The Reactionary Twenties

• With the end of the Great War, a renewed surge of immigration led to a wave of nativism. To Americans who feared that many immigrants were political radicals, the Sacco and Vanzetti case confirmed their suspicions. Nativists persuaded Congress to restrict future immigration, particularly from eastern and southern Europe, in the Immigration Act of 1924. Other reactionary movements reflected the feeling of many white Protestants that their religion and way of life were under attack. A revived Ku Klux Klan promoted hatred of Catholics, Jews, immigrants, Communists, and liberals, as well as African Americans. Fundamentalist Protestants campaigned against teaching evolution in public schools. Their efforts culminated in the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, where a high school teacher was convicted of violating a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. Along with progressive reformers, conservative Protestants also supported the nationwide Prohibition of alcoholic beverages that had gone into effect in 1920, despite widespread disregard for the law and the increased criminal activity and violence associated with it. Union membership declined in the 1920s as businesses adopted new techniques (such as the so-called open shop) to resist unions, a conservative Supreme Court rolled back workers’ rights, and workers themselves lost interest in organizing amid the general prosperity of the decade.

Republican Resurgence

• Although the Eighteenth Amendment (paving the way for Prohibition) and the Nineteenth Amendment (guaranteeing women’s right to vote) marked the culmination of progressivism at the national level, the movement lost much of its appeal as disillusionment with the Great War and its results created a public preference for disarmament and isolationism, stances reflected in the Five Power Treaty of 1922. Warren G. Harding’s landslide presidential victory in 1920 was based on his call for a “return to normalcy.” Harding and his fellow Republicans, including his vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge, followed policies advocated by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon that emphasized lowering taxes and government spending as well as raising tariffs to protect domestic industries. The plan succeeded spectacularly in reviving the economy. Harding died suddenly in 1923, soon after news broke about the Teapot Dome Affair involving a government-owned oil field in Wyoming, one of many incidents of corruption growing out of Harding’s appointments. Coolidge, an austere, frugal man who identified with the interests of business, restored trust in the presidency and won reelection in a landslide in 1924. In the 1928 presidential election, Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce under Harding and Coolidge, won a third straight decisive victory for the Republicans as Democratic candidate Al Smith.

The Great Depression

• The 1929 stock market crash revealed the structural flaws in the economy, but it was not the only cause of the Great Depression (1929–1941). During the twenties, business owners did not provide adequate wage increases for workers, thus preventing consumers’ “purchasing power” from keeping up with increases in production. The nation’s agricultural sector also suffered from overproduction throughout the decade. Government policies—such as high tariffs that helped to reduce international trade and the reduction of the nation’s money supply as a means of dealing with the financial panic—exacerbated the emerging economic depression.

The Human Toll of the Depression

• Thousands of banks and businesses closed, and millions of homes and jobs were lost. By the early 1930s, many people were homeless and hopeless, begging on street corners and sleeping in doorways. Many state laws and business practices discouraged the employment of married women, and discrimination against African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans in hiring was widespread.