The 1920’s

A Time of Cultural Conflict

The Bombing of Wall Street

On September 16, 1920, as hundreds of Wall Street workers headed out for lunch, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in front of Morgan Bank — the world’s most powerful banking institution. The blast turned the nation’s financial center into a bloody war zone and left 38 dead and hundreds more seriously injured. As financial institutions around the country went on high alert, many wondered if this was the strike against American capitalism that radical agitators had threatened for so long. A mostly-forgotten act of terror that remains unsolved today, the bombing helped launch the career of a young J. Edgar Hoover and sparked a bitter national debate about how far the government should go to protect the nation from acts of political violence.

An Attorney General Targeted

In 1919, after a series of bomb attacks — one on his own home — Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer set up a new division within the Justice Department. Known as the “Radical Division,” its goal was to identify people who posed a threat to the U.S. social stability, particularly anarchists. And though initially the raids were celebrated, it seemed to many Americans that this was too extreme a violation of civil liberties.

The First Red Scare and �Immigration Restrictions

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First Red Scare (1919–1920) – Period when the Justice Department arrested and deported alien anarchists and Communists suspected of trying to destroy American democracy and capitalism

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Palmer Raids – Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered arrests and deportations of suspected radicals

- Violation of First/Fourteenth Amendments?

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Immigration Restriction

• World War I brought about increase nativist attacks and calls for immigration limits
• The movement to restrict immigration of southern and eastern Europeans accelerated in the 1920s.
• Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 created quota systems that favored Northern Europeans but limited all Europeans to under 200,000 total
• Banned all Asian immigration

FIGURE 23.3 Immigration Trends to the United States by Continent/Region, 1880–1930

Immigration Restriction

• Fear of Communists and anarchists contributed to laws

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• Concerns about ability of immigrants to assimilate

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• Labor unions feared competition for jobs

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Sacco and Vanzetti

• Italian immigrants accused of murder at the height of the Red Scare in 1920
• After being found guilty and sentenced to die, many took appealed on their behalf
• Historians unclear of guilt or innocence but evidence exists they did not receive a fair trial
• Symbol of nativist sentiment of the time

Return of the KKK

• Regained prominence during 1910’s helped by film – Birth of a Nation
• Called for “100 percent Americanism”
• Hiram W. Evans transformed the Klan into a mass movement by using modern promotional techniques.
• Issues such as northern black migration, Red Scare, mass immigration, and women’s suffrage led to outbursts against blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, radicals, and feminists
• 1925 March on Washington – 40K marchers showed height of popularity

Lynchings

• Approximately 5000 lynchings took place between 1880 and 1930
• Usually due to accusation of murder or rape against a white person
• Contributed to white southerners’ social control over African-Americans
• NAACP tried but failed to get federal anti-lynching laws passed
• Racial violence spread beyond the South
• Scottsboro Boys case -  nine young black men, falsely accused of raping two white women on board a train near Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931

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Prohibition

Eighteenth Amendment (1919) – Constitutional amendment that banned the sale, manufacture, and transportation of intoxicating liquors

Twenty-First Amendment (1933) – Constitutional amendment that repealed the Eighteenth Amendment

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Prohibition

• Enacted in 1919, the Volstead Act enforced the 18th Amendment ban on alcohol.
• Many looked to prohibition as a way to restore public morality, but public demand for alcohol remained strong. As a result, illegal bootlegging and speakeasies proliferated.

Speakeasies and Prohibition

• Volstead Act - Defined an intoxicating liquor as .5% alcohol and established criminal penalties for manufacturing, transporting or possessing alcohol
• Enforcement uneven, divided by class
• Led to growth of organized crime

Testing Norms – �Speakeasies and Prohibition

• Secret bars known as “speakeasies” proliferated
• Glamorized by “Lost Generation” writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
• Rather than stigmatizing drinking, became social acceptable for middle- and upper-class women
• Political debate over law continued throughout the 1920’s
• Great Depression brought on demands for its repeal and 21^st Amendment was passed in 1933
• Local laws remained in some areas

Resisting Modernity

• People in rural parts of the country resisted many of the cultural and intellectual changes taking place

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Science vs. Religion

• Conservative Christians challenged Darwin’s theories
• “Fundamentalists vs. Modernists”
• 1925 Tennessee law made it illegal to teach anything but Creationism
• “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Dayton, OH
• Viewed as “science vs. religion” and “urban vs. rural”
• Tennessee law not repealed until 1967

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Testing Norms - Women

• “Flappers” represented small percentage of women but became symbol of sexual and social emancipation of women
• Smoked, drank in public
• Shorter skirts, new hairstyles
• Margaret Sanger – birth control movement – discredited somewhat by role of eugenicists
• Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) - 1923 - designed to guarantee equal rights for women - written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman.

Images of Women in the Culture

A woman in a man’s shirt and necktie wears a pair of Paul Jones knickers in this 1922 advertisement

The “New Woman” of the 20’s

Gender and Consumerism

The “New Negro”

• Migration to northern urban communities
• Harlem
• major African-American cultural center, artists explored aspects of black life in new ways
• New voices of black protest
• Marcus Garvey
• black pride, black-owned businesses, unity among all people of African descent
• Most Harlem residents worked long hours at menial jobs for low pay.

