the roaring 20’s · the roaring 20’s america after wwi “a return to normalcy” ......
TRANSCRIPT
The Roaring 20’s
America After WWI
“A Return to Normalcy”
• This became Warren
G. Harding’s
campaign slogan
when he accidentally
messed up the word,
“Normality”
• Americans loved it
and elected him
Fighting the Recession
• After WWI, 2 million
soldiers were looking
for work
• Factories were
closing because they
were no longer
getting orders for
wartime goods from
European nations
Republicans Rule the 1920s
• “HARD”-”COOL”-”HOOV”
• All the presidents of the
1920s were Republican
• The names of the 3
presidents are Harding,
Coolidge, and Hoover
• Warren G. Harding died in
office, probably due to
shock
Warren G.
Harding 1921-
1923 (died in
office)
Calvin
Coolidge
1923-1929
Herbert Hoover 1929-1933
President Harding’s Corrupt
Cabinet
• Secretary of the Treasury: Andrew Mellon,
a wealthy financier
• Secretary of Commerce: Herbert Hoover,
famous for his food raising efforts during
WWI
• “Ohio Gang”: Harding’s old friends from
Ohio who were corrupt and stole money
from the government
Charles Forbes
• One of Harding’s old buddies
• Head of the Veteran’s Bureau
• Stole millions of dollars from the bureau
“I can take care of my enemies all right, but
my…friends, they’re the ones that keep me
walking the floors at night!” –Hoover
Herbert Hoover was very hard-working and honest, but his friends were not
After a bunch of betrayals, Harding died of a heart attack in August, 1923
The Teapot Dome Scandal
• Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall accepted a bribe to lease government land to oil executives
• One of these areas was called “Teapot Dome” in Wyoming
• Fall was sent to prison
Vice President Calvin Coolidge
Becomes President
• “Silent Cal” spoke and spent little (Harding
loved to throw parties and give long
speeches)
• He forced corrupt officials to resign
• He was re-elected in 1924 with the slogan
“Keep Cool With Coolidge”
From War Goods to Consumer
Goods
• Coolidge cut regulations
on businesses
• Americans’ incomes rose
• People began to buy
refrigerators, radios,
vacuums, and other
appliances
• Businesses began to
advertise their products
“Coolidge Prosperity”
“The business of America is business. The man who builds a factory builds a temple. The man who works there worships there.
• Calvin Coolidge
What does President Calvin Coolidge believe American Prosperity rests on?
Buying on Credit
• Installment Buying= Buying on Credit (Buy
now, pay later)
• Demands for goods jumped, but so did
Americans’ debt “If we want anything, all we have to do is go
and buy it on credit. So that leaves us without
any economic problems whatsoever, except
that perhaps some day to have to pay for
them.”
–Comedian Will Rogers
Soaring Stock Market
• By the late 1920s, more people were investing in the stock market
• People became rich overnight
• Bull Market: Period of rapidly increasing stock prices
• Prices of stocks rose more quickly than the value of the companies themselves
American Foreign Policy in the
1920s
• Most all Americans (including Harding and
Coolidge) wanted to remain “isolationist”
HOWEVER:
1. The U.S. still needed to protect economic
interests in Mexico
2. The U.S. gave $10 million in aid to Russia
during a famine
3. The U.S. still signed the “Kellogg-Briand Pact”
with 61 other nations (which outlawed war)
“Hopeful that, encouraged by their example, all the other nations of the world will join in this humane endeavor and by adhering to the present Treaty as soon as it comes into force bring their peoples within the scope of its beneficent provisions, thus uniting the civilized nations of the world in a common renunciation of war as an instrument of their national policy”
-Section of the Kellogg-Briand Pact http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm
Women Gain the Right to Vote
• 19th Amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote
• Carrie Chapman Catt set up the League of Women Voters
• This group tried to educate voters and ensure the right of women to serve on juries
Ana Roque de Duprey
Fought for the right to
vote for women in
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rican women
got the right to vote in
1929
Life Changes for Women
• Women were told to go back home when the men came home to the factories after WWI
• Many women stayed in the workforce as typists, cleaners, cooks, servants, seamstresses, teachers, secretaries, and store clerks
• Many women bought ready-made clothing instead of making their own
• Many women bought appliances to help them with housework after working a full day outside of the home
Impact of the Automobile
• Car sales grew rapidly in the 1920s because Henry Ford’s assembly line made them so cheap
• General Motors also became a popular seller of cars
Changing Lifestyles Due to the
Automobile
• Millions of jobs were created through factories, oil refineries, roads, highways, truck stops, gas stations, restaurants and tourist stops
• Many Americans began to move to the suburbs to escape crowded conditions in cities
Mass Culture
• Radio
• Movies
(Above, lines outside a movie theatre)
(Left, family listening to the radio
The Jazz Age
• Fashion Fads,
flappers
• Marathon Dancing
More Fads
Flagpole sitting: Where young people would sit for hours and even days on top of a flagpole. (The record: 21 days!)
