Chapter 25: The Roaring Twenties, 1919–1929

The Roaring Twenties, 1919–1929

Depression of 1920-1921

A recession following WW1 caused by the return of soldiers into the workforce and reduction in jobs(factories no longer need to produce war supplies)

President Warren Harding, a Republican, took office in 1921.

President Warren Harding

Put able, pro-business men in top Cabinet positions and put his friends in other Cabinet positions

This resulted in a series of scandals which damaged the Republican party, the most series of which was the Teapot Dome Scandal. Two oil executives bribed Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall for secret leases of government land in California and at Teapot Dome in Wyoming.

President Calvin Coolidge set out to repair the damage that these scandals caused to the Republicans.

President Calvin Coolidge

Believed that prosperity for all Americans depended on business prosperity

Kept high tariffs, and cut regulations on business, contributing to a time of economic growth

Coolidge Prosperity

The postwar recession ended as factories switched to consumer goods

Production increased, incomes rose, consumers bought the new products being made(refrigerators, radios, phonographs)

Advertising increased

Businesses began to allow installment buying to attract more buyers. This increased demand for goods but consumer debt rose.

• Buyers make a small down payment and paid an installation each month until they paid the full price plus interest.

Soaring Stock Market

The economic boom gave the stock market a boost. Many people began investing in stock and margin buying.

• Corporations sold stocks, or shares of ownership, to investors. Investors made or lost money depending upon whether the price of the shares went up or down.

• Many people bought stocks on margin. With this method, an investor bought a stock for a small down payment, held the stock until the price rose, and then sold it at a profit. Margin buying worked as long as stock prices rose.

Bull markets are periods of increased stock trading and rising stock prices.

By 1928 and 1929, a few experts were warning that the bull market could not last forever.

World Affairs in the 1920s

The US was the world’s leading economic power. It returned to its prewar isolationism and refused to join the League of Nations.

In Latin America, trade and investment increased during and after World War I. The United States sometimes intervened to protect economic interests.

In the Soviet Union, V.I. Lenin created the first communist state. Americans disliked communism but Congress still voted $20 million in aid when famine threatened Russia in 1921.

Peace Efforts after the WW1

The arms race in Europe helped cause WW1, so many in the 1920s favored disarmament(reduction of armed forces and war weapons).

At the Washington Conference (1921), the US, Britain and Japan agreed to limit its navies.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) between the US and 61 other nations was a treaty that outlawed war but didn’t set up any means of keeping the peace.

Prohibition (1929)

A ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor anywhere in the United States

Bootleggers smuggled liquor from Canada and the Caribbean. Speakeasies, illegal bars, opened in nearly every city and town.

Organized crime increased and became big business. Professional criminals provided a steady supply of liquor. Gangsters forced speakeasy owners to buy their liquor and used profits to bribe police, public officials, and judges.

The Prohibition reduced drinking but failed to stop it, and undermined respect for the law. In 1933, the states ratified the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment.

Women Voters

The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote.

Carrie Chapman Catt set up the League of Women Voters (1920), which educates voters and and worked for other rights, such as the right of women to serve on juries.

In 1924, Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming and Miriam A. Ferguson of Texas became the nation’s first women governors.

Women in Puerto Rico also crusaded for their right to vote and succeeded in 1929.

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

Proposed by Alice Paul, it would prevent equal rights from being denied on account of sex.

Many people feared that it went too far and might cause women to lose some legal protections. The amendment passed but was never ratified.

Working Women

Although some women had to leave their wartime jobs after the war, many stayed in the workforce.

Poor and working-class women had long worked outside the home as factory workers and maids. In the 1920s, middle-class women also began to work outside of home as teachers, typists, secretaries, and clerks.

Homelife also changed: women began to buy ready-made clothes rather than sew for the family. New electric appliances made housework easier but also encouraged women to spend more time on housework.

Automobile Boom

Henry Ford made auto factories more efficient, lowering auto prices and allowing the middle-class and poor to buy cars.

Car sales spurred the growth of other industries, like steel, tires, paint, and oil. States and towns paved roads and built highways.

Gas stations, garages, car dealers, motels, and roadside restaurants sprang up across the country.

Many city dwellers moved to the suburbs. Women also drove, breaking down another barrier that separated men and women.

Cars brought rural people closer to towns, shops, and movies. By making travel easier, the automobile helped people from different parts of the country learn about one another, helping to create a new national mass culture.

New Forms of Entertainment

Rising wages and labor-saving appliances gave families more money to spend and more leisure time. Pop culture changed.

Radio and the movie industry became popular in the 1920s. The first radio station, KDKA, started broadcasting in Pittsburgh in 1920. Hollywood became the movie capital of the world. Movies contributed to the new mass culture.

