• Prosperity returns to the United States

• Return to Normalcy

• Isolationism

• Increasing businesses, standard of living

• Teapot Dome Scandal

• Secretary of Interior – Albert Fall

• Granted oil drilling rights to companies in CA and WY in return for $300,000.00 worth of bribes

• Fall went to jail

• Harding died of a heart attack

• VP Coolidge becomes president and wins reelection.

Albert Fall secretly leased government land to private oil companies. Although he claimed these contracts were in the

government’s best interest, he suddenly received more than $400,000 in “loans,

bonds, and cash.”

“I have no trouble with my enemies…But my…friends, they’re the ones that keep

me walking the floor nights!” ~ Warren G. Harding~

Harding and Coolidge

“"The business of the American people is business."

~ Calvin Coolidge~

Coolidge

•Supported big business

•Laissez -faire economics – government is hands off

•Natural cycles will fix any problems with the economy

•Stock Market did very well

Lives of the People

Then

• once isolated rural communities

• tightly controlled values

• high standards of religious morality

• Close social relationships

Now

• less control over the whole community

• Cities = competition and change;

• Drinking, gambling, casual behaviors accepted

The agricultural world that millions of Americans left behind was largely

unchanged from the 19th century. That world was one of conservative moral values and close social relationships. Those small-

town attitudes lost their hold on the American mind as the city rose to

prominence. City-dwellers tolerated a freer lifestyle—one that included drinking,

gambling, and casual dating. The Cotton Club in the 1920s was symbolic of this new

city and jazz lifestyle.

“Cities were the place to be, not to get away from.”

Standard of Living• Wealth changed American living

• Effects of the automobile

• Mechanization = cheaper products = more people have products

• freedom to travel

• urban sprawl - Workers live away from jobs, cities sprawl in all directions

• Airlines develop

• First with U.S. mail, then into major transportation industry

• Electricity boom

• Radio industry grows

The new president, Calvin Coolidge, fit into the pro-business spirit of the 1920s.

Both Coolidge and his Republican successor Hoover, favored laissez-faire

policies that would keep taxes down and business profits up, and give businesses more credit to expand. Their goal was to

keep government interference in business to a minimum to allow private enterprise to flourish. Manufacturers flourished, and wages were rising, and

productivity was high.

“The chief business of the American people is business…The man who builds a

factory builds a temple—the man who works there, worships there.”

In 1927, the last Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line. On December 2, some 1 million New Yorkers mobbed show rooms to view the new Model A.

One difference between the two models was that customers could order them in colors, while the old Model T only came in black. The automobile became the backbone of the American economy in the 1920s. It profoundly altered

the American landscape and American society. The automobile liberated the isolated rural family, who could now travel to the city for shopping and

entertainment. It allowed both women and young people to become more independent. It allowed workers to live miles from their jobs, resulting in

urban sprawl. By the late 1920s, around 80% of all registered vehicles in the world were in the U.S.—about one car for every five people.

The Model A was a more luxurious car than the

Model T. It was introduced at $495. Model T’s were

selling for $290.

“Good-looking as that car is, its performance is better than its appearance. We don’t brag about it, but it has done seventy-one miles

an hour. It will ride along a railroad track without bouncing…It’s the smoothest thing you ever rode in.”

~Ford Salesman

One of the most famous paved roads was Route 66, which provided a route for people

trekking west from Chicago to California. Commissioned on

the cusp of the Depression and begun in 1926, Route 66 symbolized the road to

opportunity. Also known as the “Mother Road,” it became the subject of countless songs,

films, books, and legends. The automobile also launched the rapid construction of gasoline stations, repair shops, public

garages, motels, tourist camps, and shopping centers.

The use of electricity transformed the nation. American factories used

electricity to run their machines, and the development of the alternating current made it possible to distribute power over long distances, like the

suburbs.

By the end of the 1920s, more and more homes had electric irons, refrigerators, cooking ranges, and toasters. These

electrical appliances made lives of housewives easier, freed

them for other community and leisure activities, and coincided with a growing trend of women

working outside the home.

American consumers in the 1920s could purchase the latest household electrical

appliances, such as the refrigerator, for as little as a dollar down and a dollar a week.

Prosperity

• growth of advertising industry

• productivity increases

• Businesses growing

• Iron, railroad, farmers behind

• buying on the installment plan increases consumption

• Buy goods over a period of time with little or no money down (credit)

• Ford and Prosperity

• Assembly line production

• workers as consumers

• $5 day plan

• Prime examples of increased prosperity in 1920s

“She was a beautiful girl and talented too. She had the advantages of education and better clothes than most girls of her set. She possessed that culture and poise that

travel brings. Yet in one pursuit that stands foremost in the mind of every girl

and woman—marriage—she was a failure.”

~Listerine advertisement in the 1920s, trying to convince readers that without Listerine a person could have bad breath, which would

lead to disaster.

“Enjoy while you pay.”

New Role of Women

• Victorian Age view of women

• Cult of domesticity

• Flapper was a young women of modern times

• hair styles, dress, attitudes, behavior

• Double standard of behavior

• Clash of conservative values

• Many women pulled between old standards and new

“Rouge means that women want to choose their man—not take what lives in the next house…

[Women] want to choose their destinies—to be successful competitors in the great game of lif

e.”

