Chapter 32: American Life in the Roaring Twenties (1919-1929)

Seeing Red The coincidence of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the formation of an American Communist party, and a series of strikes (caused by high prices and thwarted attempts at unionizing) led many, such as evangelist Billy Sunday, to believe that Communism would bring anarchy to the US 1919 to 1920 the red scare was a nationwide crusade against radicals and left-wingers Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer overzealously rounded up suspects Hysteria was stoked by bombs in June 1919 in Washington and September 1920 on Wall Street December 1919 a shipload of alleged alien radicals on the Buford were deported to Russia Many states passed criminal syndicalism laws that forbade the advocacy of violence to secure social change; were criticized for restricting freedom of speech Conservative businesspeople used the red scare to break unions and denounce them as Sovietist 1921 laborers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of the murder of a MA paymaster despite weak evidence because the judge and jury were prejudiced against them because they were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers; despite the efforts of liberals and radicals, 1927 they were electrocuted

Hooded Hoodlums of Starting early 1920s, a new KKK arose that opposed foreigners, Catholics, blacks, Jews, the KKK pacifism, Communism, internationalism, evolution, bootlegging, gambling, adultery, and birth control and that supported Anglo-Saxons, Protestants, and native-born Americans Peaked in the mid-1920s, esp. in the Midwest and the Bible Belt, with 5 million members and significant political influence Had secret ritual, parades, burning crosses as warnings, and lashings as punishment Late 1920s, suddenly declined, because people recoiled from their terrorism, and because they were exposed as embezzlers and racketeers Stemming the Foreign 1920s immigration rebounded, again with most coming from southern and eastern Europe, and again many native-born Americans opposed the influx of Europe's wretched Flood refuse The 1921 Emergency Quota Act restricted the number of immigrants of each nationality per year to 3% of their current population in America that had been residents since 1910; was favorable to southern and eastern European immigrants The 1924 Immigration Act replaced the Emergency Quota Act and reduced the percentage to 2% while pushing back the year of residence to 1890, so was disadvantageous to southern and eastern Europeans, and prohibited Japanese immigration; goal was to maintain America's existing racial composition, which was mostly northern European The pivotal adoption of immigration quotas sacrificed some of America's tradition of freedom, opportunity, and diversity and marked the end of a century of unrestricted immigration Immigration fell dramatically; 1931 for the first time in American history, more foreigners left than arrived Ethnic differences got in the way of class and political solidarity

 The Prohibition Experiment

1919 the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act prohibited all alcoholic drinks Southerners supported because wanted to keep the blacks from becoming stimulated, and Westerners supported because was an attack on the vices of saloons Immigrants in the East opposed because much of their culture involved drinking But prohibition was ineffective because America had a weak central government and a strong tradition of drinking To dodge prohibition, speakeasies arose that served bootlegged alcohol (often from the West Indies and Canada) in secret, and many took to home brewing, with mixed results But prohibition still succeeded in increasing bank savings and reducing absenteeism in industry The profitable illegal alcohol trade led to gang wars and bribery of police The center of the violence was at Chicago with Al Capone and his gang The gangs went on to also profit from prostitution, gambling, and narcotics, and would force legitimate merchants to pay protection money By 1930, organized crime had become one of the nations biggest businesses 1932 aviator-hero Charles A. Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped for ransom and murdered, so the Lindbergh Law was passed that made interstate abduction punishable by death Increasingly in the 1920s, states were requiring youths to remain in school until late adolescence or high school graduation, and more than 1 in 4 17-year-olds were high school graduates Professor John Dewey set forth the principle of learning by doing of the more permissive progressive education Public health, nutrition, and health care had improved greatly, and the life expectancy was up to 59 years Fundamentalists opposed the teaching of evolution because believed that it undermined the faith of and contributed to the moral decline of youth, so got laws passed in a few states, including Tennessee, that forbade it in public schools 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in a high-profile court case; but was not a great victory for the fundies, because Scopes only had to pay $100, and the fundies were ridiculed Increasingly, Christians reconciled their beliefs with modern science, though fundamentalism would remain strong in the Baptist Church and Church of Christ After a recession in 1920 and 1921, the economy took off for seven years because of the recent war, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's tax policies, productivity-increasing machines, and assembly-line production The electricity and automobile industries boomed The character of the American economy shifted from solving problems in production to finding enough mass markets, so advertising came into vogue, ex. Bruce Barton's 1925 The Man Nobody Knows that argued that Jesus Christ was the greatest adman of all time Sports became big business with the phenomenal popularity of ex. baseball player Babe Ruth and heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey

The Golden Age of Gangsterism

Monkey Business in Tennessee

The MassConsumption Economy

 For the first time, consumers could buy on credit, so increased debt while being able to afford more things now Putting America on Rubber Tires The automobile, among other inventions, heralded a new industrial system based assembly lines and mass production Early cars, ex. those by Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds, were slow and unreliable Detroit became the car capital of America with the help of Frederick W. Taylor's reduction of wasted motion through the principle of scientific management Henry Ford was the most famous of the new industrialists; applied assembly-line production so well that by the mid-1920s his Model T was priced well within the range of the working class By 1929, about 1 in 5 Americans owned a car, more cars than anywhere else on Earth Economic effects included new jobs in industries that fed the automobile industry, esp. the petroleum industry, a higher standard of living, reduced usage of railways, increased marketing of perishable foods such as fresh fruits grown by outlying farmers, the building of countless new hard-surfaced roads, and the introduction of installment-plan buying Social effects included the development of the car as a symbol of freedom and equality, the emergence of a new way to spend leisure time, reduced dependence of women on men, population loss of less attractive states, the consolidation of schools, and the spread of suburbs Because it did not produce manure, the car contributed to improved air and environmental quality However, negative effects included fatalities from car accidents and the perceived decline of youths' morals December 1907 Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright achieved the first flight in a heavierthan-air craft Airplanes, though still rather dangerous, were used successfully in WWI, and after the war were used to transport passengers and mail 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh became the first to fly solo across the Atlantic, became a national hero, and dramatized and popularized flying Effects of airplanes included a new aviation industry, reduced use of railroads, a new weapon for war, and and shrinking world

The Advent of the Gasoline Age (or, Effects of the Automobile)

Humans Develop Wings

The Radio Revolution 1890s Italian Guglielmo Marconi invented the telegraph Many collaborated to make the voice-carrying radio November 1920 was the first news broadcast over radio, and late 1920s long-distance broadcasting was possible Unlike the government-owned stations of Europe, US stations were mostly public or commercial Effects: Brought people together to the neighborhood's only radio and by having millions listen to the same programs Were another media for commercials to be broadcast

 Widened the audiences of politicians, musicians, sports, and news Hollywood's Filmland Thomas A. Edison was a major contributor to the invention of the movie Fantasies 1890s movies were used mostly for porn, and 1903 the first real movie was The Great Train Robbery A new industry quickly arose centered in Hollywood, CA Early motion pictures featured nudity and were heavily suggestive, and producers were forced to set up their own code of censorship because of public outrage The motion picture took off after WWI, having been used as a medium for kill the kaiser propaganda films 1927 The Jazz Singer was the first talkie produced; color would come soon after Movies quickly became the primary form of entertainment, and movie stars enjoyed huge salaries and fame Movies and radio helped to unify the working classes, though they lost some Old Country culture The Dynamic Decade 1920 for the first time, more Americans lived in the cities than in the country Women clustered in low-paying jobs such as clerking and typing in cities, Margaret Sanger encouraged the use of contraceptives, and Alice Paul's National Women's Party called for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution Conservative churches lost ground to the Modernists who believed God was a good guy and that the universe was a good place Culture was highly sexualized, to the older generations' dismay; ads often used sex to sell, women (flappers) showed more skin and independence, and teenagers were more adventurous Viennese physician Sigmund Freud argued that sexual repression was detrimental to mental health Jazz music originated in New Orleans with such black musicians as Handy, Jelly Roll Morton, and Joseph King Oliver, but gained mainstream popularity with all-white bands, such as that of Paul Whiteman The Harlem Renaissance was a blossoming of black racial pride, ex. Langston Hughes's poetry and Marcus Garvey's unsuccessful but rousing attempts at promoting black welfare through the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Cultural Liberalism The new generation of writers were often disillusioned, young, and questioning of traditional values and literary standards H. L. Mencken in his monthly American Mercury viciously criticized such things as the South, Puritanism, patriotism, prohibition, and marriage F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 This Side of Paradise was popular among the new generation of bewildered abandon toward life, and his 1925 The Greaty Gatsby highlighted the glamour and cruelty of 1920s high society In Theodore Dreiser's 1925 An American Tragedy, a socially ambitious lover murders his pregnant girlfriend Ernest Hemingway saw action in WWI; his 1926 The Sun Also Rises told the stories of disillusioned, numb American ex-patriots in Europe, and his 1929 A Farewell to Arms

told of the war experience Sherwood Anderson's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio featured characters whose minds were warped by their cramped surroundings Sinclair Lewis's 1920 Main Street told the story of a woman's unsuccessful struggle against provincialism, and his 1922 Babbitt pointed out the materialism of the middle class William Faulkner's 1926 Soldier's Pay was a bitter war novel, and his 1929 The Sound and the Fury and 1930 As I Lay Dying told the history of an imaginary Deep South county Poets included Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot (1922 The Waste Land), Robert Frost, and the unorthodox e.e. cummings Playwrite Eugene O'Neill's 1928 Strange Interlude dealt with Freudian notions of sex In the Harlem Renaissance, black writers such as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston and jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Eubie Blake celebrated black culture and argued for a New Negro who was equal to whites Architecture was directed by materialism and functionalism by such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright, ex. the Empire State Building Despite the prosperity, the economy was still at risk of crashing Wall Street's Big Bull Gross overspeculation of real estate in Florida Market Stocks were also overspeculated, and were often bought on margin with a small down payment, but could pay off richly The government's involvement in the economy: Did not do much because surplus funds were being directed towards the immense war debt 1921 a Republican Congress created the Bureau of the Budget that estimated receipts and expenditures to submit to Congress for the annual budget Secretary of the Treasury Mellon and other millionaires (mellonites) believed that high taxes on the wealthy discouraged business and ended up bringing in less revenue, so he and Congress reduced taxes on income, land, and many else; reduced the $26 billion debt by $10 billion, but now the middle class bore most of the tax burden