Chapter 20: Great Depression (1920-1932)

FQ #1: Who Benefited & Who Suffered in the New Consumer Society of the 1920s?

The Business of America

A Decade of Prosperity

  • after a sharp postwar recession that lasted into 1922, the 1920s was a decade of prosperity

  • productivity & economic output rose dramatically as new industries flourished 

  • automobile was the backbone of economic growth → industry stimulated the expansion of steel, rubber, and oil production

  • american factories were now famous for making cars instead of textiles & steel; shows change in manufacturing

  • automobile industries also promoted tourism and the growth of suburbs & helped to reduce rural isolation

  • growth of American corporations 

    • unsuccessful corporation in Fordlandia 

      • Henry Ford wanted to create a town in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest (for rubber) but it was basically a utopia where substances were banned and Brazilian traditions were destroyed → workers rebelled

A New Society

  • consumer goods proliferated

    • bought on credit through new buying plans

    • altered daily life

    • telephones, vacuums, fridges, washing machines, phonograph & radios

    • coca-cola became a symbol of American life

  • americans spent more time and more money on leisure activities  

  • first modern celebrity was opera tenor Enrico Caruso

  • greatest celebrity was Charles Lindbergh (aviator)

  • OG work was seen as a source of pride in craft skill → 1920 work was was valued as a path to individual fulfilment through consumption and entertainment

The Limits of Prosperity

  • unequal distribution of money within factories 

    • real wages for industrial workers rose ¼ between 1922-1929 but corporate profits rose at more than twice the rate

  • small auto companies fell to the side while handful of firms dominated numerous sectors of the economy

  • majority of the population had no savings & were living in poverty

  • manufacturing workforce declined

The Farmers’ Plight

  • “golden age” of american farming reached its peak during WWI bc they had to feed a war-torn europe

    • govt also raised prices → more $$$ for farmers → more land credit

  • overtime, farm incomes declined steadily and banks foreclosed many farms when owners couldn’t pay their mortgage 

  • extractive industries (mining & lumber) faced a glut on the world market

  • many migrated out of rural areas into larger places like CA

  • new technological advancements came into the use of farmers, especially in the Great Plains

    • steam tractor & disk plow - killed weeds, chopped up the sod, and left the surface layer much easier to plant

    • mechanization encouraged an increase in the scale of agriculture

  • western states became home to “factory farms,” employing many migrant workers

  • extensive plowing while ignoring environmental risks set the stage for the dust bowl of the 1930s

The Image of Business

  • hollywood spread the idea of “american way of life”

  • numerous firms established public relations departments to justify corporate practices to the public and counteract its long-standing distrust of big businesses 

  • many assumed that stock values would rise forever… (💀)

The Decline of Labor

  • businesses used the rhetorics of Americanism & “industrial freedom” against labor unions 

  • “welfare capitalism”: moral socially conscious kind of business leadership 

    • corporations implemented new management (healthcare, private pensions, job security & safety, sports teams, etc.) 

  • employers embraced the American Plan– a workplace free of both government regulation and unions

  • companies believed prosperity originated from complete freedom from the government

  • companies continued to employ strikebreakers, private detectives, and the blacklisting of union organizers to prevent or defeat strikes

The Equal Rights Amendment

  • equal rights amendment: amendment to guarantee equal rights for women, introduced in 1923 but not passed by congress until 1972; it failed to be ratified by the states 

    • Would actually serve as a step backward for those protected by pensions and working hour limits 

  • in 1929, congress repealed the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, a major achievement of the maternalist reformers that had provided federal assistance to programs for infant and child health

Women’s Freedom

  • female liberation resurfaced as a lifestyle

  • flappers– young women of the 1920s who rebelled against prewar standards of femininity; example of change in sexual behavior

    • More revealing clothing, obvious makeup, smoking and drinking 

  • ‘new woman’ as a form of advertisement; not just to appeal to women 

  • Freedom lasted up until women were married

FQ #2: In What Ways Did the Govt Promote Business Interests in the 1920s?

