POSTWAR SOCIETY AND CULTURE: CHANGE AND

ADJUSTMENT

• Closing the Gates to New Immigrants

– xenophobia did not cease with the passing of

the Red Scare

– as millions of Europeans attempted to flee their

continent’s devastation, Congress acted to bar

their entry into the United States

– bowing to nativist pressures, especially against

southern and eastern Europeans, Congress

established entry quotas based on national

origin

– Congress restricted overall immigration to a

maximum of 150,000 in 1929

– dislike of the new immigrants, many of whom

were Jewish, was related to a general growth of

anti-Semitism

• New Urban Social Patterns– the 1920 census revealed, for the first time, that

urban Americans (defined as those living in a community of 2,500 or more) outnumbered rural Americans

– city life affected family structure, employment, and educational and cultural opportunities

– ethnic background, socioeconomic status, and family size played significant roles in determining whether women worked outside the home and, if they did work, women's work patterns

– compulsory education laws and child labor legislation limited the number of children working

– new ideas about family life, such as companionate marriage, contraception, scientific child rearing, and more easily obtainable divorces, gained currency

– the impersonality of large cities loosened constraints on sexuality

– homosexuals developed a distinct culture

• The Younger Generation– the failure to achieve the idealistic goals of

America’s entry into World War I created a feeling of alienation among young adults

– however, popular notions of the Jazz Age only superficially reflected reality

– young people behaved in unconventional ways because they were adjusting to more rapid changes than previous generations

– trends barely perceptible during the Progressive Era reached avalanche proportions

– patterns of courtship changed; respectable women smoked cigarettes in public; women cast off corsets, wore lipstick, shortened their hair, and shortened their skirts

– parents worried about the breakdown of all moral standards, but many facets of the youth rebellion reflected a conformity to peer pressure

– young people’s new ways of relating to each other were not mere fads and were not confined to people under thirty

• The “New” Woman– Margaret Sanger, a political radical concerned

about poor women who lacked knowledge of contraception, led the battle for birth control

– Sanger encountered legal, religious, and societal barriers but helped win wide acceptance for birth control

– other gender-based restrictions slowly broke down

– many states modified divorce laws to protect women’s rights

– more women attended college and worked, but

women earned less than men and were

excluded from many management positions

– radical feminists realized that voting did not

guarantee equality; they founded the Women’s

Party and campaigned for an equal rights

amendment

– less radical women founded the League of

Women Voters and campaigned for broad

social reforms

• Popular Culture: Movies and Radio– popular culture changed dramatically as

moving pictures grew in sophistication and appeal

– the introduction of sound in 1927 brought a new level of technological maturity

– filmmakers like D. W. Griffith created an entirely new art. Radio exerted an even greater impact

– radio soon brought a wide variety of public events into American homes

– by using radio to spread its messages, the

advertising industry subsidized the nascent

medium

– because advertisers sought mass markets,

however, they preferred uncontroversial,

intellectually light programs

• The Golden Age of Sports– prosperity, increased leisure time, radio, and

advertising dollars all promoted the extraordinary popularity of sports in the 1920s

– sports heroes such as Harold “Red” Grange, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden, and Babe Ruth enthralled the American public

– new stadiums filled with capacity crowds; radio brought the action into living rooms of millions

– football became the dominant college sport, and tens of thousands of Americans took up participatory sports such as tennis, golf, and water sports

• Urban-Rural Conflicts: Fundamentalism– rural America viewed cities as hotbeds of

decadence, sin, and overt materialism– religious fundamentalism emerged as a reaction

of rural conservatives toward the perceived excesses of urban culture

– the Scopes “Monkey Trial” typified the conflict between fundamentalism and modernism

– John T. Scopes, a biology teacher, in cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union, defied a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools

– Clarence Darrow represented Scopes, while

William Jennings Bryan represented the state

(and, in a larger sense, rural, fundamentalist

America)

– although Scopes was convicted, the trial

exposed the ignorance and danger of the

fundamentalist position

• Urban-Rural Conflicts: Prohibition– ratification of 18th Amendment (1919), which

prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages, signaled a great victory for the forces of rural conservatism

– alcohol abuse declined during the “noble experiment”; however, the illegal trade in “booze” spawned corruption

– by the end of the decade, it was readily apparent that prohibition had failed, but powerful moral and political forces prevented modification or repeal

• The Ku Klux Klan– the new Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1915 by

