Chapters 23 & 24

1. Chapters 23 & 24 US History – UEH- ISB

2. Booming Business, Ailing Agriculture: • After a depression from 1920-22; Business did well because of cars (Henry Ford competed with GM) • Used factories/material sources in foreign countries, which raised tariffs (Fordney-McCumber & Smoot-Hawley) • Workers in the North made 47¢… South made 28¢. Caused factories to move south!!

3. New Modes of Producing, Managing, and Selling: • Routine, assembly-lines (Fordism), business consolidation, and management structures (different work divisions w/ managers) increased productivity • Ads used celebrity endorsements, promises of success, aroused desires that capitalism fixed… perfectionism • Your Money’s Worth by Chase and Schlink tested advertisers’ claims and reported results

4. Women in the New Economic Era: • Weakening of the labor union increased wage discrimination; women took unskilled jobs, some worked in offices • More women went to college—“women’s professions” like teaching, nursing, librarians, and clerical jobs

5. Struggling Labor Unions in a Business Age: • Unions declined because wages rose, and older businesses that required unions (railroads, printing) weren’t popular • Management hostility (Ford/violence, Textile Strike in NC got shot). Unions were smeared as Communistic • Treated workers well to avoid unions, (cafeterias, reduced price stocks), which was called welfare capitalism

6. Politics in a Decade of Change: • Warren G. Harding won 1920; picked Charles Evans Hughes (state), Andrew Mellon (treasury), Hoover (commerce), Harry Daugherty (attorney gen.), Albert Fall (sec. of Interior), & Charles Forbes (Veterans’ Bureau) • Daugherty appointed Fall, a draft dodger, to his position; Forbes stole Veterans’ Bureau funds and fled • Fall gave Navy oil reserves, (in Teapot Dome, WY), to oil companies for $400,000 bribe—called Teapot Dome Scandal • Harding died in 1923 and Calvin Coolidge aka. Silent Cal took over

7. Republican Policy Making in a Probusiness Era • Coolidge’s Presidency: • Mellon’s “trickle down theory”—tax cuts for the rich would encourage investments • Supreme Court under William Taft ended a law passed in 1919 that banned child labor • Great Mississippi Flood of 1927—no federal aid against natural disasters, but signed law that would build levees • Vetoed McNary-Haugen Bill twice—gov. would buy extra crops, sell in foreign countries

8. Independent Internationalism: • Harding started the Washington Naval Arms Conference to end Japan/America/England arms race: Halted ship construction for a decade, Japan/America promised to respect each others’ Pacific lands • Kellogg Briand Pact renounced aggression/outlawed war. America used diplomacy to protect economy (debts, tariff)

9. Progressive Stirrings, Democratic Party Divisions: • William McAdoo (South)/Alfred Smith (cities, immigrants) divided the Democrats in 1924; Picked John Davis • Socialists/AFL picked La Follette; Coolidge (high tariff, low tax/spending) for Repubs. Repubs won in landslide

10. Women and Politics in the 1920’s- A Dream Deferred: • Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 funded rural prenatal/baby care centers run by public-health nurses • 19th Amendment had little short-term impact: Women’s rights advocates came from all different parties

11. Cities, Cars, Consumer Goods: • America officially became a majority urban in 1920; city life/labor-saving appliances eased housework for women • Cars brought families both together (vacations) and apart. Women saw cars as their freedom/empowerment

12. Soaring Energy Consumption and a Threatened Environment: • Demand caused boom in Texas/Oklahoma oil; allowed wilderness to become more accessible. Hoover called a Conference on outdoor recreation to balance the preservation with the leisure/vacation culture

13. Mass-Produced Entertainment: • Magazines like Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest; Book-of-the-month clubs, book sales at dept. stores • Radio era began in 1920; General Electric, Westinghouse, Radio Corp. of America founded NBC in 1926 • Movies became fancier and more censored/policed: Will Hayes enforced a code of movie standards • The Jazz Singer: 1st to have sound. Steamboat Willy: Mickey Mouse. Created a dream world, unrealistic

14. Celebrity Culture: • Celebrities incl. Miss Americas, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Charles Lindbergh (flew across Atlantic in The Spirit of St. Louis) • They offered ideals/goals to look up to; people escaped the everyday be projecting hopes/fears onto celebrities

15. The Jazz Age and Postwar Crisis of Values: • Young people became more liberated by dancing, drinking, smoking, partying, having sex freely • For women, skirts got shorter, makeup was allowed, formal dress like corsets faded away • Flappers rejected female stereotypes: wild, independent. Fitzgerald’s The Side of Paradise talked about the Jazz Age

16. Immigration Restriction: • The National Origins Act of 1924 (Coolidge) restricted immigration to the amount of 2% of America’s native borns • In Ozawa v. US, the court rejected citizenship request from a Japanese student at U. of Cal. Upheld a law that limited the rights of Japanese immigrants to own farmland. Ruled that Caucasians were only from Western Europe

17. Needed Workers/Unwelcome Aliens—Hispanic Newcomers: • Origins act did not ban Canadian/Latin American immigration, which soared. Worked in low-paid migratory jobs • Mexicans formed communities and local support networks, incl. the League of United Latin-American Citizens • Immigrants had to take literacy tests; made illegal immigration a criminal offence in 1929