Business and Government

The Retreat from Progressivism

  • Govt undermined rational, self-direct citizens w/ the war effort (propaganda & influence)

    • Americans ‘mentally unfit for self-govt’

  • Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion & The Phantom Public 

    • Rejected the idea that smart people/experts can easily fix social problems in a big democracy

    • Claimed that independent citizens were nothing but a myth 

    • “Manufacture of consent”: govt creating & manipulating public opinion 

  • Sociologists Robert & Helen Lynd’s Middletown 

    • Classic study of life in Muncie, Indiana, a typical community in the American heartland

    • leisure activities & consumption was the focus of public concern instead of politics 

  • Elections were no longer “lively centers” of public attention & voter participation had fallen dramatically 

    • Due one-party politics in South, long period of Republican dominance, and enfranchisement of women

The Republican Era

  • Business lobbyists dominated national conventions of the Republican Party

    • Would call federal govt to lower taxes on income & business profits, maintain high tariffs, and support campaign against unions 

  • The two presidents appointed so many pro-business members in federal govt that they repealed the regulatory system 

  • Under William Howard Taft (chief justice), Supreme Court was strongly conservative 

  • The idea of less govt (laissez-faire) control became more important than the idea of the govt helping society 

  • Court ruled against a federal law that prevented goods (child labor) from being sold between states; disagreed w/ Adkins v. Children’s Hospital

  • Adkins v. Children’s Hospital: reversed Muller v. Oregon → overturned minimum wage for women → ruled that they no longer deserve special treatment because they were entitled to the same ‘freedom’ as men

Corruption in Govt

  • Warren G. Hardin took office in 1921; little regard for govt issues or the dignity of president 

  • Get-rich-quick ethos → administration became one of the most corrupt in American history 

    • Some cabinet members used their offices for private gain 

    • Many financial scandals occurred

  • Teapot Dome: Albert B. Fall secretly allowed private oil companies to use government oil reserves in Teapot Dome, WY & Elk Hills, CA in exchange for bribes, which he profited from

Election of 1924

  • Calvin Coolidge seemed to exemplify Yankee honesty despite followed predecessor’s policies 

  • McNary-Haugen Bill: plan to help farmers by having the govt buy agricultural products for sale overseas; aimed to raise crop prices 

    • Coolidge vetoed the McNary-Haugen bill twice 

    • Denounced it as an unwarranted interference with the free market

  • 1/6 of electoral vote went to Robert La Follette; 

    • New Progressive Party– wanted higher taxes on the rich, conservation of natural resources, public railroad ownership, farm aid, and ending child labor

      • Coolidge opposed → “communistic & socialistic” America

    • Candidacy showed some dissent continued in a conservative decade

Economic Diplomacy

  • Foreign affairs showed a close working bond between business and govt 

  • “Isolationism”: 1920s was a retreat from Wilson’s goal of internationalism 

    • Remained outside the League of Nations

  • The Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 raised import taxed goods to their highest levels ever; went against Wilson’s free trade policy

  • Most foreign policy was conducted through private business dealings rather than govt action

    • Loans, Germany advanced payments, raw materials (copper/oil)

  • American marines withdrew from Nicaragua in 1925 but soon came back to suppress a nationalist revolt led by General Augusto Cesar Sandino 

    • Anastasio Somoza created the National Guard → marines could depart

    • Somoza had Sandino assassinated; his family seized & ruled Nicaragua → overthrown by Sandinistas in late 1970s

FQ #3: Why Did the Protection of Civil Liberties gain importance in the 1920s?

The Birth of Civil Liberties

  • Progressivism faith– active federal govt helped national purpose & enhance freedom

  • Public power going wrong → appreciation of civil liberties 

    • necessity of vibrant, unrestricted political debate

  • Concept of civil liberties & stance in legal protection for free speech against govt

The “Free Mob”

  • Wartime repression continued into 1920s

  • The Nation magazine detailed recent examples of the degradation of American freedom 

    • lynchings, beatings, arrest 

  • Artistic works with sexual themes were censored 

  • 1930s– the film industry adopted the Hays code, which gave guidelines that prohibited motives from depicting obscenity (nudity, long kisses, adultery), portraying criminals in a sympathetic way, and portraying clergymen in a negative light

    • Filmmakers thought that self-censorship would prevent censorship from local govt

  • Some came to view America as a repressive cultural wasteland → caused people to move → “The Lost Generation” of cultural exiles (Hemingway, etc.)

A “Clear & Present Danger”

  • Arrest of antiwar dissenters under the Espionage & Sedition Acts → American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 

    • Organization that opposes limits on free speech during wartime 

    • ACLU would take part in most of landmark cases that helped to bring about a “rights revolution”

    • Helped to give meaning to traditional civil liberties (free speech) & invented new ones (right to privacy)

  • Charles Schenck distributed leaflets urging resistance to WWI → Schenck V. United States

    • Supreme court case that rules free speech can be limited if it poses a clear and present danger to public safety, especially during wartime

  • Schenck v. US was important because it limited free speech, causing convictions and jailing to those who opposed the govt

    • Eugene V. Debs– convicted for a speech condemning the war

    • Upheld jailing a german newspaper editor for questioning the draft

The Court & Civil Liberties

  • 1919– Court held conviction of Jacob Abrams and five other men for distributing pamphlets that criticized American intervention in Russia after the Russian Revolution 

  • Two supreme court justices (Holmes & Louis Brandeis) disagreed with the court’s decision and showed support for the stronger free speech rights

  • Court recognized that the 14th Amendment prevented them from prohibiting free speech 

  • Anita Whitney was arrested for attending a communist convention

    • Later pardoned by the CA governors but then later arrested again for displaying a red flab (a communist symbol)

FQ #4: What Were the Major Flash Points Between Fundamentalism and Pluralism in the 1920s?

