AMERICAN SOCIETY IN THE 1920s
I. Political philosophies
A. Radical (Socialist/ Communist in this
era) -- refers to advocating drastic revolutionary
changes in society and in
the gov’t.
B. Conservative -- refers to preserving the
existing order; conserving rather than changing
(often means pro-business)
C. Reactionary -- desire to move society
backwards into a past society, usually idealized.
-- Mugwumps; some Progressives
wanting to return to WASP ideals
D. Liberal -- advocating changes in society’s
institutions to reflect changing conditions.
-- Progressive movement
E. These terms refer to means as well as ends; one
can pursue radical goals by
conservative means, e.g.,
socialists running for political office in a democratic
political system (Eugene
Debs)
II. "Americanism" in the 1920s
A. "Red Scare" and the "Great Unrest"
1. Overview:
a. Fear of radicalism (esp. Bolshevism), large numbers of strikes, and
bombings
resulted in street violence and government crackdown on suspected radicals.
b. "Red Summer" resulted in deaths of blacks and whites due to racial violence.
-- Apex of racial violence in 20th century.
2. Oct. 1917, Bolshevik
Revolution in Russia sparked paranoia that communism would
spread to the U.S.
a. Two small communist parties formed in the U.S. (70,000 members total)
b. WWI anti-German hatred transferred to any foreigners
3. Large numbers of strikes
occurred after World War I (economy not ready for
returning soldiers from Europe); 4 million workers went on strike after
WWI
a. Largely result of inflation during the war and frustrated
union-organizing drives.
i. More strikes occurred in 1917 but number of strikers far more
in 1919.
-- 20% of all workers; largest proportion in U.S. history.
ii. Wilson lifted war-time price controls but refused to lift anti-strike
regulations.
iii. Corporate leaders repudiated war-time concessions they had made to
labor.
iv. Millions of returning veterans furious at the economic situation at
home.
-- Price of food doubled; cost of clothing nearly tripled
v. Labor had sacrificed during the war and would now expect payback.
b. Many Americans believed that labor troubles were the result of Bolshevism.
-- Evangelist Billy Sunday: described a Bolshevik as "a guy with
a face like a
porcupine and a breath that would scare a pole cat.. If I had my way, I’d
fill the jails
so full of them that their feet would stick out the window."
c. Wilson’s 6-month absence from the U.S. to negotiate Versailles Treaty
began to cripple
federal gov’t during the Great Unrest of 1919.
d. Seattle General Strike (Jan, 1919) – most famous general strike
in U.S. history.
i. 35,000 shipyard workers went on strike after they failed to get wage
increase
to compensate for inflation during the war.
ii. All unions in Seattle, 60,000 additional workers, demanded higher pay
for shipyard
workers.
iii. Although strike peaceful and orderly, conservatives feared a European-style
labor
takeover.
iv. Seattle mayor called for federal troops to head off the "anarchy of
Russia."
-- Later toured U.S. bragging he had put down Bolshevik uprising
e. Labor sought industrial democracy: AFL, liberals and Socialists.
i. Permanent federal ownership of railroads (like all other nations)
ii. Board of directors representing consumers, labor and gov’t would set
policy but
workers would manage railroads on daily basis.
iii. Public and railroad workers would divide all profits.
iv. Conseratives viewed this as blow to representative gov’t.
v. Voted down by Congress in August 1919.
f. Boston Police strike (Sept. 1919)
i. Over 70% of Boston’s 1,500 policemen went on strike seeking wage increases
and the right to unionize.
-- Some worked between 73 to 98 hrs per week with no pay for parade duty.
-- Some hailed the strike as another victory for the Bolsheviks.
ii. Gov. Calvin Coolidge called out the National Guard stating there was
"no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime".
-- Refused Gompers’ offer to settle strike, demanding police had no right
to form a
union.
-- Coolidge became a national hero (vice president in less than 2 years)
iii. Most frightening strke in the minds of many Americans.
-- Police went on strike in 37 other cities.
iv. Police were fired and a new force was recruited from national guards.
g. Steel Strike:
i. AFL attempted to organize the steel industry in Sept. 1919
-- Major shift: now attempting to organize unskilled labor by industry
-- Sought 8-hr day, 6-day week, end to 24-hr shift every 2 weeks, &
union
recognition.
ii. Judge Elbert H. Gary, head of USX refused to negotiate on grounds that
representatives of AFL were not his employees.