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Harlem Renaissance

• Harlem Renaissance – An outpouring of African American artistic expression in the 1920s and 1930s
• Great Migration led to tripling of black population in New York
• Harlem became center of intellectual thought and a symbol of liberty for African-Americans
• Poets such as Langston Hughes championed racial pride

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Harlem Renaissance

• Jazz music began in the South but followed the Great Migration north
• “Harlem sound” made Duke Ellington and other famous
• Led to marketing to urban blacks, but also brought “black music” to mainstream American culture
• F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Jazz Age”

Langston Hughes

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“I, Too, Sing America” (1925)

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I, too, sing America.

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I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

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Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed–

I, too, am America. �

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Claude McKay�“If We Must Die” (1919)

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If we must die, let it not be like hogs�Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,�While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,�Making their mock at our accursed lot.�If we must die, O let us nobly die,�So that our precious blood may not be shed�In vain; then even the monsters we defy�Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!�O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!�Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,�And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!�What though before us lies the open grave?�Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,�Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!�

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Countee Cullen�“Incident” (1924)

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Once riding in old Baltimore,�Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,�I saw a Baltimorean�Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,�And he was no whit bigger,�And so I smiled, but he poked out�His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore�From May until December;�Of all the things that happened there�That's all that I remember.

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Prosperity in the 1920’s

• Unemployment generally below 4%
• Boom years lasted from 1922-1928
• By 1930, two-thirds of all Americans had electricity
• Approximately 30,000 millionaires by decade’s end (prior to market crash)

“The Business of America is Business”

• End of the Progressive Era
• Harding spoke of a “Return to Normalcy”
• Welfare Capitalism and court decisions led to decrease in Union membership
• Oligopolies in industries
• Coolidge succeeds Harding after his death
• Believed in limited government while business took care of itself
• Vetoed bills to help farmers deal with falling prices

Economic Policies under Mellon

• Treasury Secretary from 1921-1932
• Served under three presidents (or they served under him)
• One of the wealthiest Americans at the time
• SUPPLY-SIDE (“trickle-down”) ECONOMICS - Cut income tax rates for wealthiest Americans from 73% to 25%
• Also lowered taxes on lower income Americans
• Tried to reduce federal deficit
• Led to budget surpluses

Welfare Capitalism

• To improve worker morale and reduce the challenge of unions, corporations employed “welfare capitalism.”
• To undercut unions, businesses promoted an “open shop” in which non-union workers received the same benefits as union workers.
• Union membership rapidly declined.
• Auto production spurred production of steel, rubber, glass, petroleum
• Overall, the position of workers remained precarious and insecure.

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The Automobile

• Mass production of cars contributed to economic boom of the 1920’s
• Stimulated many other industries
• Part of new trend of purchasing on credit
• Changed way Americans spent leisure time, particularly dating patterns

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The Auto Age

• The car symbolized the rise of the consumer economy.
• 1925: Henry Ford’s Highland Park assembly line—a car every 10 seconds
• Ford paid workers a decent wage, & enabled workers to be both producers and consumers of his Model T. ($300—three month’s wages)
• Road building promoted new businesses along highways and changed social habits.

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Automobiles change Business and Society

• Car sales soar by 1920s
• People make more money & buy on credit
• Assembly-line production lowers price by 60%
• Frederick W. Taylor – scientific management
• Autos spur growth of other industries
• Rubber, plate glass, service stations, and gasoline
• Change society and culture
• Traffic jams, parking problems
• Accident death rates rise sharply
• Changes family life—people get away from home more often; youth culture changes
• Suburban sprawl
• people commute to work

The New Mass Culture

• New media shaped the 1920s. Movies, radio and sound recording all increased Americans’ access to entertainment but, redefining the “good life,” undermined traditional values and cultural distinctiveness in ethnic and rural communities.

Consumer Culture

• “Advertising Culture” became more aggressive
• Bruce Barton
• Messages of progress, convenience, success, leisure, style, etc.
• Advertising became a thriving industry that promoted consumerism.
• Installment plans - “buy now and pay later” - credit

The Radio

• By the end of the decade approximately 40% of American households owned a radio
• Created a national culture
• Coverage of sports and politics
• Serialized programs

Entertainment

• By the end of WWI, Hollywood had become the movie capital - 90% of movies produced there
• Stars set national trends in fashion
• Sports such as baseball, boxing and horse racing were popular pastimes
• Athletes such as Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey became national heroes

Lucky Lindy

• Became international hero with first solo trans-Atlantic flight
• Epitome of 1920’s technological innovation and media culture
• Subject of media sensation when twenty-month old child was kidnapped
• Later became controversial figure with isolationist views on American entry into WW2

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Weakened Agriculture, Ailing Industries

• Despite the boom in business, many farmers suffered from overproduction and global competition.
• Agricultural profits steadily declined and the gap between farm and non-farm income widened.
• Coolidge vetoed efforts to aid farmers weighed down by debts incurred during wartime expansion.
• Other sick industries included:
• coal mining—which faced competition from oil and natural gas
• railroads—which faced competition from cars and trucks
• New England textiles—which faced competition from low-wage southern producers

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FIGURE 23.2 Consumer Debt, 1920–31 FIGURE 23.1 Stock Market Prices, 1921–32