Chapter 23: The 1920s, 1920-1928

1. Prosperity Decade
   1. The Economics of Prosperity
      1. Declining prices for agricultural products brought lower prices for food and clothing.
         1. Thus, many Americans seemed better off by 1929 than in 1920.
      2. Persuading Americans to consume an array of products became crucial to keeping the economy healthy.
         1. The marketing of Listerine demonstrates the rising importance of creative advertising.
      3. Changes in fashion also increased consumption and, therefore, economic growth.
         1. Cigarettes became more fashionable after World War I, as soldiers had found them easier to carry and smoke than pipes or cigars.
      4. Technological advances contributed in other ways to the growth of consumer-oriented manufacturing.
         1. As the number of residences with electricity increased, advertisers stressed the time and labor that housewives could save by using electrical appliances.
      5. Increased consumption contributed to a change in people’s spending habits.
         1. In the 1920s, many retailers adopted the installment plan: "Buy now, pay later."
   2. The Automobile: Driving the Economy
      1. The automobile, more than any other single product, epitomized the consumer-oriented economy of the 1920s.
      2. Henry Ford scored the greatest success by developing a mass-production system that drove down production costs.
         1. By the late 1920s, America’s roadways sported nearly one automobile for every five people.
      3. Ford’s company also provides an example of efforts by American businesses to reduce labor costs by improving labor efficiency.
      4. The automobile industry in the 1920s often led the way in promoting new sales techniques.
         1. By 1927, two-thirds of all American automobiles were sold on credit.
   3. "Get Rich Quick": The Speculative Mania
      1. Stock market speculating - buying a stock and expecting to make money by selling it at a higher price - ran rampant as more people saw the stock market as a certain route to riches.
      2. Just as Americans bought their cars and radios on the installment plan, some also bought stock on credit - this was called buying on the margin.
      3. Driven partly by real economic growth and partly by speculation, stock prices rose higher and higher.
      4. Other speculative opportunities abounded.
         1. The mania of the Florida land boom was fed by rapid growth in the population of the state.
   4. Agriculture: Depression in the Midst of Prosperity
      1. Prosperity never extended to agriculture, since many farmers did not recover from the postwar recession and struggled to survive financially throughout the 1920s.
      2. Many had expanded their operations during the war in response to government demands for more food.
      3. After the war, as European farmers resumed production and American production increased, the glut of agricultural goods on world markets caused prices to fall.
         1. Prices fell as a consequence of this overproduction; corn and wheat sold for about half their wartime prices.
      4. Throughout the 1920s, farmers pressed the government for help.
         1. A congressional Farm Bloc promoted legislation to assist farmers.
         2. Legislative efforts did not staunch the hemorrhaging of the farm economy.
2. The Roaring Twenties
   1. The Automobile and American Life
      1. During the 1920s, the automobile profoundly changed American patterns of living.
         1. Highways significantly shortened the traveling time from cities to rural areas, thereby reducing the isolation of farm life.
         2. Trucks allowed farmers to take more products to market more quickly and conveniently than ever before.
         3. The spread of gasoline-powered farm vehicles also reduced the need for human farm labor and so stimulated migration to urban areas.
         4. If the automobile changed rural life, it had an even more profound impact on life in the cities; suburbs mushroomed, for example.
   2. A Homogenized Culture Searches for Heroes
      1. Restrictive immigration laws were closing the door to immigrants from abroad.
      2. Together with the new technologies of radio and film, the automobile and restrictive immigration laws began to homogenize the culture.
      3. Radio and film joined newspapers and magazines - the media - in prompting national trends and fashions as Americans pursued one fad after another.
         1. Such fads, in turn, created markets for newfangled consumer goods.
      4. The media also contributed to the development of national sports heroes.
      5. The rapid spread of movie theaters created a new category of fame - the movie star.
   3. Alienated Intellectuals
      1. Some Americans went to Paris and other European cities in the 1920s to escape what they considered America’s dull conventionalism and dangerous materialism.
      2. American writers bemoaned what they saw as the shallowness, greed, and homogenization of American life.
   4. Renaissance Among African-Americans
      1. There was a striking outpouring of literature, music, and art by African Americans in the 1920s.
      2. Harlem emerged as a large, predominantly black neighborhood in New York City and quickly became a symbol of the new, urban life of African Americans.
      3. The term Harlem Renaissancedescribes a literary and artistic movement in which black artists and writers insisted on the value of black culture and used African and African-American traditions to shape an abundance of literature, painting, and sculpture.
