AP/IB American History
Mr. Blackmon
The Twenties
I.
II.
III.
Reaction to the war
A.
Many believed that WWI had been a mistake
B.
Progressive idealism yielded to cynicism, materialism, irresponsibility, and
iconoclasm.
C.
This is one example of the "Cycles of American History" identified by Arthur M.
Schlesinger Jr.
Demobilization
A.
Wilson "took the harness off" the economy
1.
No control in readjusting for a peace-time economy
2.
There was a short-term boom--post-war spending to make up for pent-up
demand.
3.
Product shortages led to inflation; prices doubled from 1913 to 1920.
4.
Inflation leads to labor strife, since wages did not keep up with inflation;
workers face a net loss of buying power.
a.
There are 3,600 strikes in 1919
b.
Boston Police Strike--led to riots and looting
(1)
Gov. Calvin Coolidge became famous when he said, "There
is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody,
anywhere, anytime." He then fired the entire police force.
c.
Gary Steel Strike--350,000 workers go out; 18 are killed in violence;
non-union labor hired to replace the strikers; the AFL eventually
repudiates the strike.
d.
Labor loses 10 years of progress.
B.
Post-War depression
1.
There was a sudden drop in prices, especially agricultural prices.
a.
End of government deficit spending
b.
Evening out of consumer demand once the first flush of spending was
over
c.
Effects of inflation
d.
100,000 bankruptcies
e.
453,000 farmers lose their land
f.
5,000,000 unemployed
2.
Recovery was swift--completed by 1923--but it was frightening.
Urban vs Rural Conflict
A.
A crucial theme in this decade is deep cultural conflict, which to a large extent can
be classified as manifestations of an urban/rural conflict
B.
This is a subject of a DBQ!!!!.
C.
The new, materialistic urban civilization was viewed by rural, conservative,
traditionalist Americans as sinful, fascinating, and unhealthy.
1.
A line from a famous World War I song was "How you gonna keep 'em down
on the farm once they've seen Paris?"
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The Twenties
D.
E.
F.
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Rural Americans responded by a fierce attempt to defend their traditional way of life
and culture
1.
There is a new consciousness that they were a minority and were losing
ground. They had been losing ground for some time, of course, and in fact,
had already lost. But the census of 1920 for the first time put a majority of
Americans in an urban, big city environment.
a.
Rural America is now desperate in a way that they had not been
before, and that desperation bred intolerance.
Disparate phenomena can be linked together using this theme:
1.
Nativism and Xenophobia
a.
Labor unrest
b.
Red Scare
c.
Palmer Raids
d.
Immigration restriction
e.
the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
2.
Evolution
a.
Scopes Monkey Trial
3.
Prohibition
4.
Alienation of the Intellectuals
a.
Sacco and Vanzetti
b.
the Lost Generation
c.
Babbitt and Elmer Gantry
d.
H.L. Mencken
Nativism and Xenophobia
1.
The labor unrest of 1919 spurred the "traditional" nativism which labelled
strikes, unions, etc. as foreign and un-American.
a.
The success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia intensified these
fears.
2.
The Red Scare
a.
fearful reaction to labor unrest
(1)
fear of a plot to establish a Soviet government in the U.S.
(which in fact, Lenin would have liked to have done;
however, he had more immediate worries in 1919)
(2)
The Communist International (Comintern) in 1919, designed
to export revolution, gives substance to these fears
(a)
It is not popular currently to argue that the Red Scare
had any basis in objective fact, and such a plot in fact
had little chance of success in the U.S. However,
anyone who does not believe that the Bolsheviks
plotted and actively sought to export revolution
simply doesn't know much about the time period. Just
because you are paranoid does not mean that they are
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The Twenties
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not out to get you . . . .
b.
There were some radicals in the U.S.
(1)
Letter bombs were found in 1919; 8 of them exploded on the
same day, which suggested a national conspiracy.
(2)
Letter bombs were typical of Anarchists, rather than
Bolsheviks. Most Americans were unable to distinguish
between the two.
(3)
The International Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies)
a small organization, advocated violence.
c.
Old-stock Americans blend the image of the radical, unionist, and
foreigner to convince themselves that our way of life was threatened.
The Palmer Raids
a.
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (who, unusual among mindless
Red-baiters and witch-hunters like Joe McCarthy, was a Democrat)
is:
(1)
Angry, since one letter bomb was sent to him
(2)
Ambitious to become President and needs an issue
(3)
Feeds the frenzy with violent xenophobic statements: "Out
of the sly and crafty eyes of many of them [foreigners] leap
cupidity, cruelty, insanity, and crime; from their lopsided
faces, sloping brows, and misshapen features may be
recognized the unmistakable criminal type."
b.
A young J. Edgar Hoover rises to prominence by collecting
information on "radicals" (an activity he pursued with far greater
tenacity and attention during his entire public career than he ever
pursued organized crime)
c.
650 "radicals" were arrested in 1919, and 43 deported (a pretty rotten
conviction record)
d.
The Palmer Raids proper took place on 1/2/20 (let's get the new
decade off to a good start!)
(1)
6,000 arrested
(2)
Premises were searched without warrants
(3)
Persons were held incommunicado for weeks, in violation of
habeas corpus and the Fifth and Sixth Amendments
(4)
The search for arms caches (to arm the coming revolution)
yielded 3 pistols
(a)
Put that into perspective: how many Texans would be
required to build up a cache of 3 pistols? Or modern
junior high students (we will count machine pistols as
pistols but assault rifles as machine guns)
(5)
There were 556 deportations
(6)
Palmer looks ridiculous with this result (the worst thing that
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The Twenties
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can happen to a politician--one can beat an indictment but not
mocking laughter) and the Red Scare collapses.
Immigration Restriction
a.
Pressure to restrict immigration had been building up steadily, and by
World War I, some restriction was inevitable.
b.
The first success was the passage of the literacy test over Wilson's
second veto in 1917.
c.
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 was aimed at stopping
immigrants from Eastern or Southern Europe, ie. the New
Immigrants.
(1)
The act established a quota system for the first time in US
history.
(2)
3% of the number of foreign born residents in the US as of
1910 could enter the country (350,000)
(3)
The base year for the quota was 1910
(4)
Immigration from any particular country was made
proportional to the percentage of foreign born residents
originating in that country in the base year.
d.
The National Origins Act of 1924 reduced both the percentage and
altered the base year.
(1)
The percentage was set at 2%
(2)
The base year was set at 1890
(3)
Both would have the effect of reducing immigration from
Eastern and Southern Europe, since a smaller percentage of
our foreign born residents were from those regions in 1890
than in 1910.
e.
In 1929, the quota was again altered, this time based on a percentage
of the entire white population in 1920, and effectively set the number
of immigrants per year at about 150,000.
f.
Instead of accepting the "huddled masses yearning to be free," these
acts attempted to preserve a homogeneous, Anglo-Saxon population-long after such a homogeneous population had ceased to exist. They
are closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out.
The new Ku Klux Klan
a.
The Klan was revived in 1915
b.
Originally an instrument for the oppression of African Americans, it
now broadens its scope to include anyone and anything "unAmerican."
c.
In part, it is a response to the massive migration of African
Americans to Northern cities.
