4. CONSUMERISM:
Impact of the Automobile
Replaced the railroad as
the key promoter of
economic growth (steel,
glass, rubber, gasoline, highways)
Daily life: commuting,
shopping, traveling, “courting”
Increase in sales:
1913 - 1.2 million registered;
1929 - 26.5 million registered
(=almost one per family)
Passenger Car
Sales, 1920-1929
Filling Station, Maryland in 1921
5. Automobiles &
Industrial Expansion
Henry Ford
‘fordism’
Ford Highland Park assembly line, 1928
(From the Collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village)
“Trying out the new assembly line“ Detroit, 1913
Henry Ford (1835-1947)
1913: 14 hours to build a new car
1928: New Ford off assembly line every 10 seconds
1913: car=2 yrs wages
1929: 3 mos. wages
6. Impact of the Automobile:
Trains and Automobiles, 1900-1980
Jones, Created Equal
9. MASS CULTURE:
Radio
New mass medium
1920: First
commercial radio
station
By 1930: over 800
stations & 10
million radios
Networks: NBC
(1924), CBS (1927)
The Spread of
Radio, to 1939
10. •Radio sets, parts
and accessories
brought in $60
million in 1922…
• $136 million in
1923
•$852 million in
1929
•Radio reached into
every third home in
its first decade.
•Listening audience was 50,000,000 by 1925
11. MASS CULTURE:
Movies
Movie “palaces”
“talkies” (1927)
Will Hays
80 million tickets sold per week by
1930 (population: 100 million)
(Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library)
12. “Flappers” sought
individual freedom
Known for their
short “bobbed” hair
Ongoing crusade for
equal rights
Most women remain
in the “cult of
domesticity” sphere
Discovery of
adolescence
13. ROLE OF WOMEN:
Women and Politics
Impact of suffrage
League of Women Voters
National Women’s Party
Alice Paul (founder)
Margaret Sanger- called
for limiting number of
children per family Alice Paul
Sheppard-Towner Act
14. CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART
Literature
“lost generation”
F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Great
Gatsby
Sinclair Lewis-author who wrote
about absurdities of small town life
Ernest Hemingway-famous author
Eugene O’Neill-modern playwright
F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
on the Riviera, 1926 (Stock Montage)
15. CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART
African Americans
Harlem
Renaissance-African
American culture in
the form of
literature,theatre
and music that
originated from
Harlem New York
Langston Hughes-
key writer of HR Langston Hughes
16. CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART
Jazz
“The Jazz Age”
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
The Cotton Club
Louis Armstrong & the Fate Marabel band, 1919
Louis Armstrong
18. 1925
The first conflict between
religion vs. science being
taught in school was in 1925 in
Dayton, Tennessee.
19. Scopes Trial
A.K.A. Monkey Trial
Fundamentalism
Rejected ideas that implied human moral
behavior came from society and nature, not
God
Rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution—
humans developed from lower life forms
Believed in creationism—God created world
20. John T. Scopes
Biology teacher in Dayton TN recruited to
teach evolution
Arrested for teaching evolution
Clarence Darrow—Scopes lawyer
William Jennings Bryan—prosecutor
Scopes found guilty after 8 days
Sentenced to $100 fine
Conviction later overturned on technicality
21. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Prohibition
Prohibition
The noble experiment
“Speakeasies”
Al Capone
Alphonse “Scarface” CaponeGovernment agents breaking up an illegal bar during Prohibition
23. Immigration
Emergency Quota Act - 1921
3% of total number people in ethnic group per
year
Based on 1910 census
National Origins Act - 1924
2% of each nationality living here in 1890
1929 limit total immigrants to 150,000/yr with
nationality allotment based on 1920 census
24. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
National Origin
Act of 1924
Number of
Immigrants and
Countries of
Origin, 1891-1920
and 1921-1940
Percentage of Population Foreign Born, 1850-1990
25. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
Communist International
3rd International Goal (1919):
promote worldwide communism
Red Scare
Palmer Raids (1920)
A. Mitchell Palmer’s Home bombed, 1920
Police arrest
“suspected
Reds” in
Chicago,
1920
26. •Red Scare, 1919 to 1921, was a
time of great upheaval…U.S.
“scared out of their wits".
•"Reds” as they were called,
"Anarchists” or "Outside
Foreign-Born Radical
Agitators” (Communists).
•Anti-red hysteria came about after WWI and the
Russian Revolution.
•6,000 immigrants the government suspected of
being Communists were arrested (Palmer
Raids) and 600 were deported or expelled from
the U.S.
•No due process was followed
Attorney General
Mitchell Palmer
27. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
Sacco &
Vanzetti
HAVE A CHAIR! from The Daily Worker
IS THIS THE EMBLEM?
from The Daily Worker
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1921
28. Sacco and Vanzetti Case
2 shoe-factory workers were murdered and
robbed of company payroll
Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, a fish peddler
Italian immigrants arrested on flimsy evidence
• Anarchists and immigrants
Found guilty, sentenced to death, executed
anti-immigrant sentiments led Congress to
change immigration laws
29. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
Birth of a Nation - D.W. Griffith
“new” Ku Klux Klan
“American-ism”
(Picture Research Consultants & Archives)
Ku Klux Klan initiation, 1923. The Klan opposed all who were not “true Americans”.
(c) 2000 IRC
31. Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan parade in
Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 1926
32. BUSINESS – FRIENDLY
GOVERNMENT
Warren G. Harding
“Return to normalcy”
Herbert Hoover
Andrew Mellon
The “Ohio Gang”
Teapot Dome Scandal
Harding with Laddie, June 13, 1922
Albert B. Fall (left)
33. The 1920 Election
Wilson’s idealism and Treaty of
Versailles led many Americans
to vote for the Republican,
Warren Harding…
US turned inward and feared
anything that was European…
34. The Ohio Gang: President Warren Harding (front row, third from right), Vice-President
Calvin Coolidge (front row, second from right), and members of the cabinet.
The 1920 Election
35. Republican Policies
Harding’s Return to "normalcy"
tariffs raised
corporate, income taxes cut
spending cuts
Government-business cooperation
“The business of government, is
business”
Return to “isolation”
36. BUSINESS – FRIENDLY
GOVERNMENT
Calvin Coolidge
“The business of
America is business”
President Calvin Coolidge Coolidge throwing out first pitch 1924
37. The 1924 Election
Calvin Coolidge served as
President from 1923 to 1929.
“Silent Cal”.
Republican president
38. • Secretary of the Interior, Albert
B. Fall leased naval reserve oil land
in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk
Hills, California, to oilmen Harry F.
Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny
•Fall had received a bribe of
$100,000 from Doheny and about
three times that amount from
Sinclair.
•Fall found guilty of taking a bribe.
•Sinclair and Doheny were
acquitted of charges.
39. Harding and Coolidge
Republican presidents appeal to
traditional American values
Harding dies in office after 2 years.
Scandals break after his death
Teapot Dome Scandal
Calvin Coolidge becomes President after
Harding’s death in 1923.
Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall
leased naval reserve oil land in Teapot
Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California,
to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L.
Doheny
Fall had received a bribe of $100,000 from
Doheny and about three times that amount
from Sinclair.
Fall found guilty of taking a bribe.
40. + + =
$
REPUBLICAN ECONOMY SUPPORTED LAISSEZ FAIRE AND BIG
BUSINESS……….
Lower Taxes Less Federal Higher Strong
Spending Tariffs National
Economy
Fordney-McCumber Tariff---1923
Hawley-Smoot Tariff ---1930
raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%!!!