The Culture Wars

The Fundamentalistic Revolt

  • Many evangelical protestants felt threatened by the decline of traditional values & the increased growth of Catholicism and Judaism bc of immigration

    • Did not like that modernists were integrating sciences w/ religion 

  • Billy Sunday was an apostle rivalist preacher (former bball player)

    • Drew huge crowds with theatrical preaching style

    • Messages denouncing sins (ranged from Darwinism to alcohol)

  • Fundamentalism: Anti-modernist Protestant movement that proclaimed the literal truth of the Bible 

    • Was portrayed as backwoods bigots by the press 

  • Enforcement of Prohibition of alcohol → building of new federal prisons & laid the foundations for powerful national action against crime and immorality 

  • Prohibition raised questions of local rights, individual liberty, and force of religious/moral values on society through legislation 

    • Democratic party divided into “wet” & “dry” wings → bitter battles 

    • Decline of Christian liberty

The Scopes Trial

  • John Scopes was arrested for violating a state law that prohibition the teachings of Darwinism/theory of evolution

  • Became a nationally celebrated confrontation between religious fundamentalism and civil liberties 

  • To fundamentalists, the law offered a lesson in the dangers of religious intolerance and the merger of church and state 

  • Jury found Scopes guilty.. Shortly after trial ended, Bryan died & the movement for anti-evolution laws disintegrated 

  • Fundamentalists strained away from arguing about public education; instead, they built their own schools and colleges where they could reflect their beliefs into the teachings

The Second Klan

  • 100% Americanism– citizenship education, immigrant investigations, employer efforts 

  • 1922– Oregon became the only state ever to require all students to attend public school

    • Abolishing narrow-minded education

    • Preventing communists from organizing their own schools 

  • Resurgence of the KKK 

    • Atlanta 1915 after a lynching of Leo France, who was a Jewish factory manager accused of murdering a teenage girl

    • Many white, native-born protestants who had respected positions in their communities 

  • Sank deep roots in North and West

  • largest private organization in IN & controlled the state’s Republican Party 

  • Broader array of targets during reconstruction 

    • Jews, Catholicals, Immigrants

    • feminists, unions, giant corporations

Closing the Golden Door

  • Klan’s attacks reflected sentiments widely shared 

  • 1924, Congress declared all Native Americans born in the US to be American citizens; many western states continued to deny suffrage to those living on reservations, though 

  • 1875– various classes of immigrants had been excluded but prior to WWI, all the white people who wished to immigrate into the US & become citizens were able to do so

  • Big companies, which usually opposed certain ideas/policies, changed their stance bc the political environment had shifted 

    • They feared of immigrant radicalism; this caused a reduction in the desires to hire cheap unskilled laborers

  • Limitation on immigration → European immigration example 1921-1924

    • Johnson-Reed Act aimed to ensure that descendants of the old immigrants forever outnumbered the children of the new 

    • But… to satisfy demands of large farmers in CA who relied heavily on Mexican labor, the 1924 law established no limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere 

  • Barred the entry of all those ineligible for naturalized citizenship– all Asians except for the Philippines bc the island was US territory

  • Illegal Alien: referred to immigrants crossing US borders 

    • New enforcement mechanisms, the Border Patrol, arrest/deportation

Race & the Law

  • New immigration law reflected the heightened emphasis on “race” as a determinant of public policy 

    • Blacks referred w/ second-class citizenship

    • Not just white-black; ethnic issue

  • “Race-policy” → “America must be kept America”

    • James J. Davis’ commentary that immigration policy must now rest on a biological definition of the ideal population 

    • 1924 immigration law reflect Progressive desires to improve “quality” of democratic citizenship & employ scientific methods for public policy

  • Double Standards

    • Courts admitted no scientific basis for concept of “race”

    • Tactility admitted that race was a social construct

    • Didn’t matter– race retained its “scientific” trappings

Pluralism & Liberty

  • Conservative views on race and culture faced liberal pushbacks

  • Horace Kallen’s “Cultural pluralism” described a society that gloried in ethnic diversity rather than attempting to suppress it