-- Nearly half of nation’s steel workers worked for USX
iii. After much violence and the use of federal and state troops, the
strike was broken by January 1920.
iv. Failure of strike marked hardening of Americans on labor matters.
f. United Mine Workers of America Strike: under John L. Lewis
struck for shorter
hours and higher wages on November 1, 1919.
i. Attorney General Palmer obtained injunctions and the union called off
the strike.
-- Wilson used WWI legislation that prohibited strikes in war industries
ii. An arbitration board later awarded the miners a wage increase.
4. Palmer Raids
a. After bomb scares, Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer,
got $500K
from Congress to "tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American
ideas in
their poisonous theories." (Palmer aspired for Democratic pres.
nom. in 1920)
i. Identities of persons who sent bombs never identified: radicals, Bolsheviks
and
Wobblies blamed.
ii. May Day violence against Socialists done by servicemen esp. Cleveland,
Boston, &
NY. (although servicemen in Europe more violent towards radicals)
iii. Some terrorist bombings in 1919 & 1920 inc. Wall Street (38
dead) & Palmer’s
Washington home.
iv. Several cities required teachers to sign loyalty oaths; emphasized
"Americanism.
b. Nov. 1919, 249 "radicals" deported to Russia after nationwide dragnets;
mostly
anarchists
i. Many orders came from Mrs. Wilson and the president’s secretary.
ii. American Legion took the lead in going after dangerous foreigners.
-- Inherited role from GAR during WWI.
c. Jan. 2, 1920, 5,000 suspected communists arrested in 33 cities during
i. Most seized w/o warrants, denied attorneys, deprived of food, heat and
other bathroom facilities.
ii. 550 Russians were deported; many were U.S. citizens.
d. Public reaction
i. Most Americans condoned Palmer’s actions.
ii. Many began to question the compromising of individual rights.
-- IWW and other radicals vigorously prosecuted.
-- 1920, 5 members of NY legislature denied seats because they were
Socialists.
e. "Red Scare" ended in Summer of 1920 when alleged May Day strikes never
occurred.
-- Palmer was discredited.
f. Conservatives used the "red scare" to break the backs of fledgling
unions.
i. Labor’s call for "closed" shop denounced as "Sovietism in disguise."
ii. Recession of 1921 futher weakened unions
-- Prices fell faster than wages; by 1922 real wages up 19% than in 1914
-- Paved way to prosperity of 1920s.
iii. Employers’ antiunion campaign for "open" shop: "the American plan."
-- AFL lost ¼ of its members.
B. Sacco and Vanzetti case
1. 1921, Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti charged & convicted of killing two people
in a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts.
2. Jury and judge probably
prejudiced: defendants were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and
draft dodgers.
a. The defendants’ radicalism became an issue during the trial.
b. Evidence not conclusive; many believe sentence unjust and due to prejudice.
3. Repeated motions for
a new trial were denied by Judge Webster Thayer and the
Massachusetts Supreme Court.
4. In 1927, Judge Thayer
sentenced the men to death by electric chair.
a. Case attracted world attention as riots broke out in Japan, Warsaw,
Paris, and
Buenos Aires after the executions. -- (like Rodney King trial and L.A.
riots?)
b. Because the powers that convicted Sacco and Vanzetti were members of
the upper
class, the execution seemed to be class-based.
c. Distinguished Americans such as Felix Frankfurter, Albert Einstein,
and George
Bernard Shaw protested; Italian-American community deeply affected.
5. In 1977, Gov. Michael
Dukakis of Mass. vindicated both men claiming faults existed in the
case: "any stigma & disgrace should be forever removed from their names."
C. Ku Klux Klan
1. Resurgence of the Klan
began in the South but also spread heavily into the
Southwest and the North Central states -- Il, IN, OH
a. Northcentral states = 40% of new Klan membership; far west only 6.1%;
LA = 25%;
South = 16%; Total membership as high as 5 million.
b. Resurgence spawned by 1915 movie Birth of a Nation,
by D.W. Griffith.
i. First blockbuster epic (3 hours)
ii. Based on 1905 book The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the KKK,
by
Thomas Dixon
2. More resembled nativist
"Know-Nothings of 1850s (anti-Irish & German) and
American Protective Association of late 19th c. (anti-eastern
& southern European)
than the antiblack terrorist organization of the 1860s.
a. Antiforeign, anti-Catholic, antiblack, anti-Jewish, antipacifist, anti-
Communist,
anti-internationalist, antievolutionist, antibootlegger, antigambling,
antiadultery, and
anti-birth control.
b. Pro-WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) and pro-"native" American.
c. Extremist and ultraconservative uprising against forces of diversity
and
modernity transforming American culture: nationalist, racist, narrow minded.