(1)
There were race riots in Houston, Philadelphia, St. Louis and
Chicago in 1917 and 1919.
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The Twenties
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(2)
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
The premier of D.W. Griffiths' landmark Birth of a Nation
glorified the original Klan.
(a)
The film is a milestone in the history of
cinematography; a masterpiece of film-making. The
interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction
given by the film is racist and inaccurate.
The new Klan was founded by William J. Simmons
They used elaborate rituals and titles to appeal to members (rather
like Catholic rituals, ironically)
They quickly shifted to include Jews, Catholics, intellectuals and
foreigners in general on their hate list.
They worked to purge America of "alien" influences and to enforce
conformity of ideas and behavior.
Hiram Wesley Evans replaced Simmons as Imperial Wizard in 1922.
[Please note this for your DBQ] In 1926, Evans wrote the following
for periodical, North American Review: "The Ku Klux Klan, in
short, is an organization which gives expression, direction, and
purpose to the most vital instincts, hopes, and resentments of
old-stock Americans, provides them with leadership and is
enlisting and preparing them for militant, constructive action
toward fulfilling their racial and national destiny. . . . .We are
a movement of the plain people, very weak in the matter of
culture, intellectual support, and trained leadership. We are
demanding, and we expect to win, a return of power into the
hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly
intellectualized, but entirely unspoiled and not deAmericanized, average citizen of the old stock. Our members
and leaders are all of this class--the opposition of the
intellectuals and liberals who held the leadership, betrayed
Americanism, and from whom we expect to wrest control, is
almost automatic. This is undoubtedly a weakness. It lays us
open to the charge of being 'hicks' and 'rubes' and 'rubes' and
'drivers of secondhand Fords.' We admit it. Far worse, it
makes it hard for us to state our state and advocate our crusade
in the most effective way, for most of us lack skill in language.
. . . .The Klan does not believe that the fact that it is emotional
and instinctive rather than coldly intellectual is a weakness. All
action comes from emotion rather than from ratiocination.
Our emotions and the instincts on which they are based have
been bred into us for thousands of years, far longer than reason
has had a place in the human brain. . . . . For centuries those
AP/IB American History
The Twenties
i.
j.
k.
l.
m.
n.
o.
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who obeyed them have lived and carried on the race; those in
whom they were weak, or who failed to obey, have died. They
are the foundations of our American civilization, even more
than our great historic documents; they can be trusted where
the fine-haired reasoning of the denatured intellectual cannot.
Thus the Klan goes back to the American racial instincts, and
to the common sense which is their first product." (Evans 50910)
The Klan grew into the Midwest from the South
(1)
It was strongest in small towns and mid-sized cities (where
the rural outlook was still dominant)
They targeted nonconformity and any group that threatened
traditional values.
Their tactics included threats, intimidation, boycotts, beatings, arson,
and lynching.
By 1923, there were 5,000,000 members and they were conducting
parades in broad daylight through the streets of American cities.
A decline set in with factionalism and scandal
(1)
The Indiana Klan leader, David C. Stephenson, was
convicted of raping and murdering a young woman.
They retained enough strength to help defeat Al Smith for the
Presidency in 1928 (Smith was a New Yorker and a Catholic).
They were down to 9000 members by 1930 (I have some questions
about that figure. My father recalls quite clearly during the
Depression years in Atlanta how powerful the Klan was politically;
he had personal, direct, and unpleasant experiences with the Klan)
Evolution
1.
Fundamentalism
a.
Protestantism by 1921 had split into
(1)
an urban, middle-class version, adapting religion to science
and to a secular society
(2)
a fundamentalist, provincial, largely rural version, trying to
preserve traditional faith and the centrality of religion in
American life.
(a)
Darwinism implies no absolutes, no inherent rights.
Fundamentalists sense that and reacted to defend their
beliefs.
b.
There was a wave of evangelism in the country
(1)
Billy Sunday was the best known of the evangelists.
(2)
Much of this seemed silly to secular society, or to what today
are labelled by evangelical Christians as "secular humanists"-such as Sinclair Lewis.
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(3)
c.
d.
Others were frauds (my father found himself working in the
organization of one such fraud in the 1930s, but not for long.
He was a radio evangelist and all he was interested in were
the donations from desperately poor people. He would shake
open their letters for money and throw them away unread.)
(4)
Think of your (or my) reaction to Tammy Faye Bakker,
Jimmy Swaggart, and others even less savory. Even the ones
who are legitimate are part of a subculture that can cause real
culture shock to those (such as myself) who are not part of it.
Check out the religious cable channels some time to see what
I mean. And I am an evangelical Christian whose theology is
very similar to theirs. If I am in culture shock, what of others
who don't share the theology at all?
One rather odd example of the evangelism was Aimee Semple
McPherson, sort of a cross between California chic and Jimmy
Swaggart. [Remember her for your DBQ!]
(1)
"charismatic evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, for
example, regularly filled the fifty-two hundred seats of her
Angelus Temple in Los Angeles and reached many thousands
more by radio. Radiating drama and beauty [over the radio?],
the white gowned McPherson won an enormous following
through her cheerful sermons and considerable theatrical
talent. On one occasion she employed a gigantic electric
scoreboard to illustrate the triumph of good over evil. Her
followers, predominantly transplanted Midwestern farmers,
embraced her fundamentalist theology while reveling in her
mastery of the techniques of mass entertainment. In many
ways, McPherson anticipated the television evangelists of a
later day. When she died in 1944, her International Church of
the Foursquare Gospel had over six hundred branches in the
United States and abroad." (Boyer 856)
There was intense hostility to Darwinism and the Theory of Evolution
(which has not diminished at all, believe me)
(1)
Fundamentalist Christians believed that Man had not evolved
from the apes, but had been created by God, as described in
Genesis.
(2)
This is not a minor point of theology. Since it deals with the
very conception of the nature of Man, it is almost as
important as the conception of God to religious faith.
(3)
If Darwin is right, then Man is just another animal, perhaps a
bit more complex, but not a creature with a soul to be saved;
in fact, he is not a creature at all, but just a being, the product
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of an essentially random process without any real meaning.
Bertrand Russell is a good advocate of that point of view
taken to its logical end.
(4)
If Genesis is true, however, Man is a special creation of God,
endowed with a soul and with the moral capacity to
understand good and evil. Francis Schaeffer is the most
perceptive and eloquent spokesman of this point of view I
know.
(5)
Issues of public and private morality, public and private
ethics, natural rights, and the dignity and meaning of human
life are bound up inexorably in the debate. The debate is not
just about the paradigms used in biological science--else the
debate would not be so heated nor so prolonged--but in
paradigms used to conceptualize a wide range of personal and
social relationships.
e.
Individual states, mostly in the Bible Belt, began passing laws
forbidding the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in public
schools.
f.
Modernists are alarmed and horrified at those laws on a number of
grounds.
(1)
Modernists are concerned at the censureship of human
thought implied by the laws.
(2)
Modernists also regard evolution as indisputable, thoroughly
proven scientific fact, and any denial of evolution as
equivalent to asserting that the earth is flat and that the sun
revolves around the earth. Anyone who questions evolution
must be stupid, ignorant, bigoted, or all three.
