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Chapter 22: The New Era. Section 3: A Conflict of Culture. Prohibition. After the sale and production of alcohol was ceased in January 1920, it was clear that it wasn’t working too well.
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Chapter 22: The New Era Section 3: A Conflict of Culture
Prohibition • After the sale and production of alcohol was ceased in January 1920, it was clear that it wasn’t working too well. • The government hired only 1500 agents to enforce the law, and in many places they didn’t have any help from the local police. • It became incredibly easy to acquire illegal alcohol. • In Chicago, Al Capone built a criminal empire based largely on illegal alcohol. It was guarded by 1000 gunman. Many regions produced gangsters • Protestant Americans still supported Prohibition. • After challenging the “drys,” the eighteenth amendment was repealed.
Nativism and the Klan • Immigration was a huge problem to society. • They passed the National Origins Act of 1924, which strengthened the law of 1921. • Immigration limits kept getting lower over the years. • This natvism helped instigate the Ku Klux Klan. • After WWI, all the KKK’s grew larger. • The Klans were very brutal to Catholics, Jews, and blacks • Klans burned crosses as a sense of excitement and cohesion.
Religious Fundamentalism • American Presbyterians were divided on their beliefs. • Modernists, mostly urban middle class people who had attempted to adapt religion to the realities of society. • Traditional Faith- Fundamentalists tried to reinforce the widely accepted “American way of life,” and wanted the Bible to be followed literally. • Fundamentalists challenged the theory of evolution • John T. Scopes spoke out against the Fundamentalists in Tennessee, and was arrested for it.
The Democrats’ Ordeal • The Democratic Party suffered during the 1920’s as a result of tensions between its urban and rural actions • The Democrats were a more diverse coalition of interest groups, linked to the party by local tradition. • In 1924, at the Democratic National convention in New York the tension started when the party’s urban wing attempted to win approval for the repeal of prohibition and a denunciation of the Klan. • A deadlock in the balloting for a presidential candidate was damaging to the party • In 1928, a similar quarrel plagued the party because of wide spread Anti-Catholic sentiment.