the 20’s and 30’s boom and bust click the picture!
TRANSCRIPT
POSTWAR TRENDS
• Returning soldiers faced unemployment or took away minorities or women’s jobs• Cost of living had doubled, farmers and factory
workers suffered as wartime orders declined• What cost $100 in 1915 would cost $172.63 in
1925. Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 1925 and 1915, they would cost you $100 and $58.79 respectively.
• Source: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
KEY TERMS
• Rise of nativism and isolationism
• Nativism: prejudice against foreign-born people
• Isolationism: policy of pulling away from involvement in world affairs
LABOR UNREST
• During the War, the government forbid strikes to prevent them from interfering with the war effort.• POSTWAR: In 1919, over 3,000 strikes occurred.• Employers didn’t want to give raises or allow
employees to join unions, labeled striking workers as Communists.• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-95bn8IFyc&p
laynext=1&list=PL7A00DE6DB435439B&feature=results_video
MAJOR STRIKES
• The Boston Police Strike• The Steel Mill Strike• The Coal Miners’ Strike
• Union membership begins declining:• Immigrants willing to work for cheap and hard to organize
because of language barriers• Many excluded African Americans
SACCO AND VANZETTI
• Italian immigrants and anarchists who evaded the WWI draft.
• May 1920, Nicola Sacco and Barolomeo Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the robbery and murder of a factory paymaster and guard in Massachusetts.
• Found innocent and charged to death even though they had alibis, evidence was circumstantial, & the judge was prejudiced.
• Public outrage!
THE RED SCARE
• Many feared the spread of communism • Panic began in 1919 due to Lenin’s Russian
Revolution • A communist party formed in the U.S. w/ 70,000
members.• Over a dozen bombs were mailed to government
and business leaders.
THE SEARCH FOR REDS
• 1919- U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer appointed J. Edgar Hoover to help hunt Communists, socialists, and anarchists.• Video: Palmer Raids
QUOTAS
• 1919-1921 the # of immigrants in the U.S. had grown from 141,000 to 805,000.• Congress responded by limiting the number of
immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.
EMERGENCY QUOTA ACT
• The Emergency Act of 1921established a quote system limiting the number of European immigrants.
• Amended in 1924, it limited immigration from each European nation to 2% of the number of nationals living in the U.S. in 1890.• This discriminated against eastern and southern Europeans,
i.e. Roman Catholics and Jews, who didn’t start immigrating to the U.S. until 1890.
• By 1927, the law reduced the total # of people admitted in one year to 150,000.
• The law also left out Japanese immigrants, hurting TR’s Gentlemen’s Agreement from 1907.
“KEEP AMERICA FOR AMERICANS”
• Nativists believed immigrants taking unskilled jobs and were actually communists
• 2nd Rise of the KKK (Ku Klux Klan)• 4.5 million “white male
persons, native-born general citizens” were members by 1924.
• Favored keeping blacks in their place, opposed unions, destroyed saloons, and drove Roman Catholics, Jews and foreign-born people out of the U.S.
WARREN G. HARDING
• President in 1921• Held a Naval
Conference in Washington and urged the US, GB, Fr., Japan, and Italy to downsize their navies.
DAWES PLAN
• Britain and France owed the US $10 million from WW1• 1922 America adopted the Fordney-McCumber
Tariff raising taxes on US imports to 60%• Made it impossible for them to repay debts
• France and Britain looked to Germany to pay up, Germany defaulted and Fr. Troops marched in.• Am. Investors loaned Germany $2.5 million to pay
GB and Fr. With annual payments on a fixed scale
TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL
• The gov. set aside oil rich lands in WY and CA to the Navy.• Albert B. Fall, Secretary of the Interior, transferred
the oil reserves to the Interior Dept. then leased the lands to two private oil companies.• Fall received over $400,000 (Today:
$4,859,280.42) in “loans, bonds, and cash” and was found guilty of bribery and was convicted of a felony while holding a cabinet post
THE AUTO INDUSTRY
• Henry Ford’s assembly line lowered production cost of vehicles and increased productivity• Effects on Industry• Many companies copied
Ford which led to a 60% increase in productivity
• Rise of welfare capitalism where companies provide benefits to employees in an effort to promote satisfaction and loyalty
INDUSTRY CHANGES SOCIETY
• An increased demand for cars led to an increased demand in:• Steel, glass, rubber• Petroleum industry
booming• Auto repair shops• The emergence of gas
stations, motels & restaurants across America
• Increase in size of suburbs (urban sprawl)
• Freedom to travel resulted in new tourism industries
THE CHANGING CONSUMER CLASS
• Avg. annual income rises from $522 to $705
• New products for sale• New electrical appliances
such as the washing machines, vacuums, sewing machine all under $150
• Radio and first passenger airplane flights, Pan American Airways brought about the first transatlantic passenger flights
What effects would this have on women?
