American Life in the

“Roaring Twenties”

1919 - 1929

Seeing Red

• THE RED SCARE 1919 - 1920

– Provoked by fear that labor violence after WWI

was associated with the communist revolution in

Russia.

– The US continues to believe that Communism is

trying to sink its red teeth into the democratic

neck of the United States!

– Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer

• Led raids against suspected left-wing radicals

• Rounded up over 6000 suspects

• Why is he so mad?

Seeing Red

• THE RED SCARE

– Many states passed laws

that made unlawful the

mere advocacy (talking)

of violence to secure

social change

– Was a godsend to

conservative

businesspeople, who

used it to break the

backs of unions.

– Unions were considered

“Sovietism in disguise”

Sacco & Vanzetti Trial

• Nicola Sacco - (shoe-factory worker)

• Bartolomeo Vanzetti – (fish peddler)

• Convicted in 1921 of the murder of a

Massachusetts paymaster & his guard

– Mainly because they were: Italian, atheists,

anarchists, & draft dodgers

• Electrocuted in 1927

• Whether they were guilty or

Not, the atmosphere of anti-

Communism was more than

Enough to have them killed.

KKK

• Reborn due to The Birth of

a Nation

• Against:

– Foreigners (nativist)

– Catholics

– Blacks

– Jews

– Pacifists

– Communists

– Internationalists

– Evolutionists

– Bootleggers

– Gambling

– Adultery

– Birth Control

– Almost everyone

• Pro:

– Anglo-Saxon

– “Native” Americans

– Protestants

• They are a new twist

on an old costume.

• Especially popular in

the Midwest & “Bible

Belt” South

– 5 million due-paying

members

• Decline in late 1920s

Slowing

Immigration

• Emergency Quota Act of 1921

– European immigrants were restricted by a

definite quota

– Quota was set at 3% of their nationality that had

been living in the US in 1910

– Favorable to southern & eastern European

immigrants

• Immigration Act of 1924

– Quotas were cut to 2% & base year switched to

1890

– No Japanese immigrants allowed

– Canadians & Latin Americans were excluded

– Who does this hurt?

– This is overly harsh against Southern and

Eastern Europeans.

Results of Restricted

Immigration

• Patchwork of ethnic communities

separated from each other and larger

society by language, customs, and

religion

• Employers used ethnic rivalries to

keep workers divided and powerless

– Undermined political and class solidarity

– Labor unions found organizing difficult

Prohibition

• Supported mainly by churches

& women

• 1919 – 18th

Amendment

• Volstead Act – passed by

Congress

– Provided the means to enforce

the law

• Fairly popular in the Midwest &

especially in the South

• Strong opposition in larger

eastern cities

• Extremely difficult to enforce

– “speakeasies”

– “bathtub gin”

• Many see as pointless

Illegal

Activity

• Gangsters

– Made lush profits of illegal alcohol led to

• bribery of the police

• Violent gangs

• Gang wars – especially in Chicago

• “Scarface” Al Capone

– Convicted of income-tax evasion

• Other profitable & illicit activities

– Prostitution , gambling & narcotics

• Lindbergh Law

– Making interstate abduction in certain

circumstances a death-penalty offense

Education in

the 1920s

• High School Graduation rate – 25%

• John Dewey – father of education

– “learning by doing” & “education for life”

• Rockefeller Foundation launched a public

health program in the South

– Increased life expectancy by 9 years

– Virtually eradicated hookworm

• Fundamentalists

– Teaching Darwinian evolution was destroying

faith in God & the Bible & contributing to the

moral breakdown of the youth in jazz age

The Scopes Monkey

Trial

• 1925 – Dayton, Tennessee

– John T. Scopes, a high school biology teacher,

was indicted for teaching evolution

– Prosecution – William Jennings Bryan

(Fundamentalist)

– Defense – Clarence Darrow

– Scopes was found guilty & fined $100

• Fined set aside on technicality

– Absurdities of the trial cast

ridicule on their cause

The Mass-Consumption

Economy

• Recession of 1920 – 1921, then sprinted

forward for the next 7 years

– War & Treasury Secretary Andrew

Mellon’s tax policies

• Productivity of the laborer increased

– Assembly line

– Electrical power

– Automobile

• Advertising

– Bruce Barton – The Man Nobody Knows 1925

• Jesus Christ was the world’s best adman

Commercialized

Atmosphere

• Sports:

– George H. “Babe” Ruth – baseball

• Yankee Stadium

– Jack Dempsey – boxer

• Buying on credit / installment buying

– Refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, cars, & radios

Putting America on

Rubber Tires

• By 1890s, Henry Ford & a few other

inventors developed the infant auto

industry

• Detroit became the car capital of America

– Stop-watch efficiency of Frederick w. Taylor,

sought to eliminate wasted motion

• By 1929, 26 million motor vehicles

registered in US, 1 for every 4.9 Americans

• Ford’s Model T (“Tin Lizzie”) cheap, rugged,

and reasonably reliable

Advent of the Gasoline

Age

• Automobile industry employed

directly and indirectly 6 million

– Thousands of other jobs created by

supporting industries

• Glass, rubber, fabric, service stations,

garages, highway construction

• New industries boomed

– Petroleum in Texas, California,

Oklahoma

– Railroads impacted negatively by growth

of cars, trucks, and busses

Impacts of the Gasoline

Engine

• New highways ribboned out

• Called Americans to open road for

vacations

• Consolidation of schools

• Expansion of sprawling suburbs and

commuting workforce

• Drawbacks:

– Death and injury

– “houses of prostitution on wheels”

– Quick getaways for gangsters

Humans Develop Wings

• Wright Brothers—1903

– Orville and Wilbur successful 12 second

airborne flight in Kitty Hawk, NC

• 1920 – 1st

transcontinental airmail

route from NY to San Francisco

• 1927 – Charles Lindberg’s solo flight

across the Atlantic

– Piloted Spirit of St. Louis from NY to

Paris in 33 hours and 39 minutes

The Radio Revolution

• Guglielmo Marconi—invented

wireless telegraphy in 1890s

• November 1920: KDKA first

broadcast

• Early local broadcasts gave way to

national networks and standardized

accents

– Sportscasts, politicians, and popular

music

More Changes

• 1903 – 1st

movie The Great Train Robbery

• 1915-The Birth of A Nation glorified the KKK

• 1927 – 1st

“Talkie” movie The Jazz Singer

– Age of silents ushered out as theaters wired for

sound

• *** The automobile, radio, & motion picture

all contributed to the “Standardization” of

American life.

– Provided Americans with a shared experienced

THE DYNAMIC DECADE

• By 1920, most Americans lived in

cities

• Women worked in “women’s jobs”

like retail and office typing

• Margaret Sanger

– Led the first organized birth-control

movement in the US

• Alice Paul

– National Woman’s party to campaign

for an Equal Rights Amendment

THE DYNAMIC DECADE

• Even churches were

affected

– Fundamentalists lost

ground to the Modernists

• Period of sexual

liberation – The Flappers

– Bobbed hair and short

dresses, cigarettes and

“wild abandon”

– Some supported one piece

bathing suits

Harlem

Renaissance

• Took root in Harlem

• Writers:

– Claude McKay

– Langston Hughes

– Zora Neale Hurston

• Jazz Musicians:

– Louis Armstrong

– Eubie Blake

– Ella Fitzgerald

• “New Negro” – full

citizen & equal rights

• Marcus Garvey

– United Negro

Improvement

Association (UNIA)

– Promoted the

resettlement of blacks

to Africa

– “Put black dollars into

black pockets”

– Later deported back to

Jamaica

– Led to the later

founding of the Nation

of Islam (Black

Muslim) movement

New Generation

of Writers

• Social critics of materialism & the loss of

idealism

– Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises & A

Farewell to Arms

– F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby & This

Side of Paradise

– Sinclair Lewis –Babbitt

– William Faulkner – Soldier’s Pay, The Sound & the

Fury, & As I Lay Dying

• Strong southern themes

Wall Street’s

Big Bull Market

• Incomes & living standards rose

• Signals did exist that a crash may be on

the horizon

– Several hundred banks failed annually

– Speculation in the stock market ran wild

– Stocks were being purchased “on-margin”

• Small down payment & borrow the rest from broker

– National debt increased: 1921 - $23.9 billion

• 1921 - Bureau of the Budget

– Created to assist the president in preparing

estimates of receipts & expenditures for

submission to Congress for annual budget

The Tax Burden

• Sec of Treasury Mellon’s theory

– “The poor rich people”

– High taxes forced the rich to invest

in tax-exempt securities rather than in the

factories that provided prosperous payrolls

– High taxes discouraged business & also brought

a smaller net return to the Treasury than

moderate taxes

– Shifted the tax burden from the wealthy to the

middle-income groups

– Was successful in reducing the national debt by

$10 billion

Just a Few DBQ

Reminders

• Please do not explain the documents…I

already know what they mean!

• Your job is to ANALYZE and use the

documents as support.

• Outside information is a MUST. In order to

get a high score your knowledge must

extend past the documents.

• THESIS, THESIS, THESIS!