The 1920s

• Brief Post-World War I depression• Remarkable period of growth began in 1922

and lasted until 1929• Shift from capital goods to consumer goods

production• Durables and perishables both• Led to complete transformation of American life

• Stock buying also gained in popularity

• Proliferation of consumer credit to facilitate purchases

• Many poor excluded from consumer revolution

• Rise of advertising and mass marketing• To generate demand for products that could make

a product seem the answer to a consumer’s desires• Advertisers played upon people’s emotions and

vulnerabilities

• Changing attitudes toward marriage and sexuality• Greater openness in attitudes toward sex• Push for compatibility and companionship in marriage

• Flapper culture among young women

• Popularity of celebrities• Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Lindbergh

• First appearance of large sporting events and professional athletes• Depended on journalists and radio promoters

• Celebrating American business• Reverence for the corporation• Rise of welfare capitalism among employers

• Position of industrial workers• Aggregate demand for industrial labor slowed• Dramatic increase in available workforce• Became employer• Unions lost ground, government hostile to labor

• Women workers• Earned less than male workers, even for same jobs• Drawn to white collar work for better opportunities

• Concentrated in “female” professions• Female college enrollment increased 50 percent

during decade• League of Women Voters & Sheppard Act

• Warren G. Harding in office• Republican nominee because of his malleability• Aware of own intellectual shortcomings

• Made some excellent cabinet appointments• Others, though, were disastrous• Teapot Dome Scandal

• Plagued by scandals perpetuated by “Ohio Gang”

• Died in San Francisco mired in controversy

• Calvin Coolidge in office• Untainted by Harding scandals• Believed in minimalist government• Worked especially to reduce government’s

control over the economy• Revenue Act of 1926

• Herbert Hoover• Hoover as commerce secretary for Harding and

Coolidge• Saw government as dynamic, even progressive,

economic force• Associationalism

• Brought different functional groups together to manage economy

• Washington Naval Conference, 1921–1922 • Five-Power Treaty

• Dawes Plan, 1924• Reduced German economy• U.S. aid to stabilize German economy

• Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928• International compact outlawing war as a tool of national policy

• Hands-on approach in Latin America

• Agricultural depression during 1920s• Nonpartisan League of North Dakota publicized

plight• Farm Bureau also facing cultural crisis

• Farmers also facing cultural crisis• 1920 census reported U.S. as urban nation• Economic and cultural vitality of nation shifted to

the cities• Forced rural Americans toward efforts to protect

their way of life

Urbanization, 1920

• Prohibition• Initially, broad support for Eighteenth Amendment (1920)

• Simply encouraged lawlessness and organized crime

• Rural folks continued to support Prohibition regardless of its defects

• Ku Klux Klan• Added Jews and Catholics to original focus on blacks

• Preached message of “Anglo-Saxon” racial party, Protestant superiority, and traditional morality

• Immigration restriction• Johnson-Reed Immigration Restriction Act, 1924

• Imposed national quotas for immigrants from outside Western Hemisphere

• Favored “old immigrants” over “new immigrants”

• Protestant fundamentalism• Literal interpretation of the Bible• Arose as reaction to liberal Protestantism and

the revelation of modern science

• Scopes Trial• Became test case in struggle between

fundamentalism and science• Symbolic victory for modernism

• European Americans• Concentrated in cities of Northeast and Midwest

• Flourishing of ethnic associations• Alfred E. Smith

• Preservation of ethnic heritage and customs

• Strong desire to become citizens

• African-Americans• Continued migration from rural South to the urban North

• Job and housing discrimination• Vigorous and productive cultural life

• Jazz• Harlem Renaissance• Black literary and artistic awakening• Image of the “new Negro”

• Mexican Americans• Chief source of immigrant labor after Johnson-Reed Act

• Agricultural jobs, construction, manufacturing

• Californios in Los Angeles• Not generally interested in becoming citizens

• World War I created generation of disaffected, alienated writers and artists• Lost Generation• Many settled in Paris

• Focused on psychological toll of living in postwar period

• Many came to question democracy itself• Spurred debate over proper role of government in economy and life in general

• John Dewey

Web

• Examine the presidencies of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. How effective were their administrations? What good or ill did they do for the United States?

• How did the role of women and minorities change in the 1920s? Did their situation improve?

• What was the Harlem Renaissance? What was its impact on American culture?

• Describe the situation of farmers in the 1920s. Was this decade a good time, economically and morally, for them?