Chapter 31

American Life in the “Roaring Twenties”

Seeing Red

Bolshevik Revolution= Communist in Russia

Red Scare of 1919-1920-Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer

-6000k suspects rounded up-249 “radicals” sent to USSR on Buford-unexplained bomb on Wall St.

Criminal Syndication Laws-illegal to advocate social change

American Plan-prevent strikes-Union=pro communist-open shop

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti-radicals linked to murder-discriminated because they were Italian, socialist

and anarchist-electrocuted after 6 year trial

Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK

-Rise up to 5 million members

-followed nativist ideals (white and protestant)

-big in Midwest and Bible Belt

Stemming the Foreign Blood

1920-800k immigrants arrived (most southern Europe)

Immigration Act of 1924-limited number of immigrants to 2% of population

from 1890 Census (not 1910)-limited immigrants from undesirable

countries-hate America campaigns in Japan

Stopped opening of America

Shop owners used immigrant diversity to their advantage

The Prohibition “Experiment”

18th Amendment and Volstead Act

-not highly enforced by federal gov’t

-Speakeasies and bootlegging were common

The Golden Age of Gangsterism

Illegal Booze Market=high profits

Chicago-worst city for organized crime

Al Capone-distributer—paid off officials-murdered hundreds of rival gang

membersRacketeers-made merchants pay money and invaded ranks of labor unions

Monkey Business in Tennessee

John Dewey-progressive education-learn by doing

Fundamentalism-literal reading of Bible

John Scopes-taught evolution-fined $100

The Mass-Consumption Economy

New inventions and riches-oil fields providing energy-automobiles

Advertising—new industry

Sports—Babe Ruth

Buying on Credit

Putting America on Rubber Tires

Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds-infant industry of cars

Ford-assembly line

Fordism-moving assembly line

Frederick W. Taylor-Scientific Management

The Advent of the Gasoline Age

Cars=new rubber, service station, and construction industries

Old industries suffered (ie-railroad)

Food stuffs-fresh fruits-markets accelerated

Open road-vacations

Flip Side-more deaths and viewed as a crime contributor (Prostitution on wheels)

Humans Develop Wings

Orville Wright-12/17/1903120 feet in 12 seconds

Airplanes-first used in war in WWI

Charles Lindbergh-NY to San Fran in 1920

1927-NYC to Paris in 33 hours and 39 minutes

1930s and 40s-regular air travel

The Radio Revolution

1920-Radio station KDKA of Philadelphia broadcast news of Harding Landslide

-Programs, news, sports, etc… grew

Families gathered around the radio

Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies

1903- “The Great Train Robbery”-first film sequence

-KKK movie and nudity-shocked viewers

-1927- “The Jazz Singer”-talking

Movie stars rose-more popular than political leaders

Mass movie culture-losing cultural identity of minorities

The Dynamic Decade

Beginnings of Sexual Expansion-sex used to sell-kissing-no longer marriage focused

Margaret Sanger—Birth Control

Flappers-emancipated women

Jazz Music-music of the age

Harlem

Largest Black Community

Marcus Garvey founded United Negro Improvement Association

-keep blacks’ dollars in black pockets-resettlement of blacks to homeland

Cultural Liberation

Modernism-questioning of social conventions-result of WWI

F. Scott Fitzgerald- “The Great Gatsby” and “This Side of Paradise”

Ernest Hemingway- “The Sun Also Rises”-iceberg principle—7/8 under water to

support the 1/8 above the water

High Modernists and the Lost Generation-Ezra Pound- “old bitch civilization”-T.S. Eliot- “The Waste Land”

Regional, not modernist-Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Sinclair

Lewis and William Faulkner

Harlem Renaissance-Claude McKay (author)-Langston Hughes (author)-Louis Armstrong (Jazz)

-revival of African American Culture