MAD MEN
With new goods, Advertising companies hired psychologies to study how to appeal to public’s desire
for youthfulness, beauty, health, and wealth
BUYING ON CREDIT
• Business is booming as companies merge, chain stores grow, and Congress allows ntl. banks to spread• This leads to an income gap between workers and
managers
• New Ways to Pay or “a dollar down and a dollar forever”• The installment plan allowed people to buy goods over a
length of time w/o having to put much money down at first
• Banks provided money at low interest rates• “You furnish the girl, we’ll furnish the home”
ECONOMIC WEAKNESSES
• Problems in agriculture• Increased competition from European farmers• Flooded markets from overproduction of food lead to
lower prices• Farm failures
• US Government Tariff in 1921• Helped raise prices of foreign crops making them more
expensive to buy• Didn’t completely solve the problem
PROHIBITION
• 18th Amendment in January 1920 prohibited the manufacturing, sale, and transportation of alcohol.
• Reformers felt that drinking led to crime, family abuse, job accidents, and other societal problems.
• Volstead Act established Prohibition Bureau in the Treasury Department but was underfunded. Click for a video!
SPEAKEASIES AND BOOTLEGGERS
• Drinkers went underground in hidden saloons and nightclubs known as speakeasies.
• Held in penthouses, cellars, and office buildings, middle-class and upper-middle-class men had to give a card or a password to get in.
• People learned to distill alcohol and build their own stills, or they would buy alcohol from bootleggers.
• Bootleggers would smuggle alcohol from Canada, Cuba and West Indies.
ORGANIZED CRIME
• Chicago gangster Al Capone raked in $60 million a year bootlegging.• This is over
$750,000,000 in today’s $$
• Capone killed his competition, literally, with 522 bloody gang killings.
Click for a video!
SCIENCE VS RELIGION
• Fundamentalism: Protestant movement grounded in a literal interpretation of the bible• Fundamentalists rejected idea of evolution and
instead favored creationism • Called for laws prohibiting the teaching of
evolution
THE SCOPES TRIAL
• 1925 TN passed the first law prohibiting teaching evolution• American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) promised to defend any teacher who challenged• John T. Scopes, a
biology teacher, challenged the law and was arrested and tried
THE TRIAL
• Clarence Darrow was set to defend Scopes and William Jennings Bryan would prosecute
• The Scopes trial was the fight over the role science and religion had in public schools and American society
• Bryan admitted that the Bible could be interpreted in different ways
• Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 even though
NEW ROLES FOR WOMEN
• 1920 the 19th amendment gives women suffrage
• Women rejoined the workforce after losing their jobs after WW1
• Flappers defied traditional ideas of proper dress and behavior• Bobs, shorter hemlines,
makeup, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, & dancing in nightclubs
• Flappers symbolized the modern woman: independence and freedom
CHANGING ROLES
• Men took over positions women had filled during the War• Women occupied “women’s professions” such as
teachers, nurses, librarians, and clerical workers• Men argued women’s real job was at home• Changing family roles• Birth control = slowing birthrates• Women had more free time to focus on their homes,
husbands, children and pastimes• Children free to attend school and engage in activities• 4 million attended high school in 1926, up from 1 million in
1914
A NEW POP CULTURE
• Expanding news coverage
• Rise of newspapers and magazines provided better coverage in bigger cities
• Reader’s Digest and Time had a circulation of over 2 million by 1930’s
• Radio provided news, entertainment, and advertisements
AMERICAN HEROES
• Popular entertainment included flagpole sitting, dance marathons, and sports
• Charles A. Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic• From New York to Paris took 33 hours
and 29 minutes
• The Jazz Singer was the first major talkie in 1927
• Steamboat Willie was the first animated film with sound in 1928.
• George Gershwin was a musician who combined Jazz with more traditional elements
LITERATURE
• Sinclair Lewis was the first to win a Nobel Prize• Ridiculed Americans for
their conformity and materialism
• F. Scott Fitzgerald• Coined the term “Jazz Age”• Showed the negative side
of the 20’s joy and freedom
• Ernest Hemingway• A Farewell to Arms• Criticized the glorification
of war
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
• African Americans oppressed in the south looked to the north in hopes of finding freedom and economic opportunity
• The Great Migration of Af. Am. to Detroit, Chicago, and New York
• The influx of Af. Am. led to tensions and the outbreak of 25 urban race riots in 1919
• By the early 1920’s, nearly 200,000 African Americans lived in NY, especially Harlem
• Harlem was overcrowded, but they began a literary and artistic movement celebrating Af. Am. Culture
• Click here for a video!
“BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL”
• Writers were predominantly well-educated, middle-class who celebrated their heritage• Claude McKay, novelist/poet/Jamaican immigrant• Urged blacks to resist prejudice and discrimination• Expressed pain of life in the ghettos and what it was like
in a white world
• Langston Hughes, poet• Difficulty of life for working class blacks• Some of his poems were set to Jazz music
• Paul Robeson, actor and son of a slave• Struggled with racism and effects from his support of the
Soviet Union and communism
ALL THE JAZZ
• Jazz music was born in New Orleans and blended instrumental ragtime with vocal blues• Spread across the country as popular dance music
• Louis Armstrong• A trumpet player revolutionized Jazz by adding his own
personal expression
• Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington• Jazz pianist and one of greatest composers of the time• Led orchestra at Cotton Club, famed nightclub in Harlem
• Bessie Smith• Blues singer who recorded on black oriented labels and
became the highest-paid black artist in the world
Bessie Smith (click) Louis Armstrong (click)