The Scopes Monkey Trial
a.
[Remember this for your DBQ!]
b.
The Tennessee statute made it illegal to "teach any theory that denies
the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible."
c.
The American Civil Liberties Union offered free counsel to anyone
who broke the law.
d.
John T. Scopes reluctantly agreed to deliberately violate the law. He
was brought to trial in Dayton, Tennessee.
e.
His counsel was Clarence Darrow, the nation's most famous defense
attorney.
f.
William Jennings Bryan, who was devoting his last years to the issue
of evolution, offered himself as an expert witness for the prosecution.
g.
The trial was conducted in a circus atmosphere. The play and later
the movie, Inherit the Wind is a thin fictionalization of the Scopes
Trial.
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H.
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Darrow knew he would lose the case (Scopes was incontestably guilty
of violating state law), but really intended to hold the fundamentalists
up to ridicule. Having gotten Bryan (formerly a friend; Bryan thought
they still were) on the stand, he used his full range of irony and
sarcasm to cut Bryan up badly. Bryan was not as dogmatic as Darrow
makes him out to appear, or as he is usually portrayed, and cross
examination was not something he was really good at anyway. It was
an unequal contest. Most portrayals and discussions of the trial are
intensely hostile to Bryan and the Fundamentalists since most people
who write about it agree with Darrow and the modernists.
i.
Bryan died just a few days after the trial. Mercifully, he never
understood the extent to which he had been held up to ridicule.
Unfortunately, most Americans who recognize his name at all know
him from the Scopes Trial. That is unfair, really. His career had been
long, and, on the whole, constructive.
j.
Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, which the ACLU paid.
3.
The issue has not gone away, although now there is a role reversal. Today,
it is the evolutionists who are trying to suppress an alternative view, and
creationists who are trying to get another interpretation into the text books.
Prohibition
1.
Prohibition was emphatically a rural victory.
2.
The XVIII Amendment (the Volstead Amendment) prohibited the
manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
a.
Temperance had been an important element in American culture since
the Age of Jackson.
b.
War shortages helped the prohibition impulse.
c.
Nativism also reinforced it:
(1)
Germans drank a lot of beer
(2)
Italians drank a lot of wine.
3.
Large portions of the country were legally dry by local law by 1917. These
counties were mostly rural, particularly in the Bible Belt.
4.
There was an insistence on total abstinence.
a.
Partial prohibition might have worked.
b.
But Americans refused to quit drinking altogether.
c.
The demand for alcohol provided an opportunity for the expansion
and organization of crime in the cities. Those profits in turn fueled
other activities.
5.
Enforcement
a.
The resources put into enforcement of prohibition were laughably
inadequate.
b.
Saloons disappear and are replaced by speakeasies.
c.
Prohibition undermined the social fabric by encouraging hypocrisy
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and graft. (President Warren G. Harding, for instance, was noted for
the whiskey served at his frequent parties)
6.
The Volstead Amendment pitted the country vs. the city, the native born vs
the immigrant.
7.
The Volstead Amendment almost destroyed the Democratic party by pitting
urban immigrants against Bible Belt Southerners.
8.
Although it soon became obvious that the amendment wasn't working, rural
forces defended it tenaciously.
Alienation of the Intellectuals
1.
Sacco and Vanzetti
a.
For many intellectuals, this trial came to symbolize all that was wrong
with American culture. Many of the most creative Americans of this
very creative era felt deeply alienated from the mainstream of US
society.
b.
Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in 1920 for murder committed
during a robbery of a post office.
c.
Both men were admitted anarchists as well as immigrants
d.
The trial, like that of the Haymarket Square incident, was a travesty
of justice.
e.
The men were convicted and sentenced to death.
f.
Intellectuals rallied to try to save their lives, bringing considerable
media attention to the issue.
g.
The effort was to no avail, and the men were executed in 1927.
h.
The trial and effort to save them from the chair crystallized as well as
symbolized their discontent.
i.
Modern forensic evidence, unavailable at the time, indicates strongly
that Sacco may actually have been guilty.)
2.
The Lost Generation
a.
Pre-war literature had generally been optimistic. The War changes
that (in conjunction with all other European literatures)
(1)
Actually, from a broader European perspective, the
destruction of the old world in art, music and literature, had
begun prior to the war. The War shatters the old world for the
mass of citizens, and accelerates the decay of old values
among the artists. The entire subject of trends in the arts at
the turn of the century and the death of Romanticism and
Victorianism is an immense subject, and one that is extremely
interesting, at least to me. It is worth extended study.
(2)
Personally, I use T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Franz Kafka,
Hermann Hesse, and Thomas Mann as both examples and
symbols of the process.
In the arts, Picasso, the
Expressionists; in music, Mahler, Schönberg, Hindemith,
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Bartok. I had better stop this line of thought now! In order to
do justice to it, instead of just throwing out random ideas, I'll
have to do an entire new handout.
(3)
Ezra Pound had invented Imagism
(4)
Carl Sandburg had founded the "Chicago School"
(5)
American writers were beginning to use Freudian psychology.
(6)
Henry Adams' pessimistic Education of Henry Adams is
often cited as an example of the disillusionment of the pure
bred intellectual with the materialistic American culture.
b.
The label "Lost Generation" was given post-war writers (many of
whom were expatriates, that is, they were living abroad--mostly in
Paris-- rather than coming home) by Gertrude Stein.
c.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) probably expresses
this mood as well as any work.
(1)
Gatsby aspires to and is destroyed by a world of fraud,
pretense, and cruelty.
(2)
Much of Fitzgerald's later work is trash, and he drifted into a
life of alcohol and despair.
(3)
Personally, I think Fitzgerald is over-rated, even if he did go
to Princeton.
d.
Ernest Hemingway is another of the expatriates (my thesis adviser,
Carlos Baker, was a specialist on Hemingway)
(1)
The Sun Also Rises (1926) pictured an expatriate world of
rootless desperation, amorality, and outrage at
meaninglessness.
(2)
A Farewell to Arms (1929) depicts an American officer who
abandons war to run away with a nurse.
(3)
He had a powerful, influential writing style.
(4)
The idea of the pursuit of manliness and a fascination with
blood sports runs through much of his work.
e.
T.S. Eliot belongs with the expatriates, although he is an Englishman
by adoption. he is, in my view, the greatest and most important
American poet of the Twentieth Century. (Of course, my list of great
American poets is rather short)
(1)
The Waste Land (1922) broke new ground poetically,
representing the sterility of contemporary culture, and the
dead end to which literature had come.
(a)
Its tone is harsh despair
(b)
It attempted (rather successfully, I think) to point into
new directions for a valid poetry
(c)
It is a sharp break with Romanticism.
Eugene O'Neill is not an expatriate, and doesn't fit into any of my neat little
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categories here. He is perhaps our first genuinely great playwright. He is the
first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
a.
Significantly, his Emperor Jones has a protagonist who is African
American.
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry
a.
[remember this for your DBQ!]
b.
The writer who gives us the best view of popular culture in the
Twenties is Sinclair Lewis. Lewis is essentially a critic whose chief
tool is irony. He provides pictures of middle America that are
photographic in detail and accuracy. Some people do not notice his
irony for what it is.
c.
