American Life in the Roaring Twenties Chapter 34

Life cover, July 1, 1926 "One Hundred and Forty-three Years of LIBERTY and Seven Years of PROHIBITION." (Private Collection) Life cover, July 1, 1926 Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

GUIDING QUESTIONS What aspects of life created the reputation of the “Roaring 20s”? In what ways and to what degree were the 1920s a period of tension between new and changing attitudes on the one hand and traditional values on the other. (Consider Race relations, immigration/ nativism, role of women, consumerism)

GUIDING QUESTION In what ways did economic conditions and development in the arts and entertainment help create the reputation of the 1920s as the Roaring Twenties?

BUSINESS BOOM

BUSINESS PROSPERITY ECONOMIC PROSPERITY: productivity: up 50% unemployment: %? real income: up 25% standard of living: (where?) indoor plumbing central heating electricity (2/3 by 1930) CAUSES OF BUSINESS PROSPERITY :  Increased productivity (scientific management, machinery)  Increased use of oil and electricity  Favorable government policy (tax breaks, antitrust) Gross National Product, Unemployment,

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 ( ) 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

Auto Manufacturing

PROBLEMS FOR WORKERS unions lose WWI gains: open shops company unions injunctions “welfare capitalism” employment insecurity

PROBLEMS FOR WORKERS Income Distribution, % 29% 5% 1% Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970  40% of all U.S. families lived on >$1,500 per year – in poverty range

PROBLEMS FOR FARMERS Mechanization Farm income down 66% “parity” McNary-Haugen Bill Agricultural Marketing Act (1929) TILLING ONE ACRE OF LAND 1900: 90 mins. using 5 horses 1929: 30 mins. using a 27-hp tractor 2000: 5 mins. using a 154-hp tractor PRODUCING 100 BUSHELS OF WHEAT ON 5 ACRES 1890s: labor hours 1930: labor hours

SOCIETY, CULTURE & VALUES

Farm vs. Nonfarm Population, CENSUS: First time majority of U.S. population in urban areas (towns 2500 or greater) 1920: More workers in factories than on farms 1930: Still 44% live in rural areas

CONSUMERISMCONSUMERISM ( electric) appliances automobiles advertising (image vs. utility) buying on credit chain stores Consumer Debt, 1920–1931 General Electric ad (Picture Research Consultants & Archives )

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: million registered; million registered (=almost one per family) Passenger Car Sales, Filling Station, Maryland in 1921

Impact of the Automobile: Trains and Automobiles, Jones, Created Equal

Automobiles & Consumerism Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved < Ford ad: < Ford ad: “Every family -- with even the most modest income, can now afford a car of their own." “Every family should have their own car...You live but once and the years roll by quickly. Why wait for tomorrow for things that you rightfully should enjoy today?" (Library of Congress) Dodge advertisement photo, 1933

CONSUMERISM & Automobiles Chevrolet Advertisement 1925 Ford Motor Company showroom 1925

July 4, Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts, early 1920s

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

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)

MASS CULTURE: Popular Heroes (Private Collection) Charles Lindbergh (National Archives)  “success ethic”  “self-made man”  Bruce Barton- The Man Nobody Knows  Thomas Edison  Charles Lindburgh

ROLE OF WOMEN: the “New Woman” the “New Woman” “pink collar” jobs Women’s fashions, 1920 Women in the Workforce,

ROLE OF WOMEN – the “flapper” the “flapper” – fact and myth

ROLE OF WOMEN: Women and Politics Impact of suffrage League of Women Voters National Women’s Party Alice Paul Margaret Sanger Alice Paul Sheppard-Towner Act

CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART Literature “lost generation” F. Scott Fitzgerald Sinclair Lewis Ernest Hemingway H.L. Mencken - “booboisie” Eugene O’Neill F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald on the Riviera, 1926 (Stock Montage) Eugene O’Neill

CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART John Dewey Charles and Mary Beard

CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART African Americans Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes I’ll Take My Stand

CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART Jazz Jazz “The Jazz Age” Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington Louis Armstrong & the Fate Marabel band, 1919 Louis Armstrong

SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS

ReligionReligion “modernists” “fundamentalism” Scopes Trial American Civil Liberties Union Clarence Darrow William Jennings Bryan

SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS: Prohibition Prohibition The noble experiment “wets and dries” Al Capone Alphonse “Scarface” Capone Government agents breaking up an illegal bar during Prohibition

SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS: Xenophobia and Racial Unrest National Origin Act of 1924 Number of Immigrants and