    • Reflected “melting pot” concept that emerged during Progressive era

    • Challenged the idea that some immigrants were not ‘fit’ for citizenship

  • Most immigrants embraced the loosening of patriarchal bonds & expansion of freedom but they were against the coercive aspects of Americanization programs

Promoting Tolerance

  • Immigrant groups believed that accepting and respecting different cultures, religions, and personal identities was a core part of what makes American freedom unique

    • Reinvented themselves as “ethnic” Americans; claiming equal share in nation life but also the right to remain culturally distinct 

  • Roman Catholics were encouraged to learn English & embrace American principles

  • Throughout the country, organizations like the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the National Catholic Welfare Council lobbied, in the name of “personal liberty,” for laws prohibiting discrimination against immigrants by employers, colleges, and government agencies

    • It was argued that the constitution protected all. The Oregon Laws were implemented, allowing for segregated schools

The Emergence of Harlem

  • Upsurge of self-consciousness among black Americans

  • Great migration during WWI → great migration, again, in 1920 → many went to Harlem, NY

  • “Slumming” where whites visited dance halls, jazz clubs, and speakeasies 

    • real Harlem was in poverty

    • most harlem businesses owned by whites

The Harlem Renaissance

  • New Negro: Term used in the 1920s, in reference to slow and steady growth of black political influence that occurred in Northern cities, where Blacks were freer to speak and act. This political movement created a spirit of protest that expressed itself culturally in the Harlem Renaissance and politically in “New Negro” nationalism

  • Harlem Renaissance: black literacy and art centered in New York City

FQ #5: What Were the Causes of the Great Depression, and how Effective Were the Government’s Responses by 1932?

The Great Depression

The Election of 1928

  • Republican Herbert Hoover seemed to exemplify the “new era” of American capitalism 

    • Condemned govt regulation of business and economy

    • Regulation interfered with economic opportunity 

  • Hoover promised to continue the prosperity of the decade

  • Hoover faced Democratic Alfred Smith, who was the first Catholic to run for president

    • Catholicism became a campaign issue

  • Hoover was elected by a landslide, even winning some of the southern states

The Coming of the Depression

  • Great Depression: greatest economic disaster in modern history

    • America was a consumer economy, so if there markets crashed, so did the worlds

  • Stock Market Crash: “Black Tuesday”; stock market panic in 1929 that resulted in the loss of more than $10 billion in market value

    • One of the causes of the Great Depression, but this alone did not cause it

  • Before 1929, other signs had included real estate speculation and busts, unequal distribution of income, stagnation of automobile sales after 1926, a decline in European demand for American goods, decline in farm prices, and bank failures 

  • In 1932, the economy hit rock bottom; 25% of labor force unemployed

Americans and the Depression

  • Transformation of American life

    • Bread lines, Hoovervilles (homeless shanty towns), unemployment 

    • Reversed trend of migration from farms to cities

    • Suicide rate spiked, birthrate plummeted

  • Collapse of the positive image of big business 

    • Investigations into cause of collapse revealed corruption and mismanagement in business

Resignation and Protest

  • Many Americans responded with resignation or blamed themselves

  • Others responded with protests 

    • “Bonus marchers”

      • Unemployed WWI veterans marched on DC to request early payment of bonuses

      • Military put the march down 

  • The press discussed the idea that the country was on the verge of a revolution

    • Surge in Communist Party activity and popularity

Hoover’s Response

  • Hoover’s response was to do nothing 

    • To many people, response was inadequate and uncaring 

  • Hoover believed providing direct aid to the unemployed was inappropriate and instead promoted “belt-tightening”

    • Tightening one’s belt to adjust to having less money 

    • Families spent less and reused items

    • people grew food and made homemade goods

    • businesses cut wages and jobs

    • the govt reduced spending in some areas 

  • Instead, the put his faith in voluntary steps by businesses and charity organizations

  • He seemed increasingly out of touch with reality to many Americans 

The Worsening Economic Outlook

  • Smoot-Hawley Tariff: raised taxes on imported goods, further reducing international trade

  • Individual income tax increases further reduced Americans’ purchasing power

  • Hoover finally signed laws creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and other relief measures, but still opposed direct relief to the unemployed 

  • Reconstruction Finance Corporation: loaned money to failing banks and other institutions to help them avert bankruptcy

Freedom in the Modern World

  • In 1920s, freedom was defined by the unimpeded reign of economic enterprise, yet it tolerated the surveillance of private life and individual conscience

  • This definition was discredited by the Depression

    • Inspired another liberal turn in American politics

  • A new conception of freedom would come to define modern liberalism

    • Socially conscious state

    • Respect for civil liberties and pluralism