Chapters 23 & 24

US History – UEH- ISB

Booming Business, Ailing Agriculture:

• After a depression from 1920-22; Business did well because of cars (Henry Ford competed with GM)

• Used factories/material sources in foreign countries, which raised tariffs (Fordney-McCumber & Smoot-Hawley)

• Workers in the North made 47¢… South made 28¢. Caused factories to move south!!

New Modes of Producing, Managing, and Selling:

• Routine, assembly-lines (Fordism), business consolidation, and management structures (different work divisions w/ managers) increased productivity

• Ads used celebrity endorsements, promises of success, aroused desires that capitalism fixed… perfectionism

• Your Money’s Worth by Chase and Schlink tested advertisers’ claims and reported results

Women in the New Economic Era:

• Weakening of the labor union increased wage discrimination; women took unskilled jobs, some worked in offices

• More women went to college—“women’s professions” like teaching, nursing, librarians, and clerical jobs

Struggling Labor Unions in a Business Age:

• Unions declined because wages rose, and older businesses that required unions (railroads, printing) weren’t popular

• Management hostility (Ford/violence, Textile Strike in NC got shot). Unions were smeared as Communistic

• Treated workers well to avoid unions, (cafeterias, reduced price stocks), which was called welfare capitalism

Politics in a Decade of Change:• Warren G. Harding won 1920; picked Charles Evans Hughes

(state), Andrew Mellon (treasury), Hoover (commerce), Harry Daugherty (attorney gen.), Albert Fall (sec. of Interior), & Charles Forbes (Veterans’ Bureau)

• Daugherty appointed Fall, a draft dodger, to his position; Forbes stole Veterans’ Bureau funds and fled

• Fall gave Navy oil reserves, (in Teapot Dome, WY), to oil companies for $400,000 bribe—called Teapot Dome Scandal

• Harding died in 1923 and Calvin Coolidge aka. Silent Cal took over

Republican Policy Making in a Probusiness Era

• Coolidge’s Presidency:– Mellon’s “trickle down theory”—tax cuts for the rich

would encourage investments– Supreme Court under William Taft ended a law passed in

1919 that banned child labor– Great Mississippi Flood of 1927—no federal aid against

natural disasters, but signed law that would build levees– Vetoed McNary-Haugen Bill twice—gov. would buy extra

crops, sell in foreign countries

Independent Internationalism:

• Harding started the Washington Naval Arms Conference to end Japan/America/England arms race: Halted ship construction for a decade, Japan/America promised to respect each others’ Pacific lands

• Kellogg Briand Pact renounced aggression/outlawed war. America used diplomacy to protect economy (debts, tariff)

Progressive Stirrings, Democratic Party Divisions:

• William McAdoo (South)/Alfred Smith (cities, immigrants) divided the Democrats in 1924; Picked John Davis

• Socialists/AFL picked La Follette; Coolidge (high tariff, low tax/spending) for Repubs. Repubs won in landslide

Women and Politics in the 1920’s- A Dream Deferred:

• Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 funded rural prenatal/baby care centers run by public-health nurses

• 19th Amendment had little short-term impact: Women’s rights advocates came from all different parties

Cities, Cars, Consumer Goods:

• America officially became a majority urban in 1920; city life/labor-saving appliances eased housework for women

• Cars brought families both together (vacations) and apart. Women saw cars as their freedom/empowerment

Soaring Energy Consumption and a Threatened Environment:

• Demand caused boom in Texas/Oklahoma oil; allowed wilderness to become more accessible. Hoover called a Conference on outdoor recreation to balance the preservation with the leisure/vacation culture

Mass-Produced Entertainment:

• Magazines like Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest; Book-of-the-month clubs, book sales at dept. stores

• Radio era began in 1920; General Electric, Westinghouse, Radio Corp. of America founded NBC in 1926

• Movies became fancier and more censored/policed: Will Hayes enforced a code of movie standards

• The Jazz Singer: 1st to have sound. Steamboat Willy: Mickey Mouse. Created a dream world, unrealistic

Celebrity Culture:

• Celebrities incl. Miss Americas, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Charles Lindbergh (flew across Atlantic in The Spirit of St. Louis)

• They offered ideals/goals to look up to; people escaped the everyday be projecting hopes/fears onto celebrities

The Jazz Age and Postwar Crisis of Values:

• Young people became more liberated by dancing, drinking, smoking, partying, having sex freely

• For women, skirts got shorter, makeup was allowed, formal dress like corsets faded away

• Flappers rejected female stereotypes: wild, independent. Fitzgerald’s The Side of Paradise talked about the Jazz Age

•

Immigration Restriction:

• The National Origins Act of 1924 (Coolidge) restricted immigration to the amount of 2% of America’s native borns

• In Ozawa v. US, the court rejected citizenship request from a Japanese student at U. of Cal. Upheld a law that limited the rights of Japanese immigrants to own farmland. Ruled that Caucasians were only from Western Europe

Needed Workers/Unwelcome Aliens—Hispanic Newcomers:

• Origins act did not ban Canadian/Latin American immigration, which soared. Worked in low-paid migratory jobs

• Mexicans formed communities and local support networks, incl. the League of United Latin-American Citizens

• Immigrants had to take literacy tests; made illegal immigration a criminal offence in 1929

