Roaring Twenties: Era of Change and Cultural Revolution

1. APUSH: Chapter 22 The “New Era” pp. 615-622 pp. 622-631 pp. 631-637

2. The New Economy The 1920’s: • Peace • Prosperity • Economic expansion

3. Technology and Economic Growth • Manufacturing up 60% • Income up 30% • Technology and industrial expansion → auto industry, radio, commercial aviation, appliances, plastics, telephone • Seeds of future tech → computers and genetics

4. 1920s Convenience: Electric Appliances

5. Radio • Commercial radio broadcasting begins in the 1920’s • Families flocked to buy radios → by 1925 two million homes →end of the decade almost every home

6. Economic Organization • Businesses moving towards nat’l organization and consolidation • Modern administrative systems → divisional organization • Trade associations → use cooperation to reduce competition • Fear of overproduction and desire for stability

7. Labor in the New Era • Industrial workers experience successes and failures in the 20’s • Rising standard of living • Welfare capitalism → paternalistic techniques by employers • Hard times for organized labor

8. Women and Minorities in the Workforce • “Pink-collar” jobs → low paying service jobs for women → secretaries, salesclerks, operators, etc. • AFL didn’t want represent women and minorities • A. Philip Randolph→ African American union and leader of Sleeping Car Porters • Asian and Hispanic unskilled workers in the Southwest

9. The “American Plan” • Strength of the corporations → main reason for absence of union organization • Unions associated with subversion and radicalism • Protecting the open shop → shop in which workers were not required to join a union • The “American Plan” → open shop and union busting

10. Agricultural Technology and the Plight of the Farmer • Mechanized farming → increased production • New hybrid crops • Chemical fertilizers and pesticides • Over production and decline in food prices • “Parity” → price raising scheme • McNary-Haugen Bill → high tariffs and govt buying of surpluses → vetoed by Coolidge twice

11. The New Culture • Increasingly urbanized and consumer-oriented culture • Consumerism → discretionary goods and services • Social impact of the automobile • Henry Ford • Model T • Assembly Line • Mass Production

12. Advertising • Advertising and public relations firms • Lifestyle, glamor and prestige, personal fulfillment and enrichment • The Man Nobody Knows → book presenting Jesus as a “super salesman” • Newspapers and magazines → Reader’s Digest and Time Magazine

14. The Movies and Broadcasting • Hollywood • The “talkies” 1927 • Al Jolson → The Jazz Singer • Fatty Arbuckle • Motion Picture Association • Will Hays → the Hays Code → set standards • Radio → KDKA Pittsburg 1920 → NBC radio network 1927

15. Cinema

16. Modernist Religion • Theological modernists • Liberal Protestantism → Harry Emerson Fosdick → vehicle for “man’s abundant life” • Most people remained faithful to traditional Christianity • Middle class secularization starting

17. Professional Women • Limited opportunities for women

18. Changing Ideas of Motherhood • “Redefinition of the idea of motherhood • “companionate marriages” • Margaret Sanger → birth control movement → founder of Planned Parenthood clinics

19. The “Flapper”: Image and Reality • Rejection of rigid, Victorian ideas of female “respectability” • Women who → smoke, drink, dance, wear seductive clothes and makeup, attend raging parties • Strive for physical and emotional fulfillment → reject repression and inhibition

20. Education and Youth Pressing for Women’s Rights • National Woman’s Party • Equal Rights Amendment – Alice Paul • Shepperd-Towner Act • Increasing role of education in the lives of youths • More people going to school → high school and college • Increasing trade/vocational schools • Emergence of a youth culture → adolescence

21. The Disenchanted • Disenchantment w/the war → disenchantment w/America • Prosperous/consumer driven culture of the 20’s → seen a shallow, vulgar, and meaningless • American writer Gertrude Stein called the writers, artists and intellectuals of the twenties a “Lost Generation”

22. Lost Generation • Ernest Hemingway→ war, bullfights, hunting, fishing, hard living, drinking → ex-patriot in Paris • F. Scott Fitzgerald → the jazz age and the lives of the wealthy

23. The “Harlem Renaissance” → the flowering of African American culture in postwar Harlem • Jazz nightclubs → the Cotton Club • Jazz musicians → Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton • Literature, poetry, and art → Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston

24. Harlem Renaissance

25. A Conflict of Culture • The Jazz Age v. tradition • Modern, secular culture of the 1920’s grew up alongside older, traditional cultures → bitterness and hostility

26. Prohibition • The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act 1920 • The failure of the “noble experiment” • Led to organized crime • Bootlegging • Speakeasies • “wets” versus “drys” • Repealed by 21st Amendment in 1933

28. Gangsters

29. Crime in the 1920s Al Capone By the 1930s organized crime was a huge business even in labor unions and government contracts.

30. Nativism and the Klan • Immigration → linked w/radicalism → restrictionson immigration → the Red Scare • National Origins Act of 1924 → immigration quotas, banned east Asia immigration • Favored northwestern Europeans

32. The New Klan • Original Klan founded during Reconstruction → dies in the 1870’s • The new Klan in the 1920’s → targeted Catholics, Jews, and foreigners • Klan saw itself as defending traditional values • New Klan dies out by World War II

33. The Rebirth of the KKK Anti Foreign Catholic Black Jewish Pacifist Communist Internationalist Anti-Evolutionist Bootlegger Gambling Adultery Birth Control

34. Religious Fundamentalism • Religion becomes a bitter cultural controversy in the 1920’s • Fundamentalists → traditional faith, literal interpretation of the Bible, rejected Darwin and evolution • Evangelism → Billy Sunday • John Scopes → teaching evolution → arrested for breaking Tenn. law → Bryan v. Darrow - Scopes “Monkey Trial” → evolution v. religion

35. The Democrats’ Ordeal • Democrats → tension between urban and rural factions → problems • Bitter conflict at 1924 Dem convention → lose pres. election → Coolidge wins • 1928 election → dems nominate Al Smith, first Catholic candidate → loses to the Republican Herbert Hoover

36. Republican Government → the return of isolationism and laissez faire 1920, 1924, 1928 → the Republicans control the presidency and the Congress

37. Harding • Warren G. Harding→ elected in 1920 → nobody senator from Ohio • Limited intellect → preferred gambling, booze, and women • “Ohio Gang” → Harding’s cronies and buddies are given positions in govt → leads to scandal and corruption • Teapot Dome→ corruption scandal involving oil reserves in Wyoming • Albert Fall → Harding’s Secretary of the Interior → key figure in the Teapot Dome scandal • Harding dies in office before the scandals become public

38. The Ohio Gang Teapot Dome Scandal 1923 Death of Harding

39. Calvin Coolidge • “Silent Cal” → personally the opposite of Harding • Serious, silent, puritanical • Govt should interfere as little as possible in the life of the nation • “The business of America is business.” • In a story recounted by First Lady Grace Coolidge, a young woman once sat next to the President at a dinner party. She told him that she made a bet she could get him to have a conversation of three words or more. According to the First Lady, Coolidge, without even looking at the young woman, quietly responded, “You lose.”

40. Government and Business • Andrew Mellon → Secretary of the Treasury → pro-business, tax cuts, budget cuts • Hoover’s “Associationalism” → Commerce Secretary • Election of 1928 → Hoover easily defeats Democratic candidate Al Smith • Less than a year later the Great Depression hits → the end of the “Roaring Twenties”