku Klux Klan
Great increase In power
Anti-black
Anti-immigrant
Anti-Semitic
Anti-Catholic
Anti-womens suffrage
Anti-bootleggers
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SOCIAL CHANGES

• 4 million members
• African Americans, Catholics, Jews, Immigrants,
  all were victims
• 1925 leader of Indiana Klan
• Was sent to prison

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Youth Culture

• Flappers

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SPORTS

• Baseball
• Football
• Boxing
• Tennis

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FAMOUS PEOPLE

• Heroes
• Lucky Lindy
• First to fly across Atlantic solo
• Became National hero
• Remained modest thus increasing popularity

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FAMOUS PEOPLE

• Amelia Earhart
• first woman to fly solo across Atlantic
• First successful flight from Hawaii to California

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CULTURAL CREATIVITY

• Literature
• Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway

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HARLEM RENAISSANCE

• Harlem Renaissance
• Grew from 50,000 to 200,000 in 16 years
• Literature and music of African Americans

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• NAACP
• James Weldon Johnson
• Alain Locke The New Negro
• African American Culture
• Langston Hughes
• Joys and difficulties of being American and black

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College Life

• Enrollment tripled
• New target group

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Leisure Fun and fads

• Dance Marathons

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• Beauty Contests- Miss America Pageant
• Pole Sitting

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Music Dance

• Berlin, Gershwin, Porter
• Jazz Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington
• Flappers

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• Theaters rose from 500 in 1910 to 22,500 in 1930
• Elaborate design ornate lobbies balconies place
  to go
• 125,000 million people in the United States

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• Magazines and Newspapers
• More readers less independent newspapers
• Tabloids instead of Hard News

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• Magazines
• Saturday Evening Post
• Readers Digest
• Time
• Ladies Home Journal

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The 20s is The Jazz Age
The Flappers make up cigarettes short skirts
Musicians Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington
Writers F. Scott Fitzgerald Ernest Hemingway
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• Jazz Age
• African American music of the south
• Radio popularized Jazz
• Jazz clubs allowed musicians to play

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• Louis Armstrong
• Duke Ellington
• Benny Goodman
• Charleston became popular

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Culture of the Roaring 20s
Radio KDKA Pittsburgh GE, Westinghouse, RCA form
NBC
Silent Movies Charlie Chaplin Talkies The Jazz
Singer Starring Al Jolson Mary
Pickford Americas Sweetheart
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• Jazz sprung Off shoots
• George Gershwin
• Rhapsody in Blue
• Combination of symphonic and jazz

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Mass Entertainment

• Bigger Paychecks/more free time
• RADIO
• 800 stations by 1929
• Broadcast church services,news,music, sporting
  events
• advertising

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MOVIES

• Silent Film,dramas, westerns
• Showed changes in morality, sexuality

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SPORTS

• Professional, college level
• Football Baseball
• Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey

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Celebrities
Babe Ruth Ty Cobb
Charles Lindbergh The Spirit of St. Louis
Jack Dempsey
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Divisions in American Society

• Farm Crisis
• Migration to city- fewer farmers needed
• 1900- 42 of America on Farms
• 1920 25 on Farms

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Farm Depression

• Over-production
• Mortgage payments
• ½ million lost farms
• McNary-Haugen Bill (Govt. buys surplus and
  resells abroad)

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Agriculture

• the 1920s a hard time for agriculture
• natural disasters and diseases
• foreign markets shrink
• increased production lowers prices
• as a result, farmers have difficulty paying off
  loans and mortgages

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Automobiles

• biggest impact on U.S. life and culture
• traffic jams and parking problems
• accidental traffic deaths rise sharply (as many
  as 26,000 per year)
• changes in family life--people get away form home
  more often, automobile comes into the household

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• 1920's great changes for women...
• 1920 - 19th Amendment
• more women worked outside the home
• women went to college
• characterized by the FLAPPER/ "new woman"
• (bobbed hair, short dresses, smoked in public...)