3. Demise of the KKK
a. 1925 -- David Stephenson, KKK leader in Indiana, went to jail for 2nd
degree murder of woman who he had brutally kidnapped and abused.
i. "I am the law in Indiana"
ii. Scandal led to a large-scale decline in the Klan’s influence.
-- Stephenson provided evidence of other Klan activities by
high-level officials in Indiana)
iii. The Klan’s claim as a protector of the virtue of white women was
compromised.
b. Embezzlement by Klan officials led to a congressional investigation.
-- $10 initiation fee constituted a racket.
4. Violence against blacks
in 1919 race riots partly due to attitudes proliferated by KKK
D. Closing the doors on immigration
1. Many in America, esp.
rural areas, believed immigrants were eroding old-fashioned
American values.
2. 1921 Immigration Act:
ended open immigration with a limit and quota system.
a. 350,000 total per annum and no more than 3% of the people already in
U.S.
-- Based on 1910 census
b. Only 158,367 from countries other than N. and W. Europe
3. 1924 National Origins
Act (Immigration Act of 1924)
a. Reduced immigration to 152,000 total per annum.
b. 3% down to 2%; 21,847 from countries other than N. and W. Europe
c. Census year to base figures was changed from 1910 to 1890.
i. Reduced #s from E. and S. Europe as most had come after 1890.
ii. Poles, Italians, Russians seen as "less American."
d. Asians banned completely
e. Irish and Germans not as affected: were discriminated against in 1850s.
f. Canadians and Latin Americans exempt from the quota system.
-- Mexicans migrated to L.A., San Antonio, and Denver in large numbers
where they held low-paying jobs and lived in poor neighborhoods - barrios.
g. Five years later, the Act of 1929, using 1920 as quota base, virtually
cut
immigration in half by limiting the total to 152,574 per annum.
i. By 1931, more foreigners left than arrived.
ii. Congress abolished the national origins quota system in 1965.
E. Scopes Trial
1. Fundamentalists
a. Believed teaching of Darwinian evolution was destroying faith in God
and the
Bible while contributing to the moral breakdown of youth in the jazz age.
b. Numerous attempts made to pass laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution
in the public schools.
-- Tennessee and two other states adopted such measures
2. Scopes Trial --
"Monkey Trial" -- 1925 in Dayton, eastern Tennessee
a. High-school biology teacher John Scopes indicted for teaching
evolution.
i. Tennessee’s Butler Law of 1924 banned any teaching of theories
that contradicted the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible
(Book of Genesis).
ii. ACLU wanted to fight the case and ran ad in the NY Times asking for
a teacher to
volunteer to be arrested for violating the Butler Law.
-- Scopes volunteered.
iii. Case attracted huge public following
-- Broadcast over the radio.
b. Clarence Darrow defended Scopes
c. William Jennings Bryan was the prosecutor; Presbyterian Fundamentalist
d. Fundamentalism itself seemed to be on trial.
i. Darrow put Bryan on the witness stand the last day to defend a literal
interpretation of the Bible.
ii. Bryan asked at length about his literal biblical beliefs: Did he think
the earth was created in 6 days?
-- Bryan: "Not six days of 24 hours"
e. John Scopes found guilty of violating the Butler Act and fined $100.
-- Supreme Court of Tennessee, however, set aside the fine on a technicality.
f. Fundamentalism suffered a setback as well.
i. Bryan was aware of his contradictions and died less than a week after
the trial
due to a stress-caused stroke.
ii. Yet, Fundamentalism remained vibrant esp. in Baptist church and the
rapidly growing Churches of Christ, organized in 1906.
F. Prohibition (One of last of the Progressive
reforms)
1. 18th Amendment ratified
by states in 1919.
a. Supported by churches and women.
i. Heavy support in the Mid-west and esp. in the South.
ii. Southern whites eager to keep stimulants from blacks.
b. Volstead Act of 1919 implemented the amendment.
c. Opposed in larger eastern cities where colonies of "wet" foreign-born
peoples cherished their drinking habits.
