Postwar Social Change (1920-1929)

I. Society in the 1920’s

• The 1920’s helped create what we think of today as modern America.

• Flappers- young women who were rebellious, energetic, fun-loving, and bold symbolized the revolution away from the traditional values that had “led to war”

A. Women’s Changing Roles

• Both single and married women had been in the work place for a long time

• Yet, the % of women in the work force continued to rise, women gained the right to vote (19th Amendment), and women wanted more equality with men

1. The Flapper Image• The flapper represented only a small number of

American women, yet her image had a wide impact on fashion and behavior

• Shorter skirts - from 9 inches above the ground to knee length or even higher

• Short hair-cuts, didn’t wear wide-brimmed hats

• Began to drink strong drinks and smoke cigarettes – Partly in protest of prohibition, but also to express their

new freedom

2. Women Working and Voting• Many women changed their fashion because it was

more convenient

• More women were getting jobs, but only 15% of working women were professionals– Owners feared women would quit once they married and

got pregnant

• It took women nearly a decade to begin to vote with any regularity– They had more influence in local elections than national

B. Americans on the Move

• Changes in demographics occurred in the 1920’s

• Demographics are the statistics that describe a population, such as data on race or income

• Most people moved away from the countryside

1. Rural-Urban Split• A wealth gap developed between the rural and urban

societies.

• Farmers began to be economically stressed while the industrial and commercial economy began to boom

• This led about 6 million people to move from farms to the city in the 1920’s– Changed the importance of public schools– Changed the ideas about traditional values

• Why?

2. African American’s in the North

• African Americans continued their great migration north to get away from the Jim Crow South and to seek jobs in the industrial North

• Blacks still faced anger and hatred from many whites who believed they were taking jobs and lowering wages

3. Other Migration• Congress acted to limit immigration during the

1920’s, esp. from Southern and Eastern Europe, China, and Japan

• Employers turned to immigrant workers from Mexico and Canada to fill low-paying jobs

• Mexicans worked the farms of California and the ranches of Texas– Barrios were Spanish-speaking neighborhoods (LA)

4. Growth of the Suburbs• Cities built transportation systems that used electric

trolleys powered by overhead wires to get people to and from their suburban homes

• Buses became available in the 1920’s and the automobile became much more affordable

• Henry Ford’s Model T is going to allow a rapid growth in suburban homes

C. American Heroes• The nation became fascinated with heroes such as:

– Charles Lindbergh- 1st to fly across the Atlantic – Amelia Earhart- 1st woman to fly the Atlantic– Jack Dempsy- American boxing hero– Jim Thorpe- Olympic gold medals in track, pro football

player, pro baseball player (Native American)– Babe Ruth- Professional baseball player– Gertrude Ederle- Olympic swimmer and swam the

English Channel faster than any male (a Flapper)

II. Mass Media and the Jazz Age• During the 1920’s, a national culture began to form

instead of the regional cultures that existed before the invention of mass media

• Mass media are print, film, and broadcast methods of communicating information to large #s of people– Allowed people throughout the U.S. to be influenced by

the same movies, the same music, etc.

A. Types of Mass Media• Movies- Silent films continued to succeed, but

“talkies” or movies with talking quickly began to gain popularity

• Newspapers and Magazines- Profits, not quality, continued to drive the tabloids– “90% entertainment, 10% information”

• Radio- Enjoyed tremendous growth; networks such as NBC linked many stations together

• The Mass Media brought the same forms of entertainment and influence to everyone in the U.S.