His first major work was Main Street in 1922.
d.
His greatest, and best known work is Babbitt (1922), which was so
powerful that the character George Babbitt and the name entered the
popular vocabulary (Eric Goldman has a chapter entitled "The Shame
of the Babbitts." One can speak of babbitts and babbittry) This is
why a passage from Babbitt is duplicated in your DBQ.
(1)
George Babbitt is a thoroughly conventional character living
in middle America, with a good job, a wife, 2.5 kids, a house
with a picket fence, and a dog. He does not have a single
independent idea in his head--they are supplied by the
Republican Party, the Elks, Rotary Club, and Madison
Avenue. He is as happy as anyone in his brainless state can
be. He doesn't understand why his teenage children do not
like him. In the course of the novel, he meets a Bohemian
woman who represents everything that Babbitt isn't: a life of
art, love, passion, risk, unconventionality. He has an affair
with her. Ultimately, he is confronted with a choice: either
go off with the bohemian woman and give up his job,
marriage, and status and try to attain real happiness, or give
up the affair and return to the conventional, placid,
materialistic life he had known. Since he is a Babbitt, he
chooses the safe, conventional, sterile path.
e.
Arrowsmith (1925) was a critique of the medical profession.
f.
Dodsworth is a very underrated novel about a businessman who
retires to Europe.
g.
Elmer Gantry (1927) is a scathing look at fraudulent evangelical
preachers. It is so true to life, that Elmer Gantry has been used as a
symbol for the real thing, and many people are not aware that Elmer
Gantry is in fact a fictional character.
H.L. Mencken
a.
Became one of the best known critics of the era; noted for his biting
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sarcasm ("Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere,
might be happy."). He can be very funny, but when closely observed,
he has not constructive view of the world of his own. He is therefore
sterile and destructive.
6.
Much of the literature of this time period is escapist, intensely creative, and
sometimes revolutionary. It is a very interesting period, and the contrast with
the literature of the '30s, which is also powerful and creative, is especially
suggestive.
Popular Culture in the Roaring Twenties
A.
The Jazz Age
1.
The Twenties is well-known as a time period of youth rebellion against
narrowness, prudery, add conservatism.
2.
Youth indulged in intense self-expression, often in bizarre ways (gee, sound
familiar? From the perspective of a former 1960s teenager who has been
watching teenage fads for 18 years of teaching, this is an enduring
phenomenon. They all look bizarre to me; they will look bizarre to you, too,
ten years from now.)
3.
The influence of Sigmund Freud, who emphasized non-rational motivation
and relative or "emancipated" standards of behavior, is strong. Freud was
extremely popular among professionals (the discipline of psychoanalysis was
developing quickly) and in popular culture (which did not necessary actually
understand what he was saying.)
4.
More than any other phenomenon of the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age is
the best and most suggestive symbol of the era.
a.
Jazz is a direct development of black gospel music via cake walk and
ragtime. It entered the mainstream of American culture via African
American artists. It eventually gave birth to rock and roll.
b.
Jazz was not only a type of music making, but a symbol
c.
Jazz is improvisational, breaks away from traditional forms and
abandons the discipline of a fixed, written score. Jazz emphasizes
the immediate, the emotional, and highlights the expression of the
individual. It symbolized a break with traditional authority.
5.
The Twenties witnessed the arrival of fads in the modern sense (in my
household, the current fad as of 1995 is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers).
The development of radio and Madison Avenue advertising techniques
helped to make fads possible by distributing an idea nationally very quickly.
B.
Cinema
1.
Early films included The Great Train Robbery in 1903
2.
D.W. Griffiths is one of the great pioneers in cinematography. His epic Birth
of a Nation (1915) (see above) is a land mark.
3.
The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first talking film.
4.
A film culture evolves quickly
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Mr. Blackmon
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a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
predictable, trashy plots
handsome, talentless stars
a decline of the American stage
a new theatrical art
changes in acting styles (you do not act the same before a camera as
on the stage)
f.
wider audiences.
Charlie Chaplin became the supreme comedic artist of the era.
C.
D.
5.
Radio
1.
This became the most pervasive communication medium. Every family had
a radio, and listened to programs as a family.
2.
Lee DeForest devised improvements for long-distance broadcasting.
3.
Radio broadcasts had an immediate impact
4.
Advertising expands its role, using techniques of propaganda developed in
war-time.
a.
Advertising helped to create a consumer economy, encouraging
people to purchase goods purely for pleasure.
5.
Congressional control
a.
Congress limited the number of stations and set the wavelengths in
1927
b.
The Federal Communications Commission was established in 1933
under FDR.
Hero Worship
1.
One of the most striking qualities of the era was the growth of hero worship,
especially of sports heroes. This seems to have filled a psychological need,
extolling the virtues of individual effort and achievement against a machine
age.
2.
Heroes were made into larger-than-life figures.
a.
Babe Ruth in baseball, probably the most widely known.
b.
Jack Dempsey in boxing.
c.
The "Four Horsemen of Notre Dame" a creation of Grantland Rice
and the sports information department.
d.
Charles Lindbergh, a genuine hero, who flew The Spirit of St. Louis
on the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927.
(1)
Lindbergh's achievement was striking, evidence of both great
courage and great skill. The magnitude of the idolatry
directed at him, however, seems to have more to do with his
background and personality than the flight itself.
(2)
Lindbergh was of Scandinavian stock, a Midwesterner. He
looked "all-American" not like a New Immigrant. In
personality, he was modest, unassuming, a solid family man.
In other words, he stood for everything that nativists believed
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3.
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was most essential about America. [remember that for your
DBQ!]
Boyer makes some snide, politically correct slurs against Babe Ruth and Ty
Cobb. It is in fact true that Ruth was a "coarse, heavy-drinking womanizer"
and Cobb was "an ill-tempered racist." (647) He misses the point--about
athletes, about both men and about hero worship. The implication seems to
be that great athletes ought really to be pristine pure individuals of great and
politically correct moral stature, like Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, or
Lou Gehrig. The fact is, they often aren't. (Why, even as nice a guy as O.J.
Simpson takes an occasional drink and is sometimes a bit coarse).
a.
Had Cobb been a nice man, he would not have been a great baseball
player. His racism is not central to his personality (was he a racist?
Yes, absolutely. More to the point, he regarded himself as a man
alone against the world and always at war.). "Ill-tempered" is a gross
understatement. Cobb was driven by inner demons to excel at
everything, regardless of cost to himself or others. He was a man
who played an exhibition game with a deep knife wound in his back
(he was attacked by three angry fans and drove them off single
handedly) who neither gave nor asked quarter. Even his team-mates
hated him. But on the field, he was an elemental force. Fans watched
him; no one loved him or idolized him.
b.