2. Problems with enforcement
a. Federal authorities had never satisfactorily enforced a law where the
majority of the people -- or a strong minority -- were hostile to it.
-- Most drinkers ignored "dry" laws. (Everybody that continued to drink
became a
criminal or something they had done legally before.)
b. Lack of enforcement officials
c. Alcohol could be sold by doctor's prescription.
d. Alcohol was necessary for industrial uses (poison was supposed to be
added to it to
prevent consumption).
e. Alcohol could be manufactured in small amounts almost anywhere e.g.
homes
-- 700 million gallons of home brew made in 1929!
f. "Near Beer" was legal (1/2 of 1% of alcohol) but you had to produce
real beer and then
reduce the alcohol content to make it.
3. Results of Prohibition
a. Rise of organized crime
i. Huge profits from "bootlegging" became foundation for corruption.
ii. Al Capone -- Most powerful gangster of the 1920s.
-- 1925, began bootlegging business that lasted six years and netted
him millions of dollars.
-- Eventually jailed for tax evasion & served most of 11-year sentence
iii. John Dillinger was another powerful gangster boss.
iv. Increase in gang violence: About 500 gang members killed in Chicago
during 1920s.
v. Many gov’t officials accepted bribes and did not enforce prohibition.
vi. Organized crime spread to prostitution, gambling, and narcotics.
-- Honest merchants forced to pay "protection money" to gangsters.
vii. By 1930, annual "take" of underworld estimated at $12 to $18 billion.
-- Several times the income of federal gov’t.
b. Rise of speakeasies (supposedly secret bars operated by
bootleggers)
i. Middle class havens for drinking.
ii. Women could now drink in speakeasies where before they were
forbidden to drink
in saloons.
c. Disappearance of saloons
-- Most "wet" immigrants affected; could not afford speakeasies
d. Many Americans became used to casually breaking the law.
e. Prohibition may have worked if light wine and beer allowed
-- Ironically, had liquor became more easily accessible than beer and wine
4. Prohibition was repealed
in 1933, only 14 years after it was passed.
III. Mass-Consumption Economy
A. Glorification of business --Business became almost
a religion.
1. The Man Nobody
Knows by Bruce Barton became top selling book in 1925-1926.
a. Called Jesus the first modern businessman
i. "Picked up 12 men from the bottom of society and forged an
organization that conquered the world."
ii. "Every advertising man ought to study the parables of Jesus. They are
marvelously condensed, as all good advertising should be.
2. Calvin Coolidge: "The
man who builds a factory builds a temple; The
man who works there worships there."
3. Businessmen were considered
the people that "ruled" the nation.
B. Booming Economy
1. U.S. came out of WWI
the world’s largest creditor nation.
a. Brief depression, 1920-1921
b. Andrew Mellon’s "trickle down" tax policies favored the rapid
expansion
of capital investment.
c. Buying on credit became another innovative feature of the postwar
economy.
2. Between 1922 & 1928,
industrial productivity (amount of goods produced by each
hour of labor) rose 70%.
3. Wages at an all-time
high.
4. Electric power increased
19-fold between 1912 and 1929.
a. Before WWI, 20% of homes had electricity; by 1930 = 70%.
b. Refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and electric stoves came into vogue.
5. New technology = greater
efficiency
a. Electric motors
b. Assembly line
6. New industries:
a. light metals-aluminum, synthetics
b. Movies, radio manufacturing
c. Auto industry became king.
-- Led to petroleum, steel, rubber, machine tools, and road building.
7. Inventions
a. Telephoto and Television (though not widely available until 1947)
b. Medical breakthroughs
i. Iron lung (respirator), cures for TB and small-pox
ii. Life expectancy in 1910 = 49 years; 1930 = 59 years
8. Construction
a. Skyscrapers began to change the horizon of major cities.
b. Empire State Building -- tallest building in the world at 102 stories.
9. 1st trans-Atlantic telephone
C. Corporate Revolution
1. Mergers continued at
a furious pace in 1920s.
-- By 1929, 1/2 nation’s wealth absorbed by top 200 corporations
2. Chain stores became common
(e.g., Sears and Roebuck)
D. Managerial Revolution
1. Corporate leadership
began to be controlled by college-trained, replaceable managers,
rather than the "build the company from the ground up Henry Ford types."
2. Business schools began
to open up on college campuses around the country.
3. Business began adding
more and more layers of management.