The flapper was an emancipated young woman who embraced the new fashions and urban attitudes of the day. Close-fitting felt hats, bright waistless dresses an inch above

the knee, skin-toned silk stockings, sleek pumps, and strings of beads replaced old

Victorian dressings. Young women clipped their hair into boyish bobs and died it jet black. They became assertive, smoking

cigarettes, drinking in public, and talking openly about sex. They danced the fox trot, camel walk, tango, Charleston, and shimmy with abandon. Attitudes toward marriage

changed, too, with men and women becoming equal partners.

~Women in the 1920s~

New Role of Women

-Opportunities increase

• Teachers, nurses, librarians

• New clerical jobs, old men’s jobs

-families change

Margaret Sanger and birth control

• Jobs and conveniences allow women more freedom

• Birth control clinics available

“I consider time for reading clubs and my children more important than…careful

housework and I just don’t do it.”

The birthrate had been

declining for several decades, and it dropped

at a slightly faster rate in the

1920s. This decline was due in part to wider availability of birth control information.

Margaret Sanger, who

opened the first birth control

clinic in 1916, founded the

American Birth Control League

in 1921 and fought for the legal rights of physicians to

give birth control

information to their patients.

Prohibition• 18th Amendment

-banned alcohol

• Manufacture, sale, transport, and consumption

-many people resented the new law that regulated behavior

-gov’t never tried to really enforce the law – not enough money or people to enforce law

-speakeasies

drinking clubs – hidden saloons and nightclubs; must present a card or password to get inside

-bootleggers: smuggled alcohol into the U.S. from Canada, Cuba, West Indies

“The reign of tears is over! The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will

laugh. Hell will be forever for rent!”

To obtain liquor illegally, drinkers went to underground saloons and nightclubs known

as “speakeasies.” Speakeasies could be found everywhere—in penthouses, cellars,

office buildings, rooming houses, tenements. To be admitted, one had to

present a card or use a password. Before long, people grew bolder in getting around the law. They learned to distill alcohol and built their own stills. People also bought

liquor from bootleggers.

Prohibition

-growth of organized crime

Al Capone (Chicago)

• Controlled alcohol and bootlegging by killing off opponents

By age 26, Al Capone headed a criminal empire in Chicago, which he controlled through the use of bribes and violence. From 1925 to 1931, Capone

bootlegged whiskey from Canada, operated illegal breweries in Chicago, and ran a network of 10,000

speakeasies. In 1927, the “Big Fellow,” as he liked to be called was worth and estimated $100 million. The end came quickly for Capone, though. In 1931, the

gangster chief was arrested for tax evasion and went to jail. That was the only crime of which the

authorities were ever able to convict him. Capone was later release from jail, but he died of an STD

several years later at age 48.

“The famous seven-ton armored car, with the pudgy gangster lolling on silken cushions in its darkened recesses, a big cigar in his fat face, and a $50,000

diamond ring blazing from his left hand, was one of sights of Chicago. The mere whisper: ‘Here comes

Al,’ was sufficient to stop traffic and to set thousands of curious citizens craning their necks along the

curbing.”

Science and Religion

-Fundamentalism

religious movement focusing on the truth of the Bible

• Skeptical of scientific theories

-Billy Sunday

-Aimee Semple McPherson

Fundamentalists were skeptical of some scientific theories, arguing that all

important knowledge could be found in the Bible. They believed that the Bible was

inspired by God; therefore, its stories in all their details were true. Fundamentalism was led by Billy Sunday, a baseball player turned preacher. In Los Angeles, Aimee

Semple McPherson used Hollywood showmanship to preach the word to the

followers of her radio broadcasts.

“If a minister believes and teaches evolution, he is a stinking skunk, a

hypocrite, and a liar.”~Billy Sunday

Science and Religion

-Scopes Trial

John Scopes arrested for teaching evolution

• A crime in Tennessee

Clarence Darrow (defends Scopes)

William J. Bryan (prosecutor)

In 1925, Tennessee passed the nation’s first law that made it a crime to teach

evolution. The American Civil Liberties Union promised to defend any teacher who would challenge the law. John T.

Scopes accepted the challenge, and was promptly arrested. The Scopes Trial

became a national sensation.

“We have now learned that animal forms may be arranged so as to begin with the simple one-

celled forms and culminate with a group which includes man himself.”

~John T. Scopes reading from his Civic Biology book

The trial opened on July 10, 1925, and almost overnight became a

national sensation. Darrow called Bryan an expert on the Bible—the contest that everyone had been

waiting for. To handle the throngs of Bryan supporters, the judge moved the court outside, to a

platform build under the maple trees. There, before a crowd of

several thousand, Darrow relentlessly questioned Bryan about his beliefs. Bryan stood

firm, a smile on his face. Finally, Darrow asked Bryan, “Do you think the earth was made in six days?” Bryan answered, “Not six days of 24 hours.” People sitting on the lawn gasped. With this answer, Bryan admitted that the Bible

might be interpreted in different ways. But in spite of this

admission, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. The

Tennessee Supreme Court later changed the verdict on a

technicality.