Nativism, Antiradicalism, and the Sacco-Vanzetti Case:

• In the Sacco-Vanzetti case, robbers killed two employees and robbed them at a shoe factory. Jury found two Italian immigrants guilty, and were given the death penalty. They were anarchists (tainted/biased trial, lack of evidence)

Fundamentalism and the Scopes Trial:

• New science (evolution) and varying Protestant vs. Evangelical views started Fundamentalism (Bible’s literal truth)

• Textbooks/schools were censored. Movement was led by William Jennings Bryan

• The Civil Liberties union said it would protect any teacher that went against censoring laws. John Scopes of Tennessee did & was arrested (defended by Clarence Darrow). He was found guilty

The Ku Klux Klan:

• Against all blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. Had over 5 million members!! Appealed to white, low classes

• Used lynching, murder, threats, political corruption. Ended when Grand Dragon Stephenson raped his secretary, went to jail, and said details about the Klan

Herbert Hoover’s Social Thought:

• “The Great Engineer” was a Quaker who wrote American Individualism. Believed in volunteering, business cooperation, welfare capitalism, tolerance, conservation

• Frowned upon cutthroat capitalistic competition and greed

The Great Depression

Black Thursday and the Onset of the Depression:

• The Depression was caused by:– Margin buying—buying stocks with cash borrowed

from a broker, using other stocks as collateral– Depressed agriculture– Reduced purchasing power—overproduction– Monetarists say the Fed. Reserve increased rates

and tightened loan policies, reducing available money for investment

• European depression hurt American exports

The Hundred Days:• Between March-June 1933, many recovery laws and measures were initiated, including:• Emergency Banking - Managed failed banks, tightened policies, more government oversight• Unemployment Relief - Created Civilian Conservation Corps to create public works jobs• Agricultural Adjustment - Created Agricultural Adjustment Admin. to raise income by cutting

production• Federal Emergency Relief - Set aside $500 mil. for state/local relief agencies by F.E.R.A (led by

Harry Hopkins)• Tennessee Valley Authority - Created TVA to make dams on Tennessee River for power, flood

control, recreation• Federal Securities - Investors must get information related to their stocks, register trading with

FTC• Home owners’ Refinancing - Gave $200 mil. to Homeowners’ Loan Corp. to refinance

mortgages for nonfarmers• Farm Credit - Allowed farmers to refinance mortgages and get loans• Banking Act/1933 - Fed. Deposit Insurance—ensured bank deposits up to $5000• National Industrial Recovery - Created NRA to promote recovery (fair competition); gave

money for public works (led by Ickes)

Problems and Controversies Plague the Early New Deal:

• Two years later, National Recovery Admin. declared unconstitutional: gave president regulatory powers of Congress and it regulated interstate commerce

• The AAA helped some, but not very poor farmers: Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, a Socialist organization, was created

1934-1935, Challenges From Right and Left:

• Roosevelt was all chill about criticism and started radio “fireside chats” to inform and talk to citizens

• Conservatives called the new deal Socialist; some Dems said it didn’t go far enough and should not aid business

• Huey Long of Louisiana wrote My 1st Days in the White House—raise taxes for wealthy a ton to benefit everyone

The Social Security Act of 1935, End of the 2nd New Deal:

• Mixed fed/state system of workers’ pensions, aid for industrial accidents, unemployed, disabled, single mothers

• Paid for by employers and workers (money from paychecks); didn’t end up really helping farmers, self-employed

Final Measures, Growing Opposition:

• Farm Security Administration gave loans to poor farmers and offered shelters, healthcare… and photographers

• Fair Labor Standards Act banned child labor, set national minimum wage and a 40-hour max. work week

• Helped all farmers short-term, but small farmers received no long-term help

• House Un-American Activities Committee, made of Repubs, investigated the New Deal agencies for Communism

WPA Arts Funding

• Allowed artists to work during Depression instead of resorting to menial labor

• Produced public art on a large scale, across the country

• Some of the most important mid-century modernists would be kept working by the program

• Berenice Abbott would capture New York

The Depression’s Psychological and Social Impact:

• Caused “unemployment shock”—jobs below level of training, walking the streets, worry/anxiety

• Women had higher unemployment; those working/married were “stealing jobs” from men, unequal wages

• Birth rate and marriage fell, birth control and divorce increased. Kids stayed in school, savings disappeared

Industrial Workers Unionize:• Lewis (Mine workers) and Hillman (Clothing) started the

Committee for Industrial Organization, welcomed all• US Steel strike resulted in improved wages/conditions;

General Motors strikers used “sit down” technique to gain union recognition, creating the United Automobiles Workers.

• CIO broke with AFL to become Congress of Industrial Organizations: “Little Steel” strikes resulted in 4 police killings

• National Guard was used in Southern textile strikes… most still remained outside of unions

Black and Hispanic Americans Resist Racism and Exploitation:

• 5/8 of the Black alleged rapists called “Scottsboro boys” were convicted after being denied lawyers & a diverse/unbiased jury

• NAACP boycotts of discriminatory shops in Harlem led to riots; Communists lobbied for black support

• Mexican-borns poured into neighborhoods (Barrios) after dust bowl- encouraged to move/go to Mexico by gov

• Mexican-Americans joined farmer/growers’ unions—during cotton pickers’ union, 2 were killed, but they won higher wages