William J. Simmons, achieved a peak membership of five million in 1923

– its targets included immigrants, Jews, and Catholics, as well as blacks

– using appeals to patriotism, nativism, morality, and traditional Americanism, the Klan found supporters primarily in middle-sized cities, small towns, and villages in the middle western and western states

– factionalism and misconduct by leaders

weakened the Klan

– by the late twenties, it was in decline; in 1930,

it had only nine thousand members

• Sacco and Vanzetti– in 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

were convicted of murdering a paymaster and a guard during a holdup in Massachusetts

– two men were Italian immigrants and anarchists

– irrespective of their guilt or innocence, their trial was a travesty of justice

– after years of appeals, two men were executed

– the case contributed to the disillusion and alienation of many intellectuals

• Literary Trends– the horrors of World War I combined with the

antics of fundamentalists and red baiters led intellectuals to abandon the hopeful experimentation of the prewar period

– intellectuals became critics of society

– out of this alienation came a major literary flowering

– F. Scott Fitzgerald symbolized this “lost generation” and captured its spirit in his novels, This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby

– some writers and artists became expatriates– the most talented of this group, Ernest

Hemingway, became the symbol of the expatriate American intellectual

– The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms revealed a sense of outrage at life’s meaninglessness

– even more than Hemingway’s ideas, his sparse literary style accounts for his towering reputation

– Edith Wharton wrote about New York’s nineteenth century elite in a traditional style reminiscent of Henry James

– H. L. Mencken reflected the distaste of intellectuals for the climate of the times

– most popular writer of 1920s, Sinclair Lewis, portrayed the smug ignorance and bigotry of the American small town in Main Street

– in Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry, Lewis presented scathing indictments of business, the medical profession, and religion

– along with new literary styles, the twenties witnessed innovations in the distribution of literature, most notably founding of the Book-of-the-Month Club

• The “New Negro”

– southern blacks continued to migrate to North

– while blacks in northern cities had always

tended to live together, the tendency toward

concentration continued and produced ghettos

– disappointment of their wartime expectations

led to a new militancy among blacks

– W. E. B. Du Bois vacillated between

integration and black nationalism

– Marcus Garvey had no such ambivalence; his Universal Negro Improvement Association stressed black pride and a return to Africa

– black leaders like Du Bois considered Garvey a charlatan

– Garvey was convicted of defrauding thousands of his supporters when his steamship line went bankrupt

– the northern ghettos produced some compensating advantages

– concentrations of black populations enabled them to elect representatives to state legislatures and to Congress

– Harlem became a cultural center for writers, musicians, and artists

– within the ghetto existed a world with economic, political, and social opportunities for black men and women that did not exist in the South

• Economic Expansion

– despite the turmoil of the period and the

dissatisfaction of intellectuals, the 1920s was an

exceptionally prosperous era in America

– business boomed, real wages rose, and

unemployment declined

– perhaps as much as 40 percent of the world’s

wealth lay in American hands

– government policy, pent-up demand from the

war, and the continuing mechanization and

rationalization of industry fueled economic

growth

– assembly lines and time and motion

engineering helped increase productivity and

profits

• The Age of the Consumer– increases in productivity and prosperity brought

a new era of consumerism– producers tailored their goods to meet

consumer demand, and the advertising industry ensured that the demand existed

– consumer durables led the economic surge– the automotive industry in particular exerted a

powerful multiplier force on the economy– by 1929, Americans drove some 29 million

privately owned automobiles

– the car changed family life and recreational

patterns

– it made a mobile people more mobile and

became a symbol of American freedom,

prosperity, and individualism

• Henry Ford

– Henry Ford, the man most responsible for the

growth of the automotive industry, was not a

great inventor

– his genius lay in the areas of production,

personnel, and business management

techniques

– cost-efficient assembly lines allowed mass

production of inexpensive cars

– Ford realized that high wages not only ensured

retention of his trained work force but also

stimulated consumer spending

– the Ford Motor Company’s “Model T,” a low-

cost, well-constructed auto, dominated the

market for many years

– Ford’s unwillingness to cater to consumer

demand, however, enabled other manufacturers

to cut into Ford's share of the market

• The Airplane

– internal combustion gasoline engines made

motorized flight possible

– World War I speeded the advance of airplane

technology, and most planes built in the 1920s

were intended for military use

– in the postwar years, wing walkers,

parachutists, and other “barnstormers”

expanded the public’s fascination with the

airplane

– commercial air service developed slowly; the

first regularly scheduled passenger and mail

service began in 1927

– Charles A. “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh captured

the world's imagination with his nonstop New

York to Paris flight in May 1927