         1. Among the movement’s poets, Langston Hughes became the best-known.
      4. The Renaissance included jazz, which was becoming a central element in distinctly American music.
   5. "Flaming Youth"
      1. The stereotype of flaming youth reflected striking changes among many white college-age youths of middle- and upper-class backgrounds.
      2. The prosperity of the 1920s allowed many middle-class families to send their children to college.
      3. Some young women, called flappers, scandalized their elders by skirts that stopped at the knee, short hair, and generous amounts of rouge and lipstick.
         1. Women’s sexual activity outside marriage had begun to increase before the war, especially among working-class women and radicals.
         2. Such changes in behavior were often linked to the automobile.
3. Traditional America Roars Back
   1. Prohibition
      1. Prohibition came to epitomize the cultural struggle to preserve white, old-stock Protestant values in the face of challenge.
         1. Spearheaded by the Anti-Saloon League, Prohibition advocates gained strength throughout the Progressive era.
      2. In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages.
      3. Many Americans simply ignored the Eighteenth Amendment from the beginning, and it grew less popular the longer it lasted.
      4. Prohibition did reduce drinking, and it apparently produced a decline in drunkenness and in the number of deaths from alcoholism, but it also produced unintended consequences such as speakeasies and bootlegging.
         1. In the cities, the high demand for alcohol provided criminals with a fresh and lucrative source of income, part of which they used to buy influence in city politics, protection from police, fast cars, and submachine guns.
   2. Fundamentalism and the Crusade against Evolution
      1. Another effort to maintain traditional values came with the growth of fundamentalism, which emerged from a conflict between Christian modernism and orthodoxy.
      2. Fundamentalists rejected anything incompatible with a literal reading of the Scriptures and argued that the Bible’s every word is the revealed word of God.
      3. In the early 1920s, some fundamentalists focused especially on evolution as contrary to the Bible; this controversy resulted in the Scopes trial.
   3. Nativism and Immigration Restriction
      1. Laws designed to restrict immigration resulted in major part from nativist antagonism against immigrants, especially those who did not appear to assimilate as readily as earlier immigrants had.
      2. The National Origins Act of 1924 limited total immigration to 150,000 people each year, with quotas for each country in an attempt to freeze the ethnic composition of the nation.
   4. The Ku Klux Klan
      1. Nativism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and fear of radicalism all contributed to the spectacular growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s as it declared itself to be the defender of old-fashioned Protestant morality.
4. Race, Class, and Gender in the 1920s
   1. Race Relations: North, South, and West
      1. Race relations changed little during the 1920s, and terror against African America continued, as well as discrimination against other minority groups.
   2. Beginnings of Change in Federal Indian Policy
      1. Resistance to the previous allotment and assimilationist policies laid the basis for a significant shift in federal policy in the 1920s.
         1. John Collier and the American Indian Defense Association led the way.
   3. Mexicans in California and the Southwest
      1. Revolution in Mexico increased the number of Mexicans moving north across the border, especially in southern California and Texas.
      2. Efforts to organize and strike for better pay and working conditions often sparked violent opposition.
   4. Labor on the Defensive
      1. There were difficulties in establishing unions among workers during the 1920s, especially in the face of many companies’ anti-union drives.
   5. Changes in Women’s Lives
      1. Significant changes occurred in two areas of women’s lives during the 1920s: the size and structure of the family and politics.
         1. Birth control became more widely recognized and available.
         2. The Nineteenth Amendment enfranchized women over twenty-one.
   6. Development of Gay and Lesbian Subcultures
      1. Identifiable gay and lesbian subcultures emerged, especially in cities.
5. The Politics of Prosperity
   1. Harding’s Failed Presidency
      1. Harding gave hundreds of government jobs to his cronies and political supporters, who betrayed his trust and turned his administration into one of the most corrupt in history, including the Teapot Dome scandal.
   2. The Three-Way Election of 1924
      1. The Republicans nominated Coolidge, who had become president upon Harding’s death, while the Democrats nominated John W. Davis, a compromise candidate, and the Progressives nominated Robert M. La Follette.
      2. Coolidge won with nearly 16 million votes and 54 percent of the total, as voters seemed to champion the status quo.
   3. The Politics of Business
      1. Having once announced that "the business of America is business," Coolidge believed that the free market and free operation of business leadership would best sustain economic prosperity for all.
         1. Coolidge cut federal spending and staffed Washington’s agencies with people who shared his distaste for government.