Ruth's gargantuan personality (let us recall the literary source of that
adjective) was essential to the hero worship leveled at him. Was he
coarse? Yes, indeed. Children raised between brothels, saloons, and
children's homes are not usually models of decorum. His team-mates
saw him as a large healthy animal--and the most extraordinary
baseball player of all time. (Even if you norm all statistics to take
consideration of changes i the game over the years, and then use
mathematical models of effectiveness, the most valuable baseball
player of all time is, easily, Babe Ruth.) Yes, he hit 60 home runs in
1927, but he also batted over .350 with around 120 walks (I can't find
my book of stats); in 1920, he batted .376, with 54 HRs, 158 Rs, and
148 Ws.
(1)
Being vivid and colorful are key to the popularity. I admire
no baseball player--no American pro athlete-- more than Lou
Gehrig. Not only was he a brave man, but a fundamentally
decent one as well (my family knows first hand; I am cousin
to Bill Terry, 1st baseman of the NY Giants, Hall of Famer,
and last National Leaguer to hit .400; his mother lived in St.
Petersburg and Gehrig made a point of visiting her every year
during Spring training; he paid a lonely woman much more
attention than her own son did; Terry was blood kin, famous,
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c.
d.
E.
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and wealthy, but no one in my family has much use for him)
In 1927, when Ruth hit 60, Gehrig won the RBI crown and
was MVP. Who paid him any attention?
Jack Dempsey's background is not exactly pristine either. What made
him popular was the savage, merciless intensity of his fighting. A
small man by today's standards, he was a killer in the ring--look up
the Willard (Dempsey broke his band, also Willard's jaw and ribs;
Willard was droped 7 times in the first round) fight and the Firpo
fight (the most savage fight in heavyweight championship history.
Dempsey was knocked completely out of the ring in the opening of
the first round. Firpo was huge, strong, and brave, and he dropped
Dempsey repeatedly, but Dempsey mauled him brutally and ended
the fight in the second round)
Boyer does not point out (snide in reverse) that Lindbergh, for all his
great virtues personally, was hopelessly wrong on the subject of
fascism--a topic I find that I am quite sensitive on. He was one of
Hitler's best friends in the US, having been fooled utterly into
thinking that the US could never defeat Germany. He became the
leading spokesman of the "America First" movement.
(1)
What do you prefer? Personal rectitude and public error of
such magnitude (and, in the case of Hitler, is there not a moral
dimension to the belief that the US should not fight him? or
private weakness without a public dimension?
(2)
By the way, after Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh offered his services
as an aviation expert, especially in the techniques of
conserving fuel. For many pilots in the Pacific, Lindbergh
probably saved their lives.
Feminism
1.
Feminists won superficial gains.
a.
Margaret Sanger has become a politically correct heroine for her
advocacy of birth control.
(1)
She argued that sexual relationships are not simply a means
of procreation but as the culmination of romantic love.
(2)
It is not so politically correct that she wished to stop the
procreation of groups which she regarded as less valuable to
society, such as immigrant women.
b.
Gains in technology reduces the demands of motherhood, giving
more time to devote to other interests.
c.
There gains in some professional areas
(1)
fashion
(2)
publishing
(3)
cosmetics
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(4)
social work
(5)
education
(6)
nursing
d.
Social mores were relaxed
(1)
smoking
(2)
drinking
(3)
wearing seductive clothing
(4)
make-up
2.
Weaknesses
a.
"By placing more and more emphasis on their relationships with men
[romantic love], women were increasing their vulnerability to
frustration when those relationships proved unsatisfactory."
(1)
the divorce rate soared as women became more intolerant of
marriages that were not good romances.
(2)
I am a strong believer in companionate marriages rich in
romance. I think, however, that it can be argued that our
present obsession with romance and quick lustful emotions
have detracted from stable marriages by encouraging less
willingness to work through rough spots or by encouraging an
unrealistic view of the dynamics of human relationships
(when the violins stop playing, it's time to move out)
(3)
From the point of view of society, marriage is the crucial
institution that nurtures and rears children, transmits cultural
values, and provides economic as well as emotional stability
to succeeding generations. At the risk of sounding like a
supporter of Dan Quayle (I shudder at the thought) the
statistical evidence available today leave no room for doubt
or even argument that the weakening of the family in America
has been an economic, social, and psychological catastrophe.
b.
wages did not equal men's wages
(1)
Therefore, a divorced woman and her children is condemned
to instant poverty or is dependent upon the support of her
former spouse. Statistics collected after 50 years of new
attitudes are compelling.
c.
Women did not vote as a bloc
(a)
Gaining the vote did not automatically bring equality
(b)
Alice Paul begins to lead a fight for an Equal Rights
Amendment.
3.
Generational Split
a.
Older feminists vs younger feminists, especially over sexual mores.
African Americans in the Twenties
A.
Problems
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1.
B.
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The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan faced them with intensified persecution
everywhere.
2.
Jim Crow had reached its apex in the South; repression in the South is as
intense as it will ever get, and will remain about that intense at least into the
1930s.
3.
The middle class is hostile to labor, which hurts them since they are more
often laborers.
4.
Organized labor is hostile to them, since they tend to drive wages down and
refuse to accept African Americans into unions.
The new urban ghettoes.
1.
The migration of African Americans to Northern or Midwestern cities had
begun prior to the war, but was greatly accelerated during the war. Prior to
World War I, the great majority of African Americans lived in the rural
South. Racism against them was therefore a phenomenon that was most
often seen in the South.
2.
Immigrants to cities such as Chicago tended to concentrate into a narrow
geographic area of the city.
a.
Part of this is due to deliberate discrimination in neighborhoods.
Persons who rented to African Americans were pressured; black
renters were harassed.
b.
The concentration of many renters in those few districts available
drove rents upward, as there were not enough units to meet demand.
c.
One response was to subdivide housing units and keep the rents up.
(This had also happened with other ethnic neighborhoods.)
d.
Many immigrants to the cities were ignorant and inexperienced in
urban living, and that caused problems.
3.
African American response.
a.
W.E.B. DuBois, in the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, strengthened
his call for black nationalism.
b.
Marcus Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement
Association.
(1)
His "Negro Nationalism" "exalted blackness, black cultural
expression, and black exclusiveness." (Tindall & Shi 1041)
(2)
He began a "Back to Africa Movement" which attracted
followers.
(3)
He criticized DuBois savagely for being too "soft" on whites.
(4)
He was a poor businessman, and his projects fail financially.
(a)
he was convicted of fraud in using the mails in
connection with the Black Star steamship company in
1923, and served 2 years' imprisonment until 1927,
when Coolidge pardoned him and deported him.
c.
Both men are preaching the message of the "New Negro" proud "of
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C.
D.
E.
Mr. Blackmon
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his culture and heritage and prepared to resist both white
mistreatment and white ideas."
Political power
1.
Concentration in the ghettoes concentrated the black vote, and gave them
some political leverage with urban machines.
2.
Ironically, the ghettoes do have the positive effect of helping to create a black
world with economic opportunities and rights.
The Harlem Renaissance
1.
There is a surge of African American artists and artistry during this time
period, some of which may legitimately classed among the Harlem
Renaissance.
2.
Jazz, as note above, moved from New Orleans to a nation-wide musical form.
a.
Then and now, many of the greatest and most influential jazz
performers were black:
(1)
Louis Armstrong
(2)
Duke Ellington
(3)
Bessie Smith
b.
The Cotton Club, in Harlem, was a famous center for performances
(but was available only to white audiences)
3.
There is the appearance of the singer and actor Paul Robeson at this time.
4.
The Harlem Renaissance proper "was a rediscovery of black folk and an
emancipation from the genteel tradition." (Tindall & Shi 1040)
a.