B. The Jazz Age

• Both the growing popularity of the radio and the great African American migration to the cities helped make a music called jazz widely popular in the 1920’s

1. Jazz Arrives• Jazz grew out of the African American music of the

South, especially ragtime and blues

• Jazz became a nationwide craze in the 1920’s leading the era to be known as the Jazz Age– Symbolized the free manners and morals of the decade

with the breathless, energetic times of the 1920’s

2. Jazz Clubs and Dance Halls

• Harlem, a district on the northern end of Manhattan, was one of the most popular places to listen to Jazz.– There were over 500 Jazz clubs in Harlem

• Flappers would often dance to jazz on the radio and in dance halls and dancing became a national craze

3. The Jazz Spirit• Poetry and painting were influenced by Jazz as was

literature

• Artists focused on everyday life and did not shy away from life’s rougher side

• Some artists disagreed with the Jazz Era of art and left the country for Europe because they were “disconnected from their country and its values”- They were known as a Lost Generation

C. The Harlem Renaissance• New York City’s Harlem was the cultural center of

the U.S. for African Americans

• The Harlem Renaissance- was an African American literary awakening of the 1920’s– African Americans expressed their political, cultural,

social, and economic wants and needs through literature

• Langston Hughes, a poet, short story writer, journalist, and playwright whose career stretched into the 1960’s is the most studied individual from the Harlem Renaissance (pg. 389)

III. Cultural Conflicts

• Prohibition- 18th Amendment (1920)

• Religious Conflict

• Racial Tensions

A. Prohibition

• Main Goals:– Eliminate drunkenness and the resulting abuses– Get rid of saloons, where immoral acts take place– Prevent absenteeism and on-the-job accidents from

people being drunk

1. Bootlegging• The bootlegger- a new type of criminal who was a

supplier of illegal alcohol– Some made their own alcohol to sell; others smuggled

the alcohol in from Canada or the Caribbean

• Speakeasies- Bars that were operated illegally– Flourished in the cities– Ex. Boston had 4,000 speakeasies and 15,000

bootleggers

2. Organized Crime

• Huge potential for profits from bootlegging led to the development of organized crime

• Local gangsters operated independently at first, but eventually created large, complex rings of bootleggers

• Rival gangs would compete for profit, and death and violence followed

3. Al Capone• The most notorious gangster

• Operated primarily in Chicago

• Nickname= Scarface

• Murdered his way to the top of Chicago’s organized crime network

• Made $60 million a year from bootlegging

• Bribed police and others to avoid jail until the Fed. Court convicted him of tax-evasion in 1931– Investigation led by J. Edgar Hoover

B. Issues of Religion

• Tended to split the country along urban and rural lines with the teaching of evolution

• Teaching of evolution began in the 1920’s

1. Fundamentalism

• Fundamentalism- support of traditional Christian ideas about Jesus, plus they argue that God inspired the Bible so every story in the Bible is exactly true

• Some fundamentalists used the radio as a way to broaden their reach

2. Evolution and the Scopes Trial• Fundamentalists denounced evolution

• Tennessee passed a ban of teaching evolution in school so John T. Scopes went to court to challenge the ruling as unconstitutional (the Scopes Trial)

• Very high profile case with famous lawyers and it was the first trial ever broadcast over the radio

• Scopes was fined $100 for breaking the law

C. Racial Tensions

• Mob violence between whites and blacks broke out in 1919

• “Red Summer” was its nickname for all of the blood that was spilled

• The lynching of the Jim Crow era continued

1. Revival of the Klan• The KKK was largely eliminated during

Reconstruction, but by 1922- membership had grown to 100,000

• By the end of 1922, its membership was 4 million

• The new Klan was no longer just a Southern organization.

• They wanted to defend their own white-Protestant culture against any group (not just black) that seemed un-American to them

2. Fighting Discrimination

• The NAACP worked very hard to get anti-lynching laws passed– Lynching gradually decreased to ONLY 10 by

1929

• The NAACP also worked to protect voting rights, but with only limited success

Politics and Prosperity (1920-1929)

I. A Republican Decade• The memory of WWI was fresh in everyone’s mind

in 1920

• The Senate still refused to accept the Versailles Treaty and refused to join the League of Nations

• Warren G. Harding (Republican) won the Presidential race with a call for a “return to normalcy”

A. The Red Scare

• “Normalcy” appealed to Americans in 1920

• Upheaval in Russia and a series of strikes and bombings in the U.S. convinced Americans that political violence posed a real threat to the U.S.