E. New White Collar Workers
1. 1920-1930, white collar
jobs rose 38.1%; 10.5 million to 14.5 million
-- 1900, 18% of workers white collar; 44% by 1930
2. Manual labor jobs up
only 7.9%, 28.5 million to 30.7 million.
3. Huge increase of consumer
products created a need for advertising and sales people.
-- Sales profession attractive to men with promises of high incomes
4. Women increasingly entered
the work force.
a. Typewriter, invented by Remington Co. in 1874, significant
b. Almost all typists were middle-class, high school-educated and female.
i. Job needed good speller, knowledge of grammar, etc.
ii. Lower class men and women lacked these skills.
iii. Upper class men could get better paying jobs.
c. Women also teachers, shop clerks, cashiers, & switchboard operators.
d. Yet, 57% of female work force comprised of black and foreign-born women,
mostly in domestic service jobs.
F. Advertising emerged as a new industry.
1. American manufacturers
seemed to have mastered problems of production and
were now more concerned about finding mass markets for their goods.
a. Typical worker: young white college grads or former newspaper writers.
b. Men outnumbered women 10 to 1.
2. Used persuasion, allure,
and sexual suggestion
-- By 1925, U.S. corporations spent over $1 billion on advertising.
3. Sports became big business
a. Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey became house-hold names due
to "image making."
b. Fans bought tickets in such numbers that Yankee Stadium became known
as
"the house that Ruth built."
c. 1921, heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey knocked out French lightweight
George Carpentier and attracted the first in a series of million-dollar
"gates."
G. Scientific Management -- Frederick W. Taylor
1. Started movement to
develop more efficient working methods increasing productivity,
which eventually led to increased wages, which led to increase profits.
2. The Principles
of Scientific Management (1911) very influential.
a. Auto industry accepted it right away (especially Henry Ford)
b. No established regulations.
c. Workers hated Taylorism as it concentrated power in production process
to
managers rather than workers and intially resulted in lower wages.
H. Henry Ford and the assembly line
1. Detroit emerged as the
automobile capital of the world
a. 1890s, Americans began to adapt the European gasoline engine to the
making of cars.
b. By 1910, 69 companies existed with a total annual production of 181,000
units.
-- Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds (Oldsmobile) most successful with
the use of a limited assembly line operation.
c. By 1929, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler made 83% of vehicles ("the
Big Three")
2. Ford realized workers
were also consumers
a. In 1914, raised worker salaries from $2 a day to $5 if workers adopted
"thrifty habits" (e.g. learn English, no gambling, drinking, etc.)
b. Ford paid good benefits, hired handicapped, convicts, and immigrants.
c. Ford called a "traitor" to his class by many wealthy people.
3. Ford’s use of the assembly
line made him about $25,000 a day throughout the 1920s
a. Took only 1.5 hours to build a car (before assembly line: 14 hours)
-- One car produced every 10 seconds at his Rouge River plant near Detroit.
b. Model-T became the staple car in America for many years.
c. By 1930, Americans owned almost 30 million cars; 20 million Model T’s.
d. Drawback: work incredibly tedious -- machine often set the pace. Sometimes,
workers were actually chained to the machine to prevent accidents.
4. Automobile’s impact
a. Replaced the steel industry as the king industry in America.
b. Employed about 6 million people by 1930.
c. Supporting industries such as rubber, glass, fabrics, highway construction,
and thousands of service stations and garages.
i. Steel industry further buttressed.
ii. Petroleum industry exploded: oil derricks shot up in CA, TX and OK
d. Nation’s standard of living improved.
e. Railroad industry decimated by passenger cars, buses, and trucks.
f. Speedy marketing of perishable foodstuffs were accelerated.
g. New network of highways emerged; 387,000 mi. in 1921 to 662,000 in 1929
h. Leisure time spent traveling to new open spaces.
i. Women less dependent on men.
j. Isolation among sections broken down while less attractive states lost
population at
an alarming rate.
k. Buses made possible consolidation of schools and to some extent churches.
l. Sprawling suburbs spread out even further as America became a nation
of
commuters.
m. One million Americans had died in car accidents by 1951, more than all
killed in all America’s battles hitherto.
n. Home life broke down partially; youth became more independent
o. Crime waves of 1920s and 1930s partially facilitated by the automobile.
I. The Airplane
1. Dec. 17, 1903, Wright
Bros. (Orville and Wilbur) flew a gasoline-powered plane
12 seconds and 120 feet at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
-- Launched the air age
2. Airplane used with some
success for various purposes during World War I.
