Notes on 1920s America

Fear of Bolshevism

Fueled opposition to workers.
In March 1919, the Soviets organized the Third International for world revolution.

Global Communism

The Communist leaders of the Soviet Union hoped their 1917 revolution would inspire similar revolutions globally, ending capitalism and imperialism.

IWW Journalism

On April 28, 1917, three weeks after the U.S. entered World War I, the IWW periodical Solidarity depicted a heroic IWW worker battling evils like "militarism."

The IWW Is Coming

An IWW poster emphasizing the union's arrival in the American workplace.
Promotes IWW through solidarity, organization, and victory for one big union.

“1919ism”

Term describing the anti-union and anti-communist campaign in the postwar era.
Represented opposition to twenty years of progressive reform and the rising power of labor unions.
In 1919, laborers participated in 2,665 strikes.
Strikes failed due to weak unions and violent public opposition.

American Communism

Although feeble, the Boston police strike and the Sacco and Vanzetti murder conviction heightened national concerns.

Hidden Radicals

A 1919 cartoon portraying a radical lurking under the American flag, armed to kill and burn.
The cartoonist labeled the radical as both "Bolshevik" and "anarchist," despite their differing ideologies beyond opposition to capitalism.

Bomb scare, 1919

In April 1919, radicals mailed bombs to thirty-eight prominent Americans and in June bombed several buildings.

Palmer Raids

In November, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer initiated raids, relying on the newly created FBI.
The Justice Department deported thirty-nine people, and the Labor Department deported 249 aliens to Russia.
Palmer predicted revolutionary violence on May 1, 1920, which did not occur.
Palmer was then considered a political opportunist, and the Red Scare ended by the summer of 1920.

Red Scare

The red scare of 1919–1920 was provoked by the association of labor unrest with the fear of Bolshevik revolution.

Immigration Restrictions

Immigration restrictions of the 1920s were introduced due to nativist beliefs that northern Europeans were superior to southern and eastern Europeans.

National Origins Act 1924

Motivations:
- Disenchantment with and distrust of the “melting pot.” Social Darwinism suggested mixed breeding weakened the race.
- Workers thought cheap labor influx prevented them from receiving a fair share of wealth.
- Fear that immigrants brought radical political philosophies.
- Social Housekeepers aimed to clean up politics, improve morality and living standards, which seemed impossible with immigrant inundation.
- Republican era, with new immigrants traditionally feeding into Democratic party machines.
- Religious and cultural bigotry against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

Immigration Statistics

The proportion of immigrants in the population was similar to most of U.S. history at 12.8 percent.
Foreign-born people made up 9.7 percent of the population in 1850 and rose to 14.7 percent in 1910.
The rise in the immigrant population from 1990 to 2000 was less dramatic than from 1901 to 1910, when the population was just ninety-two million and the number of immigrants had jumped to 8.8 million.

National Origins Act of 1924

Placed a two percent quota on European nationalities, based on their percentage of the population in 1890.
Limited the number of immigrants from Europe to 164,000.
Based proportions on the 1890 census to favor immigrants from northern and western Europe.
Banned immigration from East Asia.

Chinese Immigrant Labor

Chinese immigrant labor in the 1800s in the American West played a crucial role in the region’s development.
This workforce faced racial prejudice from white settlers, leading to the enactment of the first significant anti-immigration laws in the United States to curb Asian immigration.

American Conservatism

In the era 1921-1933, American conservatism reached the height of its influence in the twentieth century.
In the 1920s, Americans sought repose, not reform.
Politically, they longed for a return to the pre-progressive era; socially, they rejected the social responsibilities which American government had accepted in the progressive era.
Warren G. Harding expressed the feeling of age, saying: “America’s present heed is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy.”