Fads and Fashions in the 1920s

A fad is an activity or fashion that is taken up with great passion for a short time.

• Flagpole sitting, marathon dances, crossword puzzles, mah-jongg, dance crazes (ex. Charleston, the most popular new dance)

Flappers, a few young women rebelling against traditional ways through the way they dressed and behaved, set the style and symbolized a new sense of freedom.

Created in New Orleans, Jazz, recognized as an original art form developed by African Americans, is considered one of the most important cultural contributions of the US today.

The New Writers

Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby. Sinclair Lewis won the Literature Nobel Prize wrote Gibbit and Main Street. Edna St. Vincent Millay expressed the frantic pace of the 1920s in her poems. Eugene O’Neill wrote plays that revolutionized American theater.

Some writers who were horrified by World War I criticized Americans for carrying too much about money and entertainment and became expatriates, moving to other countries because they were so unhappy with life in the US.

Harlem Renaissance (The New Negro Movement)

A rebirth of African American culture, partially caused by the Great Migration where millions of African Americans moved to northern cities for jobs and to escape violence, poverty and discrimination in the Jim Crow South

Young black writers celebrated their heritage and protested prejudice and racism.

Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston

The Mass Culture of the 1920s

8 Things You Probably Will Never Use On The Test

Paying on credit

Jazz

Advertisements

Cars

Fads

Radios

Movies

Prohibition

Beneath the Prosperity

The economy was in trouble because workers were losing jobs and demand for American farm products dropped.

• Textile workers lost out when skirts became shorter. Coal miners lost out as oil replaced coal. Railroad workers lost jobs as cars and trucks replaced railroads.

• Farmers were hit hardest. After the war, European farmers were again able to produce enough for Europe’s needs.

Labor unions were hurt as wages had not kept up to prices after the war and strikes began to turn the public against labor. In the late 1920s, judges limited the rights of unions. Employers created company unions, labor organizations that were controlled by management.

The Red Scare

3 Causes

A period of paranoia and fear towards foreigners, communists and anarchists.

• During the war, Americans had to keep watch for enemy spies and sabotage.

• Communist leaders called on workers everywhere to overthrow their government. Communism also undermined the capitalist system and was associated with atheism(the US was built on Christianity).

• One anarchist group plotted to kill well-known Americans. Many anarchists were foreign-born, so people began to call for action against foreigners.

The government took action against anarchists and Communists, or “Reds”, and deported many foreigners.

Anger against foreigners led to a new movement of nativism to limit immigration. Workers feared immigrants would force wages down.

In 1921 Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act.

Emergency Quota Act (1921)

Set up a quota system that allowed only a certain number of people from each country to enter the United States

The system favored immigrants from Northern Europe. Congress passed laws limiting immigration from Eastern Europe and Japanese immigrants were denied entry.

There were two exceptions: Mexicans were not included in the quota system because farm and factory workers were needed in the Southwest. When the Jones Act of 1917 made Puerto Ricans American citizens, poverty in Puerto Rico led Puerto Ricans to migrate to the mainland.

The Scopes Trial (The Monkey Trial)

Revealed a clash between old and new values

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was condemned by the church and the teaching of it was banned in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. John Scopes, a biology teacher in Tennessee, was tried for teaching evolution, convicted and fined.

The Ku Klux Klan

A rebirth of the KKK revealed a fear of change.

The old KKK used terror to keep African Americans from voting. The new Klan aimed to preserve the United States for white, native-born Protestants and waged a campaign against African Americans and immigrants, especially Catholics and Jews. The Klan worked to limit immigration.

When scandals showed that Klan leaders had stolen money from members, Klan membership dropped sharply.

African Americans and Racism

African Americans had hoped that their service during World War I would weaken racism at home but returning soldiers still faced segregation in the South and racial prejudice in the North.

Largely black neighborhoods developed in northern cities. In some northern cities, race riots broke out.

African Americans looked for new ways to cope with racism. Marcus Garvey started the first widespread black nationalist movement in the United States. He organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association to promote unity and pride among African Americans. He urged African Americans to seek their roots in Africa.

Election of 1928

Republicans had led the nation for eight years.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover won the Republican nomination. The Democrats chose Alfred E. Smith, to be their candidate. The candidates represented the tensions in American life.

Although big-city dwellers voted for Smith, Hoover won by a landslide. Americans hoped he would keep the country prosperous.

Smith, the son of immigrants and a Catholic, attracted city dwellers, immigrants, Catholics, and opponents of Prohibition. Hoover, a self-made millionaire from the Midwest, attracted rural Americans, big business, and supporters of Prohibition.