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The 1920s

CREATED EQUAL

JONES WOOD MAY BORSTELMANN RUIZ

CHAPTER 21 The Promise of

Consumer Culture

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“I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive.”

The Great Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald

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TIMELINE1919 Volstead Act (Prohibition Bureau)

1920 Sacco and Vanzetti arrested for murder

KDKA radio broadcast of Harding presidential win

(1920s) Klan membership estimated at 5 million

(mid-1920s) Film industry grosses $80 million per week

1921 Emergency Quota Act

1923 Alice Paul, the National Woman’s Party, begins work on ERA

Approximately 500 radio stations in U.S.

1924 Johnson-Reid Act (cuts in immigration)

1925 The Scopes Trial, or “Monkey Trial”

The Man Nobody Knows by Bruce Barton

1927 The Jazz Singer, the first “talkie”

The National Broadcasting Company established

The Great Flood

1929 (October) The Stock Market crashes and the Great Depression begins

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THE PROMISE OF CONSUMER CULTURE Overview

The Business of PoliticsThe Decline of ReformHollywood and Harlem: National Cultures

in Black and WhiteScience on TrialConsumer Dreams and Nightmares

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THE BUSINESS OF POLITICS

Warren G. Harding: The Politics of ScandalCalvin Coolidge: The Hands-Off PresidentHerbert Hoover: The Self-Made President

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Warren G. Harding: The Politics of Scandal

Harding: “machine-made”, 1920 Presidential Election

Albert Fall, Secretary of Interior went to prison for taking $400,000 from oil companies in exchange for leases

Charles Forbes, Veteran’s Bureau, and $200 million in hospital supplies

Superintendent of Prisons: Harding’s brother-in-law

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Calvin Coolidge: The Hands-Off President

Inheried presidency from Harding in 1923Hands-off attitude towards big businessProgressive Party formsCool Coolidge won the presidency in 1924

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Herbert Hoover: The Self-Made President

Elected president in 1928Quaker orphan raised in povertyStanford University graduate, mining engineerWon over Irish Catholic Al Smith from New

York

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THE DECLINE OF REFORM

Women’s Rights After the Struggle for SuffrageProhibition: The Experiment That FailedReactionary ImpulsesMarcus Garvey and the Persistence of Civil

Rights Activism

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Women’s Rights After the Struggle for Suffrage

The League of Women VotersPromoted social and political reform; opposed ERA

National Woman’s Party (Alice Paul)Campaigned for ERA for women

Sheppard-Towner: health education for women and infants

Divorce rate doubled from 1900 to 1920 and continued to rise

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Prohibition: The Experiment That Failed

18th Amendment: prohibited sale or making of alcohol. Volstead Act of 1919

Enforcement difficult and gangsters were on the riseProtection monies; bootlegging

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Reactionary Impulses

Anti-immigrant sentimentsSacco and VanzettiEmergency Quota Act of 1921

800,000 immigrants to 300,000 in a yearJohnson-Reid Act of 1924

Cut immigration from 3% to 2%

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Marcus Garvey and the Persistence of Civil Rights ActivismUniversal Negro Improvement AssociationNation-state in AfricaEncouraged establishment of black-owned

businessesBlack Star Line Corporation and black

investmentGarvey convicted of mail fraudGarvey deported to Jamaica after 5 years in

prisonInspired many blacks

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HOLLYWOOD AND HARLEM: NATIONAL CULTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE

Hollywood Comes of AgeThe Harlem RenaissanceRadios and Autos: Transforming

Leisure at Home

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Hollywood Comes of Age

The Great Train Robbery, first feature length

The Jazz Singer, the first “talkie”Foreigners on screen:

Greta Garbo, Dolores del Rio, Lupe Valez, Ramon Navarro, Rudolph Valentino

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The Harlem Renaissance

European, as well as African American influenceWriters: Arna Bontemps, Langston HughesDancers: Josephine BakerSingers: Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Ethel

WatersFilmmakers: Oscar Micheaux

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Radios and Autos: Transforming Leisure at Home

By 1923, there were about 500 radio stations in the U.S.

By 1930, Americans owned 30 million cars

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SCIENCE ON TRIAL

The Great Flood of 1927The Triumph of Eugenics: Buck v.

BellScience, Religion, and the Scopes

Trial

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The Great Flood of 1927

Confidence in levees shattered in March, 1927 when torrential rains drown prime farmland, forced 900,000 from their homes and cost $100 million in crop loss and $23 million in livestock loss

Refugee camps set up by Department of Commerce, National Guard and the Red Cross

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The Triumph of Eugenics: Buck v. Bell

1924: The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, Stoddard

Social Darwinists—natural selection of the fittest

Eugenic lawsSterilization of “inferior” individuals without their

knowledge or consent. Inferiority determined by government and medical officials.

Carrie Buck, determined feebleminded because she was born out of wedlock, sent to institution, and determined to be “unfit for parenthood”

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Science, Religion, and the Scopes Trial

William Jennings BryanThe Butler ActJohn Thomas Scopes and the ACLU (Dayton,

Tennessee)Religion versus Science?Aimee Semple McPhersonGuilty verdict overturned by The Tennessee

Supreme Court. Never made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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CONSUMER DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

Marketing the Good LifeWriters, Critics, and the “Lost Generation”Poverty Amid PlentyThe Stock Market Crash

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Marketing the Good Life

“Advertising is to business what fertilizer is to farms.”

1925: The Man That Nobody Knows, Bruce Barton

The shopping centerThe Florida real estate boom and collapse

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Writers, Critics, and the “Lost Generation”

Sinclair Lewis: Babbitt, 1922; Main Street, 1920

F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise (1920); The Beautiful and the Damned (1922); The Great Gatsby (1925)

Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

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Poverty Amid Plenty

Southern sharecroppers, black and whiteLatinos work for the company storeAsian immigrants and domestic workIndustrial workers

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Americans on the Move, 1870s-1930s

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The Stock Market Crash

“Black Tuesday” October 29, 1929Stocks fell in value $14 billion, down 50%By 1932 $74 billion lostIndustrial production halved, businesses bankrupt,

banks failLittle relief from government agenciesFelt globallyThe gap between the rich and the poor