Harding's Presidency

The election of 1920, which Wilson looked to as “a solemn referendum” on the League of Nations, was instead determined by America’s demand for a less active federal government.
Harding’s slogan was, “Less government in business and more business in government.”
He selected his cabinet consistent with his goal of business emphasis.
Herbert Hoover, a friend of free enterprise, was appointed Secretary of Commerce.
Andrew W. Mellon, representing the Republican faith in big business and wealth, was appointed Secretary of the Treasury.

Prohibition

Prohibition was a traditional reform movement.
Reformers hoped that a call for moral regeneration would result in temperance; however, moral suasion did not work.
Many in rural America saw the drinking of alcoholic beverages as sinful and associated the activity with cities and immigrants.
Social Housekeepers advocated temperance because of damage to women, families, and the economy.
The First World War created a sense of high idealism in which many Americans believed they should set an example for the world.
The prohibition amendment also passed because the opposition was not organized.

Moonshine

In the post-war era, farmers found they could earn far greater profits by producing alcohol than by growing corn or other agricultural products.
The spread of moonshine stills and the illegal trade in alcohol spurred response from Arkansas law enforcement.

Murder Rate

The eighteenth amendment and the Volstead Act of 1919 prohibited all beverages containing more than one-half percent of alcohol.
The government could do little about smuggling along eighteen thousand miles of American coastline or home brew.
Organized crime became a multi-million-dollar business, and the nation’s cities became war zones as gangster armies competed for control.

Prohibition in national politics

In the 1920s, the nation returned to conservatism.
The era of progressive reform came to an end during the First World War.
The final impulse of progressivism resulted in two constitutional amendments that were the culmination of decades-long reform campaigns.
The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the production, sale, or consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Women's Employment

The growth of large cities and new technologies offered women increased employment in such occupations as telephone operators, clerical workers, and salespeople.
Some occupations even became stereotyped as “women’s work.”
Texas women accounted for 80 percent of the teachers, 90 percent of the nurses, and 90 percent of the librarians, but under 2 percent of the lawyers and physicians.

Women's Suffrage

By 1900, advocates of women's suffrage argued that the vote would enable women to extend their roles as mothers and homemakers to the public world.
The Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised American women.

The “New Woman”

In the 1920s, the number of women in the workforce increased.
The increasing number of white married women in the workforce contributed to the concept of the “New Woman”: the vibrant and independent woman who made her own decisions, free from male restrictions and advice.

Economic Expansion, 1920-1929

After a brief postwar downturn, the American economy surged in the 1920s.

Income Disparity

Farm income in the United States fell from $17.7$ billion dollars in 1919 to $10.5$ billion dollars in 1921.
Experts estimated the minimum living wage at about two thousand dollars annually, but workers never averaged more than 1,500 dollars per year during the 1920s.
The average work week was over fifty hours.
Women were paid less than men for equal work, and children were widely employed for a few cents an hour.
The labor union movement, under the conservative leadership of the American Federation of Labor, focused on organizing craftsmen such as carpenters and plumbers.
It made no effort to organize “unskilled” workers in the mass-production industries.

Revolution in Values

In the 1920s, a number of factors influenced a revolution in values.
First, the war created an “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” spirit which accompanied the departure of the soldiers to training camps and to Europe.

Dime Store

By 1910, F.W. Woolworth's stores, with their wooden floors and counters filled with neatly wrapped items, had become an integral part of American life.

Assembly Line

Hendry Ford’s contribution to the automobile industry was the assembly-line production of standardized vehicles.
Ford pioneered the assembly line as a way to reduce both cost and reliance on skilled workers.
He paid the highest wages in Detroit but required complete obedience from his workers, even to the point of prohibiting whistling during work.

Automobile statistics

From a plaything for the rich, the automobile emerged after 1920 as the basic mode of transportation for the masses.
The number leveled off after 1990, as many people switched to sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks, which are not included in these statistics.

Growth of Car Ownership

In 1919, Americans drove 6,771,000 private cars; by 1929 they owned 23,121,000.