The Dance Craze
• The Charleston
• Has a quick beat
• Dancers kick out
their feet
• Popular dance for
Flappers: Women
who wore short
skirts (to the
knees), bright red
lipstick, hair cut
short, smoked
and drank in
public, and drove
fast cars
New Music
Jazz: Born in New Orleans, created by African Americans, combination of West African rhythms, African American songs and spirituals, European harmonies
Listen to the song “Heebie Jeebies- What different rhythms can you recognize?
Famous jazz musicians: Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, “Jelly Roll” Morton
A New Generation of American
Writers
• Depressed about their awful experiences
in World War I
• Criticized Americans for being obsessed
with money and fun
• Many became expatriates (people who
leave their own country to live in a foreign
land) and moved to Europe
Ernest Hemingway
• Wrote about
experiences of
Americans during
WWI and in Europe
• Wrote A Farewell to
Arms, The Sun Also
Rises, The Old Man
in the Sea
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Wrote about wealthy
young people who go
to constant parties
but cannot find
happiness
He wrote The Great
Gatsby
His characters had
flappers,
bootleggers, and
movie makers
Sinclair Lewis
Grew up in a small town in Minnesota and moved to New York City
He wrote books about rural people from a city person’s perspective (making them look stupid)
Wrote Main Street and Babbitt
The Harlem Renaissance
• In the 1920s, many
African American
artists settled in
Harlem, New York
City
• Black artists,
musicians, and
writers celebrated
their African and
American heritage
Harlem Renaissance Poets Claude McKay: From
Jamaica, wrote the
poem, “If We Must
Die” that condemned
lynchings
Countee Cullen: Taught
high school in
Harlem, wrote of the
experiences of African
Americans
Zora Neale Hurston
Write novels, short essays, short stories
Traveled throughout the South in a battered car collecting folk tales, songs, and prayers of black southerners
Published these in her book, “Mules and Men”
Langston Hughes • Most well-known of
the Harlem Renaissance poets
• Also wrote plays, short stories, and essays
• First poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
• Encouraged African Americans to be proud of their heritage
• Protested racism and acts of violence against blacks
“The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful also, is the sun.
Beautiful also, are the souls of my people.”
-Langston Hughes, “In My People”
Heroes of the 1920s
Athletes:
–Bobby Jones: Won nearly every golfing championship
– Jack Dempsey: Heavyweight boxing champion for 7 years
–Bill Tilden and Helen Willis: Tennis champions
–Gertrude Ederle: 1st woman to swim the English Channel
Babe Ruth
• Grew up in an
orphanage
• Often in trouble as a
boy
• Hit 60 homeruns in
one season, and 714
overall
• Called the “Sultan of
Swat”
Charles Lindbergh
• The greatest hero of the
1920s
• The first person to fly an
airplane across the
Atlantic Ocean alone
• Flew from New York to
Paris
• Called “Lucky Lindy”
because he had to fly for
33 ½ hours and didn’t
carry a parachute, a
radio, or a map
“The Noble Experiment”
Prohibition
How did Prohibition help lead to organized
Crime????