3. Shortly after the war,
passenger lines with airmail contracts came into being.
-- First transcontinental airmail route established from NY to SF in 1920.
4. By the 1930s and 1940s,
travel by air on regularly scheduled airlines was markedly
safer than on many overcrowded highways.
5. 1927, Charles Lindbergh
flew the first solo flight across the Atlantic.
a. Spirit of St. Louis flew from NY to Paris in 39 hours
and 39 minutes.
b. Lindbergh became an American icon and world hero.
6. Impact of the airplane:
a. Civilization became more closely linked
b. Railroads received yet another setback as airplanes stole passengers
and
mail service.
c. Airplanes used with devastating effects on cities during World War II.
J. Radio
1. Guglielmo Marconi, an
Italian, invented wireless telegraphy in the 1890s.
-- Technology used for long-range communication during World War I.
2. First voice-carrying
radio came in Nov. 1920 when KDKA in Pittsburgh carried
the news of the Harding landslide.
3. Later, transatlantic
wireless photographs, radiotelephones, and TV emerged.
4. National Broadcasting
Co. organized in 1926; Columbia Broadcasting Co. in 1927
-- Formed first national radio networks.
5. Impact of the radio:
a. Created a new bustling industry
b. Added to American life as leisure hours were filled listening to programs.
-- Families brought closer together in the face of the automobile.
c. Nation more closely-knit.
i. Various sections heard Americans with standardized accents.
ii. Millions "tuned in" to comedy favorites like "Amos and Andy."
d. Advertising perfected as an art.
e. Sports further stimulated
f. Politicians used the airwaves to garner votes.
g. Newscasts informed millions of listeners.
h. Music of famous artists and symphony orchestras beamed into homes.
K. Movies
1. Emergence of the movie
industry
a. 1890s, peep-show penny arcades gained some popularity.
b. First real moving picture in 1903 when the first story sequence reached
the screen.
i. The Great Train Robbery shown in 5-cent theaters
called "nickelodeons."
ii. Attracted large working-class audience.
c. First full-length classic was D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation
(1915) which
glorified the KKK and defamed blacks.
d. Movies got a tremendous boost as anti-German propaganda during World
War I.
e. Hollywood became the movie capital of the world.
i. Silent movies until 1927
ii. Major stars: Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino
iii. Cecil B. de Mille helped found Paramount Pictures in 1914 and
he
produced and directed during the next 40 years more than 70 films
that grossed over $750 million.
f. 1927, first "talkie," The Jazz Singer, featured Al
Jolson in a blackface.
-- Silent movies decreased in popularity and movie theaters now wired up
for sound.
g. By 1930, some color films were being produced.
2. Impact of movies
a. Eclipsed all other new forms of amusement.
i. By 1930, weekly admissions totaled 100 million (many repeaters) in a
population of 123 million.
ii. Vaudeville effectively exterminated and the live theater decreased
in attendance.
iii. Americans spent 10X more $ than 2nd most popular attraction - Sports.
b. Became new major industry employing about 325,000 people in 1930.
c. Actors and actresses, some with huge salaries, became more popular than
the nation’s political leaders.
d. American culture bound more closely together as movies became the standard
for taste,
styles, songs, and morals.
e. Provided education through informative "shorts" such as newsreels and
travelogues.
f. Tabloids and the cheap movie magazine emerged as two by-products of
the
movie industry.
L. Changes in Working Conditions
1. Reduction in Hours
a. 1923 - US Steel offered its workers three eight-hour shifts instead
of a 12-hour
shift, partially because of pressure from Harding.
b. By mid-20s, steel making so efficient that workers given more time off.
2. Welfare Capitalism
- An American Plan of Business
a. If workers are taken care of, no unions or strikes would be needed.
i. Increased employee benefits included one-week paid vacations (two-weeks
for
seniority), basketball courts and baseball diamonds near factories where
workers
could play for an hour, a nurse or doctor available at the factory to treat
injuries or
illnesses, and company cafeterias offering good food at reasonable prices
ii. Union membership declined in the 1920s -- AF of L had 5 million members
in 1920,
but only 3.5 million by 1929.
b. Only one major flaw -- Unions could not compete with industrial prosperity,
so that
wages were not raised significantly.
i. Workers had more time off but no money to spend
ii. Prices increased faster than wages so that workers could not buy many
of the
products they manufactured themselves.
iii. Attempts were made to sell US products overseas, but trade barriers
on foreign
imports entering the US prevented capital from going overseas.