Electric Conveniences

Middle class prosperity and less drudgery in housekeeping added to women’s sense of independence.
Middle class families built smaller houses or moved into city apartments.
Canned foods, delicatessen stores, bakeries, commercial laundries, washing-machines, electric irons, ready-made clothes, and vacuum cleaners made housekeeping easier.

Urbanization and Youth

As Americans became more urbanized, young people experienced the freedom that came with the anonymity of the city.
Growing access to automobiles gave middle class youth the luxury of privacy.

Women's Independence

Although most women were tied to convention and the women’s movement declined in importance, many urban women felt a growing independence.
The winning of the suffrage consolidated woman’s position as man’s equal and more young women worked outside the home, taking jobs beyond typical women’s work (teaching and housekeeping) in offices and factories.
The nation began a century-long debate on whether married women should work outside the home.
Americans’ simplistic understanding of Sigmund Freud led some to the conclusion that the first requirement of mental health was to have an uninhibited sex life.
Many believed that to be well and happy, they had to obey their libido.

Flappers

While such “double-standards” for women persisted, many Americans who wanted to be modern in the 1920s challenged the Victorian standards of the prewar era.
Many young women wore shorter skirts and silk stockings; applied cosmetics; bobbed their hair; and learned to curse, to smoke, and to dance the Charleston.
They talked about sexual relationships and became the “flappers” who set the tone for the Jazz Age.

Sex Symbols

Some movies provided quite open expressions of sexuality and sensuality, and several of the biggest stars of the decade owed their fame to their sex appeal.
Clara Bow was the "It" girl, and "It" literally stood for sex appeal, though prevailing mores still prohibited using that term.
Rudolph Valentino was the leading male sex star of the 1920s.
The movie was so popular and influential that handsome young men came to be referred to for a time as sheiks.

Motion Pictures

Motion pictures became a big business and a worldwide symbol for American values during the decade.
An estimated fifty million persons per week attended theaters to see Clara Bow, the “It” girl; Rudolph Valentino; and Charlie Chaplin.

The Jazz Singer

In 1927, the first talking picture, The “Jazz Singer,” starring Al Jolson, was a great success and revolutionized the industry.

Magazines

The nation produced a bumper crop of sex magazines, confession magazines, and lurid motion picture magazines.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., shown here in "The Black Pirate," used his athletic skills to create stunts that thrilled audiences during the 1920s.

Radio Invention

The invention of the radio accelerated the creation of a national community that had begun in the late 1800s.
In 1901, the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in Newfoundland received signals from England.
By 1910, all ships were equipped with the “wireless.”
In 1919, commercial radio did not exist, but within ten years, one in every three American homes had a radio.

First broadcasting station

In 1920, Frank Conrad of Pittsburgh began sending out phonograph music and baseball scores from a barn.
Westinghouse officials decided to open the first broadcasting station in order to stimulate the sale of their equipment.
On November 2, 1920, in East Pittsburgh, the first radio station began operations in order to carry the Harding-Cox election returns.
Westinghouse Company operated the station with the call letters KDKA.
In 1924, the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) organized a national network.

Economic Prosperity

In most industries, unemployment disappeared.
By 1928, real wages, that is accounting for inflation, were about one-third higher than in 1914.
Americans had money to buy the new wonders of technology--vacuum cleaners, radios, and cars.
As they purchased, they created new demand calling for further expansion of production.
The rich became richer, while the gap between rich and poor widened.

Rural vs. Urban Tensions

Some historians have considered the tensions of the 1920s in terms of a rural backlash against a rising urban America.
City life is impersonal and alienating.
Farm life is innocent, God-fearing and community based.
Many considered rural life to be safe.
Rural Americans supposedly had more close personal ties, hard work, and higher morals.
Urban vs. Rural Life in America
Many considered urban life to be a world of anonymous crowds, strangers, money makers, and pleasure seekers.

