SAT History

The Roaring ’20’s

Background

• World War I has been won

• The Allies have asked Germany to repay war debts to the point that Germany, by 1923, is in total economic collapse

• As the Progressive Era ends, two major victories are women’s suffrage and Prohibition

Trends and Themes• America turned away from the ideals of progressivism. Even the pro

hibition amendment was not always strictly enforced. Republicans regained the presidency and ushered in a new era of pro-business policies.

• Government policies, progress in technology, and a new consumer society produced a booming economy. Radio helped transform the U.S. into a single national market, and a mass popular culture developed based largely on the consumption of luxury items. To take full advantage of the profits to be made, businesses merged and grew ever larger.

• Tired from the war and disillusioned by Wilson’s failure with the League of Nations, America entered a period of isolationism. The U.S. aimed to stay out of European affairs and severely limited immigration. New immigrants were often subject to suspicion and hatred.

• The younger generation rebelled against traditional morals. College students took to drinking and throwing wild parties. Women became more forward in dress and behavior. Premarital sex became less taboo. The two symbols of this new, looser social behavior were jazz and the “flapper.”

Presidents– Warren Harding

• Harding won easily in 1920 on the basis of a “return to normalcy”—which in Republican minds meant a return to two key points: big business and isolationism

• His rule was pro-business to the point of corruption—Teapot Dome scandal was where Albert Fall (Sec of State) was bribed $400,000 to secretly lease government oil

• Not exposed fully until after his death in 1923 (natural causes)

Calvin Coolidge

• 1923-25 (was the VP), won in 1924

• Relatively scandal-free, very pro-business

• Against all regulation (interference) in his words

• Many of the abuses which led to the Crash of 1929 started under him and were not stopped in time

Herbert Hoover• Won easily in 1928 due to the roaring economy

and anti-Catholic bias (Smith)• He previously was an enormously successful

Secretary of the Commerce and a leader in War humanitarian issues

• Made a secret deal to help blacks if elected in 1928, but backed out of it (one key reason they went Democrat 1932-present)

• Trained as an engineer, he believed in limited regulation and overall efficiency.

• However, he believed that the rich had the social obligation to help the poor, not the government. Even after the crash, he could not change this.

Pro-Rich/Business Policies

• Taxes were lowered on the wealthy.• The Supreme Court overturned a number of pro

gressive laws, which made labor boycotts unconstitutional, and allowed anti-trust laws to be used against unions

• Tariffs were raised twice. Fordney-McCumber, 1922, Smoot-Hawley, 1930. While they were designed to help American companies, the latter one in particular was disasterous, as other countries raised theirs in response. This cycle basically killed businesses worldwide due to the lack of international trade.

The Decade of Prosperity

• Mergers created bigger companies, and many industries were dominated by a few companies.

• Industry leaders were very popular public figures.

• Henry Ford’s assembly line helped millions afford consumer goods for the first time

• Banks introduced credit and installment buying programs to allow people to buy goods based on monthly payments.

Labor and Agriculture

• To prevent union growth, and due to the increased productivity, skilled workers saw their wages and benefits increase.

• Farmers, on the other hand, got killed. Crop prices collapsed after the war, and the Republicans did nothing to help this.

International Issues

• Isolationism—retreat from Global Affairs• U.S. refused to join the League of Nations or the

World Court• In 1928, they did sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact

(along with 60 countries) which outlawed war!• The one international issue—paying for the war.

Our allies borrowed more than the could pay.• Dawes Act 1924—scaled back debt payments

and re-stabilized the German economy

Immigration• Keeping with the isolation, many people felt that

enough was enough in terms of people moving to the U.S.

• 1921: Quota set at 350,000/year• 1924: National Origins Act cut this to 164,000

and restricted immigration to 2% of the population of that origin in 1890 (effectively ending all Asian immigration and severely cutting Southern/Eastern European immigration)

• Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1921—they were two anarchists charged with a murder in Mass—convicted essentially due to sensationalist media (demonstrated how conservative America was becoming)

The Sexual Revolution

• Young women stopped becoming family based, and started to rebel by drinking illegal liquor, wearing knee-length skirts (flappers), smoking, dancing

• Older generations also began to loosen up in terms of morality

• Pre-marital sex more common, women’s clothes were shorter, traditional values were loosened in cities

Prohibition

• While the 18th amendment banned it (in theory), in reality, it was poorly enforced and just served as a giant boom to organized crime (which sold the liquor) (repealed in 1933)

• While proponents of it thought people would be better workers and citizens, making it illegal was not realistic, then or now.

• Almost everyone knew a bootlegger (illegal seller of alcohol) or a speakeasy (hidden bar).

• Even officials were drinkers, which made the whole problem worse.

• Gangsters such as Al Capone made millions illegally, and the police were bribed to let them do what they wanted to do.

• The cities became much less law-abiding.

Jazz Age

• Jazz started in the early 1900’s in New Orleans and spread North.

• Jazz was free-flow music based on slave songs, African spirituals and roots

• Famous Jazz musicians: Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington

Harlem Renaissance

• As many blacks started to move north due to war factories in the 1910’s and disenchantment with the poverty of sharecropping/farming, they settled in large Northern cities.

• The key area was Harlem, in New York City.

• The African-American prospective was explored through poetry and novels (see the books section for names and famous works)

Writers

• F. Scott Fitzgerald– The Great Gatsby was about the rebellious youth of the era (very critical of the superficial and material excess of post-war culture)

• Sinclair Lewis – attacked the Protestant, middle-class conformist morality (Babbitt, 1922)

• H. L. Mencken – journalist/magazine editor of the American Mercury, attacked political leaders and the American “booboisie”/middle class

Popular Culture

• Radio stations were started, and affluent Americans could afford radio

• The first great decade of movies (until 1927, The Jazz Singer, they were silent with music soundtracks)

• Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford were silent-screen stars

• Steamboat Willy, 1928, first animated film• Sports became nationally popular due to the ne

w media, Notre Dame football (the four horsemen), Babe Ruth and baseball

• Charles Lindburgh—first solo nonstop flight in an airplane across the Atlantic, May 1927

Racial Tensions

• The prosperity and leisure of the middle classes in the 1920’s hid social tension

• Marcus Garvey (United Negro Improvement Association)—promoted black economic cooperation, moving back to Africa (ended in 1923 due to conviction of Garvey for fraud and his deportation in 1927)

• Attacked by the NAACP (which was more conservative, led by W. E. B. DuBois), the NAACP focused on social reform, rapidly grew in the 1920’s

Ku Klux Klan

• Started in the 1860’s with Confederate soldiers, reformed in the 1910’s had millions of members in the 1920’s.

• Wanted a return to “traditional values” and was a staple of the conservative middle class

• Was against all non-Protestants, including whites who were Catholic

• Were a major political group in the South and Midwest• Also were guilty of many lynching (killing by mob) of

blacks in the 1920’s• Collapsed in 1925 due to corruption of leadership, but

the issues remained

Scopes Trial

• This was a response by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to try to show fundamentalism (relying only on the Bible for faith) as a flawed method

• William Jennings Bryan was the leader of the movement to ban Darwin and evolution from schools

• Tennessee passed the law in 1925 banning it, and Scopes was a teacher who broke the law to test the case

• While the fundamentalists won the actual court case, Bryan was made a fool at the trial due to his lack of scientific knowledge, and the anti-fundamentalists won overall.