1. The Russian Revolution• Revolutionary leader Vladimir I. Lenin promised

“peace, land, and bread”

• His “Bolsheviks” overthrew the existing government, pulled out of WWI, and put all farms, industries, land, and transportation under government control

• Lenin made communism the official ideology of Russia which was openly hostile to American beliefs

Communism meant:• The government owned all land and property

– A “classless society”

• A single political party controlled the government

• The needs of the country always took priority over the rights of individuals

• Lenin believed communism needed to spread throughout the world in order to survive

2. American Fears• Russia’s intention to spread communism to other

countries alarmed many Americans

• Many worried that Southern and Eastern European immigrants were Communists or other radicals– Communists tried to overthrow Germany after WWI and

Communists came to power in Hungary

• The U.S. soon was in a Red Scare– An intense fear of communism and other politically

radical ideas

The Red Scare

• Reds- the nickname for Lenin’s army and eventually for Communists

• Americans called for known communists to be jailed or driven out of the country

• Rights of individuals were sacrificed during the Red Scare to “protect national security”

3. Sacco and Vanzetti• The Red Scare played a part in one of the most

controversial events in U.S. history

• Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists and Italian immigrants who were arrested and connected with a deadly robbery– Many Americans suspected that they were arrested

simply for being immigrants with radical beliefs

• A case with international attention convicted the two men and sentenced them to death despite contrasting evidence– Died in electric chairs 4 months later despite mass protest

B. Labor Strikes• A wave of strikes in 1919 helped fuel the Red

Scare– There were more than 3,500 strikes including police

strikes in Boston

• Many Americans were fearful that Communists were to blame for the high number of work stoppages since many labor union workers were immigrants

• Gradually, strikes would decrease over the 1920’s

C. Republican Leadership• Americans felt that the Republican party was more

likely to restore stability than the Democratic Party

• Republicans controlled all three branches of government during the 1920’s

• Republican Presidents of the 1920’s were Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover

1. Foreign Policy• Isolationism- Americans wished to avoid political

or economic alliances with foreign countries– Harding opposed joining the League of Nations which is

an excellent example of isolationism– Harding acted to promote business at home by raising

tariffs to record highs (angered European countries trying to pay war debts to the U.S.)

• Harding did call for disarmament- a program in which the nations of the world would voluntarily give up their weapons

2. Domestic Issues• As Americans became more isolationists, they also

became more nativist

• Nativism is a movement favoring native-born Americans over immigrants– Appeared in late 1800’s but flared up again after WWI..

In part because of the Red Scare

• Congress passed a law limiting immigrants- a quota– limits immigration based on a preset # for certain ethnic

groups or nations (Ex.- only 10,000 Italians per/year)

D. The Coolidge Presidency• “Keep cool with Coolidge”-1924

• Believed that “the chief business of the American people is business”

• Believed in Laissez-Faire for American business– Government stays out of business (low taxes, higher

tariffs to protect Americans)– “Hands off”

II. A Business Boom

• By 1920, incomes were on the upward trend again after WWI and many new goods and production methods were taken advantage of

A. A Consumer Economy• The economy of the 1920’s was a

Consumer Economy:– One that depends on a large amount of spending by

consumers (individuals who use, or consume, products)

– Increased spending leads to larger profits for businesses, which in turn pushes up wages and encourages even more spending

1. Buying on Credit• Until the 1920’s, middle-class Americans paid for

everything in cash or barter (trade)

• In the 1920’s, Americans started buying on credit to pay for the new products like cars, refrigerators, and other new products

• Many would pay using an installment plan- the customer makes partial payments at set intervals over a period of time until it’s fully paid – There’s usually an interest rate involved