Decline in American Morals

The general failure of prohibition enforcement brought home to many what they defined as a decline in American morals.
The rapidly increasing urbanization seemed to blur what were once clear moral and community values.
Migration to the city disrupted the neighborhoods of rural America and, coupled with more and better transportation facilities, broke up the extended family.
Historians have cited the urban growth of the United States as creating tensions between rural and urban Americans.
The anxiety emanated not only from the countryside, but also from developing southern cities filled with recent foreign immigrants.
The anticity focus of rural Americans resulted from their perception of urban areas as hotbeds of disloyal foreigners, religious modernism, illegal speakeasies, organized crime, morally suspicious “New Women,” and corrupting modern music.
These tensions were further abetted by the post-World War I Red Scare and reinforced by the progressive drive for social control.

Ku Klux Klan

Influences:
- Propaganda had aroused emotions during the First World War, and when the war ended, new enemies were found: Jews, African-Americans, foreigners, immigrants.
- Anti-Catholicism provided an important impetus for KKK recruitment.
- Anti-Catholicism was rooted in the colonial experience and heightened by Irish immigration in the 1840s and Eastern European immigration in 1890s-1920s.
- The KKK was also a product of the rural-urban conflict.
- Many old-stock Americans in the South and Central West feared they were in danger of being overrun by immigrants.
The KKK forced the censorship of motion pictures and books.
Members destroyed stills, attacked prostitutes and gamblers, and beat up the occupants of cars in “lover’s lanes.”
They attempted to destroy parochial schools, to enforce Bible reading in classrooms, and to defeat Catholic and Jewish candidates for public office.
By the mid-1920s, the KKK enrolled over five million members and had considerable political power in at least six states.
- Preservation of patriotism, the purity of women, white supremacy, and law and order. It opposed radicals, Catholics, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, the wearing by women of short skirts, the consumption of “demon rum,” and continued foreign immigration.
By 1922, the organization had 700,000 members, and by 1925, possibly as many as 5 million.

Klan Violence

 The motivation behind the Klan in Texas was more the imposition of moral conformity than racism and nativism, and the Klan was willing to use extralegal methods to prevent “moral decay” from spreading throughout the state.

Texas newspapers reported eighty incidents of flogging in 1921.
Klan victims included:
- doctors accused of performing abortions
- businessmen charged with corrupting young women
- oil field workers whose rowdy behavior had disturbed the townspeople of Mexia
- husbands who abandoned their wives
- divorcees who set immoral examples
- as well as pimps, prostitutes, gamblers, thieves, and bootleggers.
The Klan argued that it existed to enforce law in a time of lawlessness.
By 1923, the Klan’s increased use of violence had begun to alienate upper- and middle-class white voters, and the organization nearly disappeared toward the end of the decade.
However, its residue of demands for moral conformity lived on.

Rural vs. Urban Tensions Summarized

The prices of agricultural goods continued to fall, and many family farms and rural people in general struggled economically.
Relatively higher wages and increasing prosperity in urban areas drew many rural people to the cities and towns.
The changes in lifestyle highlighted the economic disadvantages of rural life and often created anxiety about the possible destruction of a traditional way of life.
This was especially the case with many families working on small farms, as the falling prices of agricultural goods made making-a-living increasingly difficult.
Many considered rural life to be safer.
Rural Americans supposedly had more close personal relationships, hard work, higher morals, and conservative values.
If this was not entirely the case, many still held fast to the image of farm life being more innocent, God-fearing and community based.
Despite the negative image of the cities, many moved there.
Urban life offered more job opportunities with higher pay, usually offered more amenities, more options for entertainment, and a more culturally avant-garde atmosphere.
The negative image of urban life portrayed a world of anonymous crowds, strangers, money makers, pleasure seekers, illegal drinking, gambling, casual dating, religious modernism, scandalously independent women, and a greater number of foreigners and foreign influence.
Many who moved to the cities found it hard to adjust to urban life.
Rise in crime and the mafia created a sense of moral decline.
This sense of a moral decline led to a counter-reaction as people attempted to correct it.
This counter-reaction took various forms.
One form was the meteoric rise of the second incarnation of the KKK.