Langston Hughes is probably the most widely known poet and
novelist. [Remember this for your DBQ!]
b.
Zora Neale Hurston is pushing Hughes for recognition, since she is
now often being taught in high schools.
c.
Countée Cullen, poet and novelist
d.
James Weldon Johnson
e.
Jean Toomer's novel Cane is perhaps the finest single work.
5.
The most serious problem facing the Harlem Renaissance writers is the
narrow base of support from the black middle class, which made them
dependent upon the support of white patrons.
The Influence of African American art on White Culture
1.
Jazz was picked up by white artists, and jazz clearly is the most important
and pervasive contribution of black artists of the era.
a.
George Gershwin in particular adapted the idiom of jazz to classical
music to produce An American In Paris (1928), Concerto in F,
Rhapsody in Blue (1924) , and Porgy and Bess.
2.
DuBose Heyward wrote Porgy in 1925 (from which Gershwin took his
libretto
3.
Eugene O'Neill (as mentioned above) wrote Emperor Jones (which starred
Robeson)
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4.
5.
6.
7.
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Marc Connelly wrote The Green Pastures (1930)
Shermwood Anderson also took up the theme.
Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote Showboat, from a novel by
Edna Ferber, uses African Americans extensively in the sub-plots.
Boyer takes a very condescending attitude--not to say snide--toward the
Harlem Renaissance and the spread of the influence of African American art.
He complains that the music is "drained of its energy" and the literature
"perpetuated racial stereotypes." (853) Tindall & Shi are somewhat more
sophisticated, stating that one set of racial stereotypes were replaced by
another (1041)
a.
Both of them miss the real point, especially Boyer.
b.
For the first time in our history, this period sees the entry of African
Americans and their art into the mainstream of American culture.
Heretofore, they possessed a subculture which remained isolated from
the larger national culture.
c.
I do not believe that one can adopt substantial part of someone else's
culture without obtaining some insight into that other person's
experience and view of the world.
d.
It is my belief that the introduction of African American culture into
the national mainstream was a vital prerequisite to convincing a
majority of white America that African Americans possess the same
civil rights that white men possess, and should not, must not, be
denied those rights.
e.
What strikes me most about Porgy and Bess is not alleged racial
stereotypes (I missed them if they are there) but the lyricism of the
music and the humanity of the characters--drawn as suffering and
aspiring individuals, not caricatures and stereotypes.
(1)
(Not to mention the number of African American artists who
have made a living on the play; there aren't all that many stage
and singing parts for black actors)
f.
What strikes me the most about Showboat is that the black stage
workers, and especially Queenie and Joe, provide a human chorus,
more caring than the white community as a whole. "Old Man River,"
the play's most famous song, is given to Joe, and is a powerful
commentary on the life of black people in the American South.
When Magnolia is abandoned by her husband Gaylord Ravenol and
goes into labor, it is Joe who rows to shore in the middle of a storm
to fetch the doctor. The sub-plot took on the explosive issue of
miscegenation: Julie LaVerne, the star of the Show Boat, is actually
a black woman passing for white. When she is exposed, her husband,
a white man, chooses to claim "Negro blood" for himself to live with
her rather than be separated by law (it was illegal for whites and
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Mr. Blackmon
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blacks to be married). Later, it is the tragic Julie LaVerne who gives
Magnolia her first chance for a starting role by deliberately giving up
the role. These are not caricatures. They are finely drawn human
beings who are African Americans. I recommend the film version
with Alan Jones, Irene Dunn, Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, and
Hattie McDaniel (which is very close to the original Broadway
version; the movie with Howard Keel and Ava Gardner is a waste of
time from this perspective).
The Era of Normalcy: The Presidency of Warren G. Harding
A.
Warren G. Harding was ill-suited for the office of President
1.
Invented the vulgar expression "normalcy."
2.
He chose very capable subordinates to run key Cabinet posts.
3.
Too weak to abandon party hacks. Many posts went to his "Ohio Gang."
4.
Harding was completely bewildered by the job. He preferred to escape his
responsibilities by going to the "House on H Street" with the "Ohio Gang"
where he could indulge in poker, whiskey, and women. Theodore
Roosevelt's oldest daughter commented, "Harding wasn't a bad man. He was
just a slob." (Tindall & Shi 1067)
B.
The Harding Scandals
1.
As I never cease enjoying telling you, Harding is one of the three most
corrupt administrations in our history (all together now, chant "The other two
are Grant and Nixon.". I have much less sympathy for him than I have for
Grant.
a.
Please recall, all three are Republican administrations, came after a
major wave of idealistic reform, came during a period of notable
materialism and cynicism in our culture, and followed or were during
a war.
2.
The Ohio Gang were crooks. They sold government offices, passed out
favors, bribed congressmen and Senators, and plundered their government
departments.
3.
In 1923, Charles R. Forbes, in charge of the Veterans Bureau, was
discovered to have been looting medical and hospital supplies. He had stolen
millions. He fled to Europe to escape prosecution.
a.
Harding's general counsel, Charles F. Cramer, then committed
suicide in Harding's old Washington house.
b.
Shortly after that, Jesse Smith, a close crony of Attorney General
Harry M Daugherty, committed suicide when his business of
influence peddling for bribes, was exposed.
4.
Col. Thomas Miller, another friend of Daugherty's was convicted of
fraudulent German assets seized after the war, such as German chemical
patents, which he sold dirt cheap. He was convicted of criminal conspiracy.
Daugherty was implicated in this fraud.
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Mr. Blackmon
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5.
VII.
Harry Daugherty, the Attorney General, took the Fifth Amendment when
questioned about selling his favors. He was tried twice for bribery, but
acquitted for want of evidence (pertinent records were somehow missing).
6.
The worst scandal was the Teapot Dome Scandal.
a.
Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall transferred oil reserves at Elk
Hill California and Teapot Dome, Wyoming from the US Navy to his
department.
b.
He then secretly leased the reserves to the oil companies of Edward
J. Doheny and Harry Sinclair
c.
A Senate Committee investigating the lease discovered that Fall had
received a $100,000 "loan" from Doheny and that Doheny had
provided a herd of cattle for Fall's ranch, $85,000 in cash, and
$223.000 in bonds.
d.
The government forced cancellation of the leases.
e.
Somehow, Sinclair, Doheny, and Fall were acquitted of fraud.
f.
Sinclair was convicted of jury tampering. Fall was convicted of
bribery, the first Cabinet officer to go to prison (but not the last,
thanks to Richard Nixon.)
7.
Harding attempted to escape the mounting scandals by taking a long trip to
Alaska. He told William Allen White, "My God, this is a hell of a job! I
have no trouble with my enemies. . . But my damn friends . . . they're the
ones that keep me walking the floor nights!" (Blum 625, Tindall & Shi 1071,
Boyer 837)
a.
In Seattle, he fell ill. His physician, a crony, diagnosed ptomaine
poisoning. It was a heart attack. He suffered a second heart attack
and died in a San Francisco hotel.
The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge
A.
Coolidge was little better suited. Walter Lippmann observed that "Mr. Coolidge's
genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is a grim,
determined, alert inactivity, which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly."
(Morrison & Commager 418)
B.