2. New Products• Refrigerators

• Washing Machines

• Vacuum Cleaners

• Toaster

• Ovens

• Sewing Machines

• Many new products required electricity

3. Advertising

• Marketers began using the mass-media to advertise goods

• Advertising shifted from trying to provide detailed info about a product to trying to create a consumer image for the product

B. Ford and the Automobile

• Rapid growth in the production of automobiles

• Ford made it so almost everyone could afford an automobile

• He massed produced a car called the Model T

1. Ford’s Assembly Line• He adapted an assembly line for his factory

– Each worker does 1 specialized task in the construction of the final product (division of labor)

• Ford didn’t invent the assembly line, but he made it more efficient – The line moved while the workers stayed in place

saving time and energy

• They could assemble a car every 24 seconds using prefabricated parts

• By making so many cars, the price of cars dropped – This made the cars affordable to most Americans

C. Industrial Growth

• Other businesses emerged or grew because of the boom in the automobile industry– Garages, Car Dealerships, Motels, Camp

Grounds, Gas Stations, and Restaurants– Suburbs expanded

• Republican laissez-faire policies also helped the big businesses grow– There were not restrictions on their profits

D. Bypassed by the Boom

• Unskilled Laborers

• African American migrants

• Agricultural workers– Many farmers could not pay back their loans they

took out to get new equipment during WWI when demand was high

– Prices of farm goods went down when demand did

III. The Economy in the Late 1920’s

• Most American’s were optimistic as the economy had been booming under Laissez-faire economic conditions

A. Economy Appears Healthy

• Herbert Hoover easily won the 1928 Presidential election– He had been the Secretary of Commerce and

was a self-made millionaire

• Most expected that Hoover would help keep the good economic times around

1. “Wonderful Prosperity”

• In 1928, stock values rose by $11 billion– The stock market was widely regarded as the

guide for how well the economy was doing

• The New York Times described 1928 as the year of “wonderful prosperity”

• Unemployment was below 4%

2. “Everybody Ought to be Rich”• John J. Raskob- author of the article titled,

“Everybody Ought to be Rich”

• His belief is an excellent example of the confidence in business and the stock market during the 1920’s

• He believed saving $15 a week could bring someone $400 per/month income after investing for 20 years

3. Welfare Capitalism

• Welfare Capitalism- Employers raised wages and provided benefits such as paid vacations, health plans, and English classes for recent immigrants all in the interest of strengthening worker loyalty and morale

• The result- the number of labor unions decreased

B. Economic Danger Signs

• It was not until the economy was in a depression that people looked back and noticed the warning signs of an unsound economy

• “Hind sight is 20/20”

1. Uneven Prosperity• Mainly the rich got richer

• Nearly 80% of all families had no savings

• .1% of Americans owned 34% of the country’s savings

• The government tax policy contributed to this imbalance– The largest tax cuts were to the wealthiest Americans

2. Personal Debt

• Increasing debt was mostly to be blamed on people “buying on credit” for the first time and not being able to make payments

3. Playing the Stock Market• Speculation was popular b/c of high stock prices

– The practice of making high-risk investments in hopes of getting a huge return

• Many small investors entered the stock market for the first time often risking their entire life savings

• Less wealthy investors were able to buy on margin– Pay only a fraction of the stock’s price (10-50%) and

borrow the rest– Brokers charged high interest rates and could collect

payment at any time

4. Too Many Goods, Too Little Demand

• The assembly line turned out goods (products) at record rates but consumers couldn’t buy them fast enough

• There became an over-supply of goods meaning production had to slow– This caused a ripple-effect in the economy– Industries that depend on the car and housing industry

to boom were also forced to slow

5. Trouble for Farmers and Workers

• Congress tried to pass a farm-relief bill

• President Coolidge vetoed it twice – He believed that it was not the government’s

job to provide such assistance– This Laissez-faire attitude would be the same

attitude that Herbert Hoover has during the Great Depression