Goals of Harding-Coolidge

 "The chief business of America is business” expressed his concept of the nation's destiny.

“BUSINESS PROGRESSIVISM”

Progressivism in the 1920s

Progressivism did not disappear with the triumph of the Republican party in the 1920 presidential election or with the prosperity of the following decade.
Rather, the drive for patriotism in World War I encouraged progressives to stress some goals at the expense of others.
Consequently, two strains of progressivism dominated the politics of the 1920s.
Since progressives saw no contradiction between reform and social control, they looked to public schools and other state institutions to Americanize foreigners, to inculcate middle-class values, and to protect morality through prohibition.
Thus, one faction of progressives actually had no trouble endorsing attempts by a reborn Ku Klux Klan and anti-evolution theory crusaders to exercise social control through enforcing prohibition laws.
The other emergent faction embraced “business progressivism” which endeavored to utilize the ideas of efficiency and public service to effect order and prosperity.
Business progressives fought for administrative reorganization, good roads, and improved schools and health care; they seemingly ignored the demands of labor unions, tenant farmers, and proponents of civil rights.

Calvin Coolidge (1923-29)

Unlike Harding, was a good politician whose support for big business was based on a clear-cut conservative philosophy.
He reflected Social Darwinism in believing that a successful businessman, a man of wealth, was the most important person in society.
He believed that government should avoid any interference with business.
In the midst of unprecedented prosperity, Americans liked Coolidge’s negative, custodial approach to the presidency and integrity.

Herbert Hoover (1929-33)

Believed in Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” and the credo of rugged individualism which “extolled the equality of opportunity that enabled Americans to succeed on their own merits, and the ‘rising vision of service’ . ”
Hoover stood for laissez-faire policies, help for business, and efficiency.
He also emphasized humanitarianism and private charity.
In 1928, Hoover proclaimed : “Given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from the nation.”

Business as Dictator

The “saints of the decade” were businessmen.
America became a nation of “boosters” as most joined in the celebration of a new prosperity.
One observer termed businessmen “the dictator[s] of our destinies,” ousting “the statesman, the priest, the philosopher, and becoming “the final authority on the conduct of American society. ”

Jesus as a Businessman

Bruce Barton in The Man Nobody Knows took the worship of business to its logical conclusion.
He depicted Jesus as the founder of modern business.
The prosperity of the era indicated that their faith was well placed.

War Debts

As a result of America's insistence that all Allied war debts be repaid, the French and British demanded enormous reparations payments from Germany.

German Economy

After 1918, Germany suffered an economic breakdown, due to the punitive war debt payments the state was obligated to assume.
It was only after the Dawes Plan came into effect in 1924 that Germany began to recover its economic power.

German Hyperinflation

In 1914, the mark stood at 4.2 to the dollar; in 1919, at 8.9 to the dollar; and in early 1923, at 18,000 to the dollar.
In August 1923, a dollar could be exchanged for 4.6 million marks, and in November, for 4 billion marks.
Bank savings, war bonds, and pensions, representing years of toil and thrift, became worthless.
Blaming the government for this disaster, the ruined middle class became more receptive to rightist movements that aimed to bring down the republic.

The Dawes Plan and French Withdrawal from the Ruhr (1924)

A new arrangement regarding reparations also contributed to the economic recovery.
Recognizing that in its present economic straits Germany could not meet its obligations to the Allies or secure the investment of foreign capitalists, Britain and the United States pressured France to allow a reparation commission to make new proposals.
In 1924, the parties accepted the Dawes Plan, with reduced reparations and based them on Germany's economic capacity.
During the negotiations, France agreed to withdraw its troops from the Ruhr--another step toward easing tensions for the republic.