18. Nativism, Antiradicalism, and the Sacco-Vanzetti Case: • In the Sacco-Vanzetti case, robbers killed two employees and robbed them at a shoe factory. Jury found two Italian immigrants guilty, and were given the death penalty. They were anarchists (tainted/biased trial, lack of evidence)

19. Fundamentalism and the Scopes Trial: • New science (evolution) and varying Protestant vs. Evangelical views started Fundamentalism (Bible’s literal truth) • Textbooks/schools were censored. Movement was led by William Jennings Bryan • The Civil Liberties union said it would protect any teacher that went against censoring laws. John Scopes of Tennessee did & was arrested (defended by Clarence Darrow). He was found guilty

20. The Ku Klux Klan: • Against all blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. Had over 5 million members!! Appealed to white, low classes • Used lynching, murder, threats, political corruption. Ended when Grand Dragon Stephenson raped his secretary, went to jail, and said details about the Klan

21. Herbert Hoover’s Social Thought: • “The Great Engineer” was a Quaker who wrote American Individualism. Believed in volunteering, business cooperation, welfare capitalism, tolerance, conservation • Frowned upon cutthroat capitalistic competition and greed

22. The Great Depression

23. Black Thursday and the Onset of the Depression: • The Depression was caused by: • Margin buying—buying stocks with cash borrowed from a broker, using other stocks as collateral • Depressed agriculture • Reduced purchasing power—overproduction • Monetarists say the Fed. Reserve increased rates and tightened loan policies, reducing available money for investment • European depression hurt American exports

24. The Hundred Days: • Between March-June 1933, many recovery laws and measures were initiated, including: • Emergency Banking - Managed failed banks, tightened policies, more government oversight • Unemployment Relief - Created Civilian Conservation Corps to create public works jobs • Agricultural Adjustment - Created Agricultural Adjustment Admin. to raise income by cutting production • Federal Emergency Relief - Set aside $500 mil. for state/local relief agencies by F.E.R.A (led by Harry Hopkins) • Tennessee Valley Authority - Created TVA to make dams on Tennessee River for power, flood control, recreation • Federal Securities - Investors must get information related to their stocks, register trading with FTC • Home owners’ Refinancing - Gave $200 mil. to Homeowners’ Loan Corp. to refinance mortgages for nonfarmers • Farm Credit - Allowed farmers to refinance mortgages and get loans • Banking Act/1933 - Fed. Deposit Insurance—ensured bank deposits up to $5000 • National Industrial Recovery - Created NRA to promote recovery (fair competition); gave money for public works (led by Ickes)

25. Problems and Controversies Plague the Early New Deal: • Two years later, National Recovery Admin. declared unconstitutional: gave president regulatory powers of Congress and it regulated interstate commerce • The AAA helped some, but not very poor farmers: Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union,a Socialist organization, was created

26. 1934-1935, Challenges From Right and Left: • Roosevelt was all chill about criticism and started radio “fireside chats” to inform and talk to citizens • Conservatives called the new deal Socialist; some Dems said it didn’t go far enough and should not aid business • Huey Long of Louisiana wrote My 1st Days in the White House—raise taxes for wealthy a ton to benefit everyone

27. The Social Security Act of 1935, End of the 2nd New Deal: • Mixed fed/state system of workers’ pensions, aid for industrial accidents, unemployed, disabled, single mothers • Paid for by employers and workers (money from paychecks); didn’t end up really helping farmers, self-employed

28. Final Measures, Growing Opposition: • Farm Security Administration gave loans to poor farmers and offered shelters, healthcare… and photographers • Fair Labor Standards Act banned child labor, set national minimum wage and a 40-hour max. work week • Helped all farmers short-term, but small farmers received no long-term help • House Un-American Activities Committee, made of Repubs, investigated the New Deal agencies for Communism

29. WPA Arts Funding • Allowed artists to work during Depression instead of resorting to menial labor • Produced public art on a large scale, across the country • Some of the most important mid-century modernists would be kept working by the program • Berenice Abbott would capture New York

30. The Depression’s Psychological and Social Impact: • Caused “unemployment shock”—jobs below level of training, walking the streets, worry/anxiety • Women had higher unemployment; those working/married were “stealing jobs” from men, unequal wages • Birth rate and marriage fell, birth control and divorce increased. Kids stayed in school, savings disappeared

31. Industrial Workers Unionize: • Lewis (Mine workers) and Hillman (Clothing) started the Committee for Industrial Organization, welcomed all • US Steel strike resulted in improved wages/conditions; General Motors strikers used “sit down” technique to gain union recognition, creating the United Automobiles Workers. • CIO broke with AFL to become Congress of Industrial Organizations: “Little Steel” strikes resulted in 4 police killings • National Guard was used in Southern textile strikes… most still remained outside of unions

32. Black and Hispanic Americans Resist Racism and Exploitation: • 5/8 of the Black alleged rapists called “Scottsboro boys” were convicted after being denied lawyers & a diverse/unbiased jury • NAACP boycotts of discriminatory shops in Harlem led to riots; Communists lobbied for black support • Mexican-borns poured into neighborhoods (Barrios) after dust bowl- encouraged to move/go to Mexico by gov • Mexican-Americans joined farmer/growers’ unions—during cotton pickers’ union, 2 were killed, but they won higher wages