"Silent Cal" lived a puritanical life style, and was profoundly conservative in every
aspect of his life.
1.
His personal honesty was a God-send for the Republicans
2.
One aspect of his conservatism was his idea of the Presidency as a caretaker.
"Four-fifths of our troubles would disappear if we would sit down and
keep still." he said. (Tindall & Shi 1073)
a.
He slept 12 hours a day, and took an afternoon nap in addition.
Coolidge quite deliberately adopted the creed of business, and encouraged industrial
development at the expense of everything else.
1.
Even more than the Gilded Age, Coolidge's administration marks the high
3.
C.
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VIII.
IX.
Mr. Blackmon
Page 23
water mark of the influence of business interests.
a.
"The man who builds a factory, builds a temple, the man who
works there, worships there." (Blum 628)
b.
"The business of the American people is business."
c.
The Wall Street Journal wrote "Never before, here or anywhere
else, has a government been so completely fused with business."
(Tindall & Shi 1073)
D.
Coolidge was easily elected President on his own in 1924, and retained Harding's
best appointments: Mellon, Hoover, and Hughes.
The Foreign Policy of Charles Evans Hughes
A.
Hughes had a distinguished record, and one that does not truly conform to the label
"isolationist." The underlying problem is a lack of grasp of power relationships, a
fault Hughes shared with almost all other Americans.
B.
The Washington Naval Conference 1921
1.
Hughes wished to avoid a destabilizing naval armaments race.
2.
Hughes proposed a reduction in fleets
3.
Hughes proposed a 10 months moratorium on new ship construction.
4.
Proposed the Five Power Pact 1922
a.
Established a ratio of capital ship tonnage between the US / Great
Britain / Japan / Italy / France of 5:5:3:1.75:1.75
b.
Japan agreed to this ratio since they had only Pacific interests whereas
the US and Great Britain had Pacific and Atlantic interests.
5.
Proposed the Nine Power Pact
a.
All conferees agreed to respect China's territorial integrity and uphold
the Open Door.
6.
Proposed the Four Power Pact
a.
The US, Great Britain, France, and Japan agree to a mutual Pacific
non-aggression pact.
C.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) is the crown of his policy, although it was
completed after Hughes had been appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
1.
The pact outlawed offensive war as an instrument of national power.
2.
62 nations signed it.
3.
That included Germany, Italy, and Japan.
4.
It was wonderful. War was now illegal. What a relief.
D.
Hughes' policy attempted to involve the US in maintaining world peace, but on our
own terms, rather than through the League of Nations.
The Treasury Policies of Andrew Mellon
A.
Mellon was a multi-millionaire banker.
B.
He represented a conscious return to laissez-faire
C.
He agreed with Harding: "We want less government in business and more
business in government."
D.
"The government is just a business and can and should be run on business
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principles." (Blum 621)
He reduced the debt by sharply cutting expense and balancing the budget.
He cut taxes on the wealthy (50% cut in corporate, income and inheritance taxes)
He argued (the classic Republican position) that the tax cut would stimulate
investment. Prosperity would then trickle down to lower-income groups.
1.
Bob LaFollette summed up his philosophy by saying "Wealth will not and
cannot be made to bear its full share of taxation." (Blum 622)
H.
Supported the close cooperation of government with business (with business holding
the initiative)
I.
Supported the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which unified the budget and
accounting procedures.
J.
He supported the Fordney-McCumber Tariff in 1922, which reversed the
Underwood Tariff.
1.
Fordney-McCumber provided protection for infant industries such as rayon,
toys, and chemicals.
2.
On other products, it was strongly protectionist.
3.
This is a ticking time-bomb for our economy. We are lending very large
amounts of money to Europeans. However, the only way the Europeans can
pay us back is by trading with us. We have now erected high tariff walls that
effectively choke off international trade. The inability of Europeans to earn
dollars also makes it impossible to buy from us, including agricultural
surpluses. We have called the tune, and we will pay the piper in the Great
Depression.
K.
He also supported the disastrous Hawley-Smoot Tariff in 1930, the highest in our
history.
L.
Hailed by businessmen as the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander
Hamilton.
M.
Opposition
1.
The Farm Bloc opposed him
a.
The Farm Bloc provided a kind of conservative Populism in response
to similar problems to the 1890s.
b.
Mellon opposed the McNary-Haugen Bill. (cf below)
N.
He failed to understand that a lasting economic expansion would require greater
consumption which would require higher wages.
The Commerce Policies of Herbert Hoover
A.
In 1919, Herbert Hoover was the second most popular man in the world. He
remained immensely popular in the US during the Twenties.
B.
Hoover is the dominant figure in both the administrations of Harding and Coolidge.
C.
"He used his position to promote a better organized, more efficient national
economy."
D.
"Hoover constantly encouraged voluntary [that is the key word in his psychological
make-up] cooperation in the private sector as the best avenue to stability . . . [H]e
E.
F.
G.
X.
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XI.
Mr. Blackmon
Page 25
became the champion of the concept of business associationalism, a concept that
envisioned the creation of national organizations of businessmen in particular
industries.. Through such trade associations, private entrepreneurs could, Hoover
believed, stabilize their industries and promote efficiency in production and
marketing. Hoover strongly resisted those who urged that the government sanction
collusion among manufacturers to fix prices, arguing that competition was essential
to a prosperous economy. He did, however, believe that shared information and
limited cooperation would keep that competition from becoming destructive and this
improve the strength of the economy as a whole."
E.
"In the 1920s, particularly as Harding and Coolidge filled [regulatory agencies] with
members of the very businesses they were supposed to regulate, the agencies began
to believe that their role was not to regulate industry but to assist it." (Current 706)
F.
The Supreme Court, particularly when William Howard Taft became Chief Justice,
supported that trend.
1.
Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1922) struck down federal child labor
laws.
2.
Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923) struck down a minimum wage law for
women in the District of Columbia.
3.
U.S. v. Maple Flooring Association (1925) sanctioned trade associations.
The New Era and the Coolidge Prosperity
A.
During the 1920s, the US held about 40% of all world wealth.
B.
The foundations of prosperity
1.
A friendly governmental attitude
2.
Pent-up war time demand
3.
Mechanization and rationalization of industry, which was farther in advance
in the US than in any other nation in the world.
a.
The US doubled industrial output between 1921 to 1929, which
implies enormous increases in worker productivity.
b.
The US produced 50% of world output of electricity in 1929.
C.
Frederick Taylor had written The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.
He stressed "proper organization, time-motion studies to improve factory
arrangement, the use of standardized tools and equipment, proper routing and
scheduling of work, and the development of planning departments." (Tindall & Shi
1079-80)
D.
Bruce Barton symbolized the new power of Madison Avenue and advertising with
The Man Nobody Knows (1925) Barton discovered that Jesus was a businessman:
"Jesus was the founder of a modern business [who] picked up 12 men from the
bottom ranks . . . and forged them into an organization that conquered the world."
(Garraty 641)
E.
Installment buying (ie credit) multiplied buying power.
F.
The automobile industry emerges as the great economic multiplier.
1.
Spurred road building
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The Twenties
2.
3.
4.
XII.
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Created a tourist industry
Provided thousands of jobs.