IV. Social life during the "Roaring 20s"
A. Census of 1920 revealed for the first time
that Americans no longer lived in the
countryside but in urban
areas.
B. A sexual revolution
1. Theories of Dr.
Sigmund Freud mistakenly interpreted by Americans that sexual
repression was responsible for a variety of nervous emotional ills.
-- Not pleasure alone, but health, demanded sexual gratification and liberation.
2. The "flaming youth" of
the "Jazz Age" emphasized sexual promiscuity and
drinking, as well as new forms of dancing considered erotic by the older
generation.
a. Occurred mostly among some urban dwellers, middle class people, and
students, who
were an economically-select group at the time.
b. Behavior: new codes for dancing and dress -- Charleston, thinner clothes,
juvenile look, sleeveless dresses, shorter skirts
c. Double standard: Women began to assert publicly their right to imitate
male standards (e.g. sexually).
-- Only affection necessary for sex.
d. Reasons for changing standards
i. WWI: Maxim "eat, drink, and be merry" often appears after wars.
-- WWI had highest ratio of killed & injured to participants in any
war.
-- Small matters of morality seemed less important after carnage
ii. Women: greater independence, less parental supervision, 19th Amend.,
-- Joined labor force in large numbers and more lived alone.
iii. Impersonality of urban areas
iv. Automobile, by giving people mobility and privacy, generally considered
to have
contributed to sexual license.
4. Although illegal,
birth control promoted by Margaret Sanger and others and was
widely accepted.
5. Sexual revolution
brought about some emancipation
a. Flapper styles expressed the new freedom of women
b. One-piece bathing suits shocked older Americans.
c. Women could smoke & socialize with men in public more freely than
before.
6. As women became more independent,
they continued to organize
a. National Women’s Party began in 1923 to agitate for an Equal Rights
Amendment to
the Constitution (ERA) -- Alice Paul
i. Idea shocked traditionalists
ii. Amendment finally defeated in early 1980s.
b. League of Women Voters founded in 1920 by leaders of the NAWSA.
c. Divorce laws were liberalized in many states at the insistence of women
-- 1920 = 1 divorce for ever 7.5 marriages; 1929 = 1 in 6
d. Many women stayed in the work force after WWI
e. Rise in church and synagogue membership as a reaction to a changing
society.
-- Rise of nationally popular evangelists: Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple
McPherson
C. "Jazz"
1. The term "Jazz" became
popular after WWI (dance music)
2. Pre-WWI development
a. African influenced slave spirituals grew into jubilees and the blues.
b. Blacks folk music retained a certain melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic
element
that formed a common body of sound.
3. Late 19th Century
a. Minstrelsy, vaudeville, sentimental ballads, & band music were the
most popular
genres among both white and black audiences.
b. Ragtime works became published in the late 1890's; considered to
be earliest jazz.
-- First black music ever to achieve widespread popularity and comical
distribution.
c. Blues developed simultaneously along with ragtime
4. New Orleans Dixieland
Jazz
a. Group improvisation: trumpet playing the lead, the clarinet playing
a counter melody,
trombone playing more counter melody, piano, guitar or banjo for accompaniment,
bass
or tuba, and drums.
b. Moderate to fast tempos in 2/4 meter
c. Louis Armstrong become first master improviser--some
see this as the creation of jazz.
d. During WWI, the migration of blacks north also meant the migration of
jazz to northern cities.
5. New Orleans exports jazz
a. In the 20's, Chicago became a center among jazz musicians. Many came
from New
Orleans. Would later become the center during the 1930's swing era.
b. New York also flourished (the Cotton Club) during Harlem Renaissance
E. The Harlem Renaissance
1. Development
a. Harlem, a black enclave in NYC with about 100,000 residents in the 1920s,
grew rapidly during and after WWI (largest black pop. in Northern U.S.)
b. Significance: Harlem produced a wealth of African American poetry,
literature, art,
and music, expressing the pain, sorrow, and discrimination blacks
felt at this time.
2. Poets: Langston Hughes
& Claude McKay
3. Jazz: Duke
Ellington (1899-1974) and the Cotton Club (famous night club)
-- Piano player who formed one of most famous Jazz bands in history.
