the ROARING 20’S

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TURMOIL

POLITICAL CONSERVATISM

Homework: Read Ch 27 and complete Reading Notes per NBG

For each section (27.2-27.4), make a t-chart

Contributed to peace and prosperity

•

Did not contribute to peace and prosperity

Americans cheer the return of the AEF

To what kind of an America were the doughboys returning?

all the negative stuffchapter 1

TENSIONS IN AMERICAN SOCIETY

1. Economic Uncertainty

2. Labor Unrest

3. Racism

4. Red-Scare

5. Nativism

6. Prohibition's lawlessness

Reaction to WarEconomics

• Economic downturn– no wartime production– vets returning for jobs

• Agricultural Overproduction

• Competition for jobs– women are displaced– Blacks face mounting

racism in north– calls to restrict

immigration

• Farm prices fall– remain low throughout

the 20’s,– collapse 1929

Labor Unrest

• 1919 – 3,600 strikes

• Limited success

• Most strikes face rigid opposition from owners, government, public opinion

• Labor unions=revolutionary radicalism

• Union membership falls from 5 to 3.4 million

• Owners counter with “American Plan” and welfare capitalism

“AMERICAN PLAN”

• Every working man has freedom of choice in accepting employment and should not be forced to join any organization. He has a right to negotiate himself with his employer

• BUT, employers could require “yellow-dog” contracts as a condition for employment.

“Welfare Capitalism”

• To increase worker loyalty, some employers provided– medical care– housing– recreation– schools

– also:» restrictions on behavior» spies

• “social department”• eligibility for $5 day

AgricultureMechanization + …

Increasing Farm Acreage = …

Overproduction

• supply v. demand ---------- prices fall.

Oklahoma-newly cultivated marginal lands

• 1920. (typical farm = 166 acres) – Only 4 percent had electricity, – 1 percent owned trucks– 3 percent had acquired tractors to replace or

supplement horse and mule power. – 25 percent had automobiles, and – 37 percent enjoyed telephones.

The Great Migration• Impoverished African-American sharecroppers,

oppressed by the Jim Crow laws of the South flock to industrial jobs in northern cities.

estimate: More than 1,000,000 move during the 1920’s

The Great Migration

WWI Veterans"Our second emancipation will be the outcome of this war.“

It was not to be.

• Black casualties 14% compared to whites 6%

• 10 of 70 lynchings in

in 1919 were black vets

• 25 anti-black riots 1919

RACISM IS NOT CONFINED TO THE SOUTH

RED SCARE 1919-1920anti-communist panic

• Anarchists blow up the front of the attorney general’s house along with dozen of other bombings

• Reaction to sometimes violent labor strikes

• Fear of Bolshevism

RED SCARE 1919-1920

• Bolshevism– based on theories of

Karl Marx– anti-capitalist– advocated violence– anti-religious

• A. Mitchell Palmer– Wilson’s attorney

general– arrests 1,000s– deported 800

• Git!: (1919) Depicting Uncle Sam kicking the International Workers of the World out of America

Palmer Raid on IWW offices

In for a trimming…

He’ll set the clock back 1,000 years

• J. Edgar Hoover (future director of the FBI) deports Emma Goldman along with 240 others on the U.S.S. Buford

Wall Street Bombing 1920

• 30 dead

• 200 injured

• $2million in damages

– including J.P. Morgan’s office

Sacco and Vanzetti Trial

• See page 331 in text. Did Sacco and Vanzetti receive a fair trial?

FEAR OF IMMIGRANTS

• “Immigrants bring their radical revolutionary politics!”

• “They don’t speak English!’• “They are soldiers of the pope!”• They will destroy our white, protestant,

male-dominated, superior culture!!”• “They cause deadly diseases!”

– Anxiety over the Influenza Epidemic• 675,000 deaths in 1918

National Origins Act 1924 • Emergency Quota Act 1921 –(1st restriction on

European Immigration)

– Limits immigrants to 3% of immigrant population in 1910

• National Origins Act 1924– Limits immigrants to 2% of immigrant

population in 1890

(Chinese Exclusion Act 1882)

Backlash Against Immigrants

• Fear of Bolshevism

• Ethnocentrism

• Economic competition• “America: white, protestant, male-dominated”• Resurgence of nativism

– Ku Klux Klan, again

1924, KKK claimed to have3,000,000 members

Equal Opportunity Haters

• anti-Black• anti-Catholic• anti-Jewish

• anti-foreigner• anti-communist• anti-bootlegger

• anti-divorce• anti-urban

• anti-modern

KKK Decline

• Horrific rape scandal discredits Klan leader in Indiana

• Extensive corruption discovered

• Steep decline in 1925– less than 15,000 members

• NAACP continues its activities in the North

• Jim Crow continues in the South

• Marcus Garvey– “Back-to-Africa”

movement– UNIA

Eugenics

• Social Darwinism expanded• Pseudo-science funded by Carnegie and

Rockefeller, among others.• Sought a “scientific” explanation for poverty and

inequality• “The poor were genetically inferior”• Rationalization for the status quo• Sterilization laws enacted in 18 states• Admired and adopted by Adolph Hitler• Progressivism distorted?

Prohibition

• Volstead Act puts the 18th Amendment into effect.

• Pits rural v. urban

immigrant v. native• Widely ignored• Bootleggers make $$$• Encourages

lawlessness

• wets v. drys

• "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." Albert Einstein: "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921

Religious Backlash

– Fundamentalists, believing in the literal truth of the Bible were offended by the glorification of science and the modernizing trends of urbanization.

• 4-Square Gospel• Scopes “Monkey” Trial

Political Reaction Following The War and the Era of Progressive Reforms

• Conservative trend back to small government

• Return of Isolationism, ideally,

but not practically

• “Return To Normalcy”