Became symbolic of a new way of life. (just drive down any street and Miami
and count the cars parked in front and divide by the number of dwellings.
Then go to Europe and do the same).
G.
Henry Ford
1.
The greatest entrepreneur of the era.
2.
"Get the price down to the buying power." Garraty 642)
3.
"I am going to democratize the automobile. When I am through,
everyone will be able to afford one, and about everyone will have one."
(Tindall & Shi 1078)
a.
The Model T (1908) was tough, durable, and cheap.
b.
The price in 1908 was $850. In 1924, the price was $290.
c.
Its price made it available to thousands. Ford's idea created a huge
demand.
4.
Ford paid high wages to stimulate output (one of Taylor's ideas)
a.
He raised wages 66% (from $3.00/day to $5.00/day in order to end
absenteeism and employee turnover.
5.
Ford implemented very careful time-motion studies and introduced the
assembly line on a large scale and utilized continuous motion (using
conveyor belts, gravity slides, and overhead monorails) (also ideas of
Taylor's)
a.
it is only fair to note that Ford introduced these ideas in his Highland
Park factory in 1911, the same year Taylor published his book; Ford
reached the same ideas independently.
6.
His profits soared, and spurred imitation by other companies, such as General
Motors.
7.
Ford became a folk hero.
a.
Unfortunately, he was ignorant, uninformed, stubborn and tyrannical.
b.
He would not tolerate a union.
c.
He was virulently anti-Semitic, published an anti-Semitic newspaper.
d.
He endeared himself to historians by saying "History is more or less
bunk."
Economic Problems
A.
Uneven growth
1.
Some industries, like coal, cotton and wool, lagged.
B.
Continued consolidation
1.
200 companies controlled 50% of all US assets.
2.
1% of all financial institutions controlled 46% of all banking. (Garraty 643)
3.
Such consolidation made the entire nation very vulnerable to anything that
might damage those few companies.
C.
Policies of the giants
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1.
2.
D.
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The big corporations sought stability and "fair" prices
"regulated competition" and oligarchy were typical (cf the discussion of
Hoover)
3.
Trade Associations grew rapidly (cf Hoover and Trade Associationism)
a.
The associations exchanged information
b.
The associations provided informal price fixing.
c.
They could easily have been attacked by anti-trust laws
d.
Hoover put the Commerce Department facilities at the disposal of
business.
e.
The Antitrust Division encouraged and aided cooperation.
Weak Agriculture
1.
Farm prices slump as war time demand drops
2.
Costs mount, particularly as farmers now have to pay for land and equipment
bought during the war-time boom.
3.
Foreign tariffs and quotas were placed on the importation of food, as other
nations attempted to protect domestic farmers.
4.
The use of chemical fertilizers increases the crop yield / acre which equals
overproduction.
5.
There was a world wide slump in agriculture
6.
This is a repetition of the pattern from the 1890s.
7.
George Peek in 1921 proposed that the federal government should buy up
surplus wheat. This additional demand would raise prices. the government
would then sell the wheat abroad and recover its losses by an "equalization
fee" on wheat farmers.
a.
Cotton and other staples were added to his list of products to be
bought up.
8.
The McNary-Haugen Bill embodied this concept, and was passed by Farm
Bloc Congressmen, but was vetoed by Coolidge in 1927.
a.
Coolidge cited laissez-faire for his veto.
b.
Coolidge vetoed it again in 1928.
Weak Foundations
1.
Maldistribution of resources
2.
Production was far ahead of buying power
a.
Wages lagged far behind productivity; the difference between the two
meant dramatically increased profits. But low wages meant low
buying power.
b.
High earnings and low taxes spurred the growth of large fortunes
c.
This money was not, repeat not, re-invested productively.
(1)
I stress this because the heart of the Republican argument for
lower taxes, and especially a lower capital gains tax (a
favorite idea since Reagan) base their argument on the idea
that the money thus saved will be re-invested in productive
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d.
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enterprises. If this were true, they would have a good case.
However, the experience of the 1920s, and of the 1980s would
lead to a different conclusion: the excess money is used
speculatively. Today, many corporations are carrying
massive debt burdens and are forced to down-size (cut jobs)
while forcing more productivity out in order to pay off debts
accumulated during the 1980s. An awful lot of this debt was
totally unnecessary, the result of corporate raiders who
profited personally with obscene amounts of money even
while they weakened the productive capacity and profitability
of the corporations they were raiding. Anyone who disagrees
is invited to study the time period. Speculation is driven by
greed; human beings are still greedy. A capital gains tax cut
should be accompanied by measures to penalize speculation.
Otherwise, there is absolutely no guarantee that the savings
will be used as it is intended; and much reason to believe that
they will be wasted in sterile and risky activities.
In the Roaring Twenties, much of this money went into Wall Street
Speculation.
The Election of 1928
A.
The Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover, who could have been President in
1920, had he wanted to. He was the dominant figure in the Harding and Coolidge
administrations.
B.
Hoover was the philosopher of the New Era
1.
A self-made millionaire, he believed in "rugged individualism"
2.
He believed that voluntary associations would "create codes of business
practice and ethics that would eliminate abuses and make for higher
standards." (Garraty 646)
3.
He is influenced by Woodrow Wilson and government/business cooperation
during World War I
4.
He saw himself not as a conservative but as a Progressive. [Remember this
for your DBQ!]
5.
He opposed both union busting and trust busting.
C.
The Democrats nominated Al Smith
1.
Smith was a Tammany Hall Democrat and a Catholic
2.
He favored repeal of Prohibition.
3.
He was urban, and appealed to urban immigrants
4.
He was therefore very weak in rural Democratic districts.
D.
Hoover won a smashing victory
1.
General prosperity beat Smith
2.
Internal strains over ethnic conflict (like Prohibition) threatened to break up
the Democratic Party.
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3.
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The election concealed a realignment
a.
Working class voters are shifting to the Democrats
b.
The Democrats had a stronger showing in farm districts
c.
A growing coalition is forming of dissatisfied farmers and urban
workers.
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Works Cited
Blum, John M., Morgan, Edmund S., Rose, Willie Lee, Schlesinger,
Jr., Arthur M.,
Stampp, Kenneth M.,
and Woodward, C.
Vann. The National
Experience: A
History of the United
States. 5th ed. New
York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1981.
Boyer, Paul S.; Clark, Clifford Jr.; Kett, Joseph F.; Purvis, Thomas; Sitkoff, Harvard; Woloch,
Nancy. The Enduring Vision: A
History of the American People.
New York: D.C. Heath. 1990.
[Referred to as Boyer]
Current, Richard N., Williams, T. Harry, Freidel Frank, Brinkley, Alan. American History: A
Survey. 6th Ed. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Evans, Hiram Wesley. "The Klan's Fight for Americanism" Annals
of America. Vol. 14.
Chicago:
Encyclopeadia
Britannica, 1976.
506-11.
Garraty, John. The American Nation. 5th Ed. New York: Harper &
Row, 1983.
Morrison, Samuel Eliot and Commager, Henry Steele. The Growth of
the American
Republic. Vol. II. 6th
Ed. New York:
Oxford University
Press, 1969.
Tindall, George Brown and Shi, David E. America: A Narrative History. 3rd Ed. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1992.