The Roaring Twenties: Decade of Change and Contrasts

1. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era

2. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Josephine Baker (1906-1975) • 1920s as a New Era • Retreat from Reform? A Jazz Age? • Decade of Frivolity: Historians, writers, and Hollywood films have portrayed the 1920s in the U.S. as a decade of affluence, conservatism, and the emergence of a new urban, industrialized, consumer-oriented society and popular culture, including jazz, radio, film. But is this the full story? • Becoming Modern?: Some historians argue that the 1920s marked the beginnings of the U.S. becoming a real modern nation. Yet large there was considerable resistance to these changes, as evidenced by the rise of a new Ku Klux Klan and resistance to the ideas of Darwin.

3. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Economy • Technology, Organization, and Economic Growth • Economic Growth: Except for a brief recession in 1923, the 1920s was mostly a decade of enormous growth. The industrial output of the U.S. increased 60 percent. Unemployment dropped to 1.8 percent in 1926. • Technology as a Source of Growth: Assembly lines and other technological innovations made production boom. Using electricity a power source in factories instead of coal was partly responsible for this increase, as was a greater supply of well educated engineers. • Rise of the Automobile Industry: This industry made huge contributions to the American economy by itself, but also had a huge ripple effect: steel, rubber, glass, and tool companies, oil corporations, and road construction. Increased mobility also led to a greater demand for suburban housing, creating a boon for the construction industry.

4. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era 1925 Pierce-Arrow Touring Car, made in Buffalo, New York Advertisement for a 1929 Willys-Knight Six, a car made by a company in Toledo, Ohio,

5. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Economy • Technology, Organization, and Economic Growth • Radio: The transmission of speech and music became possible with the discovery of modulation by Canadian-born scientist Reginald Fessenden. The first commercially licensed radio station was KDKA in Pittsburgh in 1920, and soon thereafter demand for vacuum-tube radio sets began to take off. By 1925, there were two millions sets in American homes, and in 1926, the first national broadcasting network was created, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). 1926 Advertisement for an Atwater Kent Radio

6. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Economy • Technology, Organization, and Economic Growth • Commercial Aviation: Planes were first used in a systematic way to deliver mail, but remained more of a curiosity. The development of radial engines and pressurized cabins led the way for more widespread commercial passenger service beginning in the 1930s. The first regularly international scheduled passenger service was by Pan Am between Key West and Havana in 1928. • Telephones Proliferate: By the late 1930s, there were roughly 25 million in the U.S., or one for every six people. • Genetic Research: Scientist Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) of Columbia University developed a better understanding of how genes were transmitted through experiments with fruit flies. • Growing Industrial Consolidation: Large sectors of American businesses continued their drive toward consolidation, especially those that relied on large-scale mass production like steel and automobiles. Attempts were made to avoid overproduction, which had caused recessions in 1893, 1907, and 1920.

7. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era The aviation industry got a significant boost from the first non-stop solo Atlantic crossing by Charles Lindbergh (1902 - 1974) from Long Island to Paris on May 21-22, 1927. Early Pan Am flight service between Key West and Havana, 1928

8. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Economy • Workers in an Age of Capital • Inequality of Wealth: One major study said the two-thirds of Americans lived at a “minimum comfort level,” while half of that number were at or below “subsistence and poverty.” By 1930, the average annual take-home pay for workers was $1,500, which was $300 less than what was considered a minimum for a marginally comfortable standard of living. • Welfare Capitalism: Some companies did share some of the prosperity with their workers. Henry For raised wages and instituted paid vacations. Corporations also organized “company unions” that workers could use to communicate grievances. But workers had little control of their own fate, and all of these benefits disappeared when prosperity collapsed by the end of 1929. In any case, firms offering such benefits were a very small percentage of all employers.

9. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Economy • Workers in an Age of Capital • Bleak Time for Labor: In the 1920s, unions themselves were weak and conservative, failing to meet the challenges of the new economy. William Green (1873-1952), the leader of the AFL after the death of Samuel Gompers in 1924, remained wedded to the old-fashion idea of the craft union, paying scant attention to the growing class of unskilled industrial laborers. • “American Plan”: This was a euphemistic phrase for union-busting in the 1920s. Corporations lobbied for “open shops,” meaning no collective bargaining power for unions. This campaign led to a decrease in union membership, from 5 million in 1920 to 3 million in 1929.

10. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Economy • Women and Minorities in the Workforce • Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: African Americans who had migrated to industrial areas were generally not allowed entry into craft unions and skilled trades, so most worked as janitors, dishwashers, and other “unskilled” trades in which the AFL was uninterested. The first African American union to receive a charter from the AFL, was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which despite the resistance of the Pullman Company, was founded in 1915 with A. Philip Randolph (1889 – 1979) as its first president. A. Philip Randolph

11. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Members of the Fresno Nissei baseball team pose with Babe Ruth ad Lou Gehrig (1927) • The New Economy • Women and Minorities • in the Workforce • Asian Immigration in the West: In the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese replaced the Chinese as a major source of menial labor. Many “Issei” (immigrants) and “Nissei” (second generation) became economically successful through small businesses or truck farms. California passed discriminatory laws in 1913 and 1920 against land ownership. Filipinos were also greeted with hostility, with riots against them beginning in 1929. • Rising Mexican Immigration: Another major source of unskilled labor in California and the Southwest was Mexican immigrants. Nearly 500,000 entered the U.S. in the 1920s and settled mostly in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Large barrios grew in cities like Los Angeles, El Paso, San Antonio, Denver, and other urban centers.

12. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Economy • Agricultural Technology and the Plight of the Farmer • Mechanization: The number of tractors quadrupled during the 1920s as they converted from steam to internal combustion engines, helping to open 35 million new acres of land. More sophisticated combines and harvesters allowed for more to be harvested with less workers. • Agricultural Science: Pioneering of new genetic hybrid crops and the new chemical fertilizers and pesticides began in the 1920s, although did not enter into widespread use until the 1930s. • Declining Food Prices: Demand did not keep up with the explosion in production, leading to a steep decline in prices for crops. More than 3 million people left agricultural work during the decade, with many selling off small farms to big company farms. • McNary-Haugen Bill: This bill demanded federal subsidies and purchases to maintain “parity” for farmers: that farmers would at least make back the cost of production. Coolidge vetoed it in 1926 and 1928.

13. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Culture • Consumerism and Communications • Growing Consumer Culture: The United States emerged as a full-fledged consumer society in the 1920s. Middle-class people began to purchase refrigerators, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners. People wore wristwatches and smoked cigarettes. Women bought mass-produced fashions and cosmetics. • Advertising Industry: The modern advertising industry had its genesis in the 1920s. Ad men no longer sought to sell a product on its own virtues, but began to sell an entire lifestyle associated with the products. Ads would also make people feel insecure about an issue a product supposedly addressed. • Bruce Barton (1886-1967): One of the founders of the modern advertising industry, he wrote a book called The Man Nobody Knows, which portrayed Jesus Christ as a “super salesman,” arguing that Jesus wanted people to live fulfilling lives here and now—a message in tune with the new consumerism.

14. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era 1928 magazine ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes Vogue magazine cover, March 1929 1929 magazine ad for a GE “monitor top” refrigerator

15. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927) • The New Culture • Consumerism and Communications • National Media Market: Many newspapers were absorbed into national chains, while mass-circulation magazines reached national audiences. • Movies: Hollywood became an even more significant and influential industry during the 1920s. Over 100 million people saw movies in 1930 compared to 40 million in 1922. The first feature-length “talkie” debuted in 1927, The Jazz Singer, featuring Al Jolson (1886-1950) in blackface. The Motion Picture Association was founded in 1922 to impose standards on content and improve the image of the industry (the current ratings system did not emerge until 1968). • Birth of Commercial Radio: In 1920, KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first commercial radio station on the air. In 1927, the first national broadcasting netwwork, NBC, was formed, as was the federal regulatory commission that would later be known as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

16. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Culture • Psychology and Psychiatry • Freud and Jung: Investigating the subconscious mind through as a source of mental problems through “talk therapy”/psychoanalysis became more widespread as the theories of Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) and Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) gained wider acceptance. • Behavioralism: John B. Watson (1878-1958), a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, countered the Freudian focus on the subconscious by treating the behaviors/symptoms of mental illness, and had significant success in treating alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. He emphasized “nurture” in the nature vs. nurture debate. • Opportunities for Women: Women with medical training often found it easier to establish themselves in psychiatry compared to more male-dominated fields of medicine. John B. Watson (1878-1958)

17. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Culture • Women in the New Era • “New Professional Women”: College-educated women were not as rare as they had been in the late 19th century, and many entered the professions. But most working women remained in low-skill, working-class positions, and there remained a strong cultural pressure for middle-class women to stay at home and raise children. • Motherhood Redefined: Behavioralist John B. Watson challenged the idea that women had a natural maternal instinct, and that women needed to rely on advice of experts to help raise children.

18. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Culture • Women in the New Era • Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879 - 1966): This pioneer of the American birth control movement said her concern came from her work as a visiting nurse in the immigrant slums of the Lower East Side. She believed large families were a cause of poverty, and even supported many aspects of the controversial eugenics movement. Sanger started publishing The Woman Rebel in 1914, which coined the term “birth control” and proclaimed that every woman should be “the absolute mistress of her own body.” She founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which changed its name to Planned Parenthood in 1942. Margaret Sanger

19. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Silent movie star Louise Brooks (1906-1985), who is often seen as epitomizing the flapper • The New Culture • Women in the New Era • “Flappers”: Many longtime women’s reformers were dismayed by single young women who did not see it as necessary to maintain rigid, Victorian female “respectability,” but who enjoyed drinking, smoking, dancing, and seductive clothes and make-up. The distinct style of dress, speech, and hairstyles originated with working-class and lower-middle-class women, but came to be copied by more affluent women. • Sheppard-Towner Act: Despite the 19th Amendment, women made few further political gains in the 1920s. One was the 1921 Sheppard-Towner Act, which provided federal funds to states for pre-natal and child health-care, but Congress ended the program in 1929.

20. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Depiction of the popular idea of the flapper by radical cartoonist, Art Young (1866-1943)

21. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” -- H.L. Mencken • The New Culture • Writers and Artists • Modern Society Critiqued: The decade proved to be a spectacular for American literary production. Many writers took on a very critical edge toward modern society, collectively known as the “debunkers.” Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) savaged American middle-class strivers in a trilogy of novels: Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), and Arrowsmith (1925). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) depicted the emptiness of the American worship of wealth and material success. • H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880-1956): Perhaps the foremost “debunker” was this irascible Baltimore journalist, who took pleasure in ridiculing nearly every aspect of American life, but especially politics and religion.

22. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • The New Culture • Writers and Artists • “Harlem Renaissance”: A concentration of artists, musicians, and writers created a flourishing cultural life in 1920s Harlem. • The New Negro (1926): This anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays edited by Alain Locke included works from writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay. • Langston Hughes (1902-1967): Published his first collection of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926. • Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974): Young Ellington left a successful career in Washington D.C. to come to Harlem in the early 1920s. By 1927, his orchestra became the house band at the Cotton Club. • Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960): This writer and anthropologist came to New York in 1925 to study at Barnard College, and became involved with many of the young leading Harlem Renaissance writers, creating the literary magazine, Fire!! with Langston Hughes and others in 1926.

23. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Duke Ellington Claude McKay Blues by Archibald Motley (1929) Zora Neale Hurston Langston Hughes

24. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • A Conflict of Cultures • Prohibition • Failure of Prohibition: When the 18th Amendment went into effect in Jan. 17, 1920, it had the support of the most of the middle class and most people who identified as progressives. But it quickly became clear it was a failure as it became almost as easy to get alcohol as it had been when it was legal. What was worse was that the business of distributing and sell alcohol had now become the monopoly of organized crime rather than legitimate businessmen. • “Wets” versus “Drys”: Many middle-class progressives who initially supported prohibition became dismayed, however, many rural Protestants continued to support it, seeing drinking as associated with the modern city and Catholic immigrants. The “Wets” increasingly gained support, but were not able to get the 18th Amendment repealed until 1933, largely due to the woes of the Great Depression, with the 21st Amendment’s ratification.

25. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • A Conflict of Cultures • Nativism and the Klan • Anti-Immigrations Sentiments: Nativism • had been a consistent part of nineteenth- • century politics, but calls to limit • immigration began to intensify in the late • 19th and early 20th century. Immigration’s associations with radical politics became stronger during the war. • National Origins Act of 1924: In 1921, Congress passed an emergency quota system on immigration that limited the amount of immigrants from any one national group to 3 percent of its population in the U.S. in 1910, cutting immigration from an 800,000 annual average to 300,000. Nativists pushed further, getting the 1924 National Origins Act passed. This act lowered the quota to 2 percent for Europeans and based the quotas on the 1890 census, not the 1910 one. In addition, it stopped all East Asian immigration.

26. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Klan March on D.C. in 1925 • A Conflict of Cultures • Nativism and the Klan • Rise of the New Klan: The first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan had been killed off in the 1870s. But in 1915, a group of white southerners gathered in Stone Mountain, Georgia, to re-form the Klan. D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, which depicted the old Klan in a romantic and positive light,helped to bolster membership. • New Focus: The new Klan was at first focused on intimidating blacks, but after World War I, it shifted more of its focus on Catholics, Jews, and foreigners. This new Klan had success in cultivating members in industrial cities of the Midwest and the West. In 1924, it peaked at a reported 4 million members, with the largest concentration being in Indiana. A series of leadership scandals in 1925 started a long, slow decline influence.

27. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era John T. Scopes • A Conflict of Cultures • Religious Fundamentalism • Fundamentalists and Modernists: The place of religion in American society was hotly debated in the 1920s. Protestants were divided among modernist, middle-class urbanites, and fundamentalist, rural people who believed the Bible should be interpreted in a literal sense. This was particularly true with the story of Genesis in the Bible, which contradicted Darwin’s theories. • Scopes Trial: In March 1925, the Tennessee legislature passed a law outlawing the teaching in public schools of any theory that contradicted divine creation of humanity as told in Genesis. Offered free counsel by the ACLU (founded in 1920). John T. Scopes (1900-1970), a 24-year-old biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, agreed to violate the law. As a defender of fundamentalism, the aging William Jennings Bryan made the prosecution’s case, arguing for biblical literalism. In a surprise move, Clarence Darrow, the progressive lawyer, put Bryan himself on the stand, and made him look foolish on a national radio broadcast. Scopes lost, but the fundamentalist were mocked on a national stage.

28. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Darrow and Bryan during the trial; H.L. Mencken deemed it the “Monkey Trial.”

29. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • A Conflict of Cultures • The Democrats’ Ordeal • Divided Democrats: Republicans were able to dominate national offices in the 1920s due to a deeply divided Democratic party: Southern and rural white Protestants on one side, and urban immigrant Catholics on the other. • Al Smith (1873-1944): Smith, born in the Lower East Side to Irish immigrant parents, served as governor of New York from 1923 to 1928, and symbol of the urban, immigrant-based wing of the Democratic Party. • 1924 Election: Smith was a contender for the Democratic nomination for president in 1924, at which planks to condemn the Klan and to demand the repeal of prohibition were narrowly defeated by the rural wing of the party. William McAdoo, secretary of the treasury under Wilson, was the rural wing’s candidate who also had the Klan’s endorsement. Ultimately a compromise candidate, John W. Davis, was chosen, who was defeated easily by Republican incumbent, Calvin Coolidge. • 1928 Election: Smith secured the Democratic nomination, but largely due to anti-Catholic prejudice, was badly defeated by Republican Herbert Hoover. Al Smith

30. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era Warren G. Harding • Republican Government • Harding and Coolidge • Republican Leadership: Republicans held the presidency from 1921 until 1933. From 1918 to 1931, they controlled both houses of Congress as well. • Warren G. Harding (1865-1923): This undistinguished senator from Ohio was elected to the presidency in 1920; party leaders were intentionally looking for someone who would be conservative in the mold of McKinley and turn away from progressivism and campaign on a “return to normalcy.” Yet he was a small-town man with limited intellectual capacities, and had a penchant for gambling, illegal alcohol, and womanizing. He often seemed overwhelmed by the demands of the office.

31. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • Republican Government • Harding and Coolidge • Teapot Dome Scandal: Harding had elevated some of the party hacks who had been instrumental in making his career into key cabinet positions. One was a New Mexico senator, Albert B. Fall, who was appointed as Secretary of the Interior. Fall and others in the cabinet were engaged in fraud and corruption, with the most spectacular scandal being when it was discovered that the rich naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, had been transferred to the Department of the Interior. Fall “leased” the reserves to two wealthy businessmen, who in turn received a “loan: to ease his financial troubles. Fall was convicted of bribery and spent a year in jail. • Harding’s Death: During extensive trip out West—including the first presidential visit to Alaska—Harding’s health failed, and he died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, of a heart attack.

32. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • Republican Government • Harding and Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933): This laconic, almost puritanical New Englander, was in many ways very different from Harding, but pursued the same conservative, unaggressive position toward the office, and perhaps was even less active as he believed the government should play only a very small role in people’s lives. He had been elected governor of Massachusetts in 1919 and came to national attention for his tough handling of the Boston police strike of 1920. He easily won reelection in 1924 against the divided Democrats’ candidate, John W. Davis. His administration did little, but it was at least free from scandal. He probably would have won renomination in 1928, but chose not to run.

33. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • Republican Government • Government and Business • Business and Government Ties: The close relationship between the federal government and the private sector pioneered during WWI continued in the 1920s. • Sharp Tax Reductions: Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon (1855-1937), an aluminum millionaire and banker, worked to lower taxes on corporate profits, getting Congress to cut them by more than half, and at the same time managed to pay off the federal debt from World War I. • “Associationalism”: The Secretary of the Treasury, Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), was themost high-profile member of the cabinet, who advocated business “associationalism”: the voluntary formation of business associations in various industries to stabilize and self-regulate, preventing the need for government interference. “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.” – Calvin Coolidge, 1925 Andrew Mellon Herbert Hoover

34. Chapter Twenty-Two: The New Era • Republican Government • Government and Business • Herbert Hoover: This former mining executive and promoter of business efficiency had spent a part of his career in China and spoke Mandarin. He easily defeated Al Smith in 1928. But less than a year into his administration, the nation plunged into its most severe and prolonged economic crisis ever, one which he was philosophically ill-equipped to handle. The Election of 1928