4. Marcus Garvey
a. Leader of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
i. "Back to Africa Movement": Purpose was to promote the resettlement of
American
blacks in Africa.
ii. Advocated black racial pride and separatism rather than integration.
-- Urged blacks to buy only from blacks & founded chain of businesses
including grocery stores, restaurants, and laundries.
iii. Garvey a native of Jamaica and founded UNIA there.
b. Black Star Steamship Co., intended to transport his black followers
to
Africa, went bankrupt in 1923.
c. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover monitored Garvey and eventually sought
to
have him arrested and imprisoned.
-- Garvey convicted of mail fraud in sale of line’s stock, imprisoned,
and then deported.
d. Garvey instilled self-confidence and self-reliance among blacks, and
later
became the basis for the Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) movement in 1960s
G. The "Lost Generation"
1. After WWI, a new generation
of writers outside of the dominant Protestant
New England burst upon the literary scene.
a. Their works often conveyed resentment of ideals betrayed by society.
b. Term coined by Gertrude Stein, one of leaders of "Lost Generation"
2. Henry L. Mencken,
in his American Mercury magazine, assailed marriage,
patriotism, democracy, prohibition, Rotarians, and the middle-class American
"booboisie."
a. Attacked do-gooders as "Puritans": Puritanism was the "haunting fear
that
someone, somewhere, might be happy."
b. Became somewhat of patron saint of many young authors who he admired
for their critical attitude toward American society.
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940)
a. At age 24, published This Side of Paradise; he became an overnight
celebrity.
i. Became a kind of Bible for the young; read by aspiring flappers
and their
lovers, who displayed a bewildered abandon toward life.
ii. "All gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken"
b. The Great Gatsby (1925) -- depicted the glamour and cruelty
of an
achievement-oriented society.
4. Theodore Dreisler:
An American Tragedy
-- Dealt with the murder of a pregnant working girl by her socially ambitious
young lover.
5. Ernest Hemingway
(1889-1961)
a. Fought in WWI on the Italian front in 1917.
-- Among the writers most affected by the war.
b. Responded to propaganda and overblown appeal of patriotism by
devising his own lean, word-sparing style.
c. The Sun Also Rises (1926) -- wrote of disillusioned, spiritually
numb
American expatriates in Europe.
d. Farewell to Arms (1929) -- One of the finest novels in
any language
about the war experience.
e. Shot himself in the head in 1961.
6. Sinclair Lewis
(1885-1951)
a. Chronicled midwestern life from his home in Minnesota as acquisitive,
amoral, and
hypercritical.
b. Mainstreet (1920) -- Story of one woman’s unsuccessful
war against
provincialism.
c. Babbitt (1922) -- Affectionately pilloried George F. Babbitt,
a prosperous
vulgar, middle-class real estate broker who slavishly conformed to the
respectable materialism of his group.
7. William Faulkner
(1897-1962) -- Mississipian
a. Considered perhaps the best American novelist of the 20th
century.
b. Soldier’s Pay (1926) -- Bitter war novel
c. The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930) depicted
the
consciousness from the constricted souls of his ingrown southern characters.
8. Poetry
a. T.S. Eliot (took up residence and citizenship in England in 1927)
-- "The Waste Land" (1922): One of the most influential poems of
the century.
b. Robert Frost criticized his adopted New England.
c. e. e. cummings -- most innovative of all
-- Relied on diction & peculiar typesetting to produce new poetical
effects.
G. Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright
1. Most famous architect
in U.S. history.
2. Buildings should grow
from their sites; not slavishly imitate Greek & Roman models.
-- Guggenheim Museum in New York City most famous
Bibliography:
Bailey, Thomas A., Kennedy, David M.: The American Pageant, 10th
edition, Lexington,
Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1994
College Board, Advanced Placement Course Description: History --
United States, European
History, College Entrance Examination Board,
1996
Foner, Eric & Garraty, John A. editors: The Reader’s Companion
to American History, Boston:
Houghton MifflinCompany, 1991
McKay, John P., Hill, Bennett D., and Buckler, John, A History of
Western Society, 5th edition,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1995
Nash, Gary : American Odyssey, Lake Forest, Illinois: Glencoe,
1992
Schultz, Constance G., The American History Videodisc Master Guide,
Annapolis, Maryland:
Instruction Resources Corporation, 1995
Yanak, Ted and Cornelison, Pam, The Great American History Fact-Finder,
Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1993
Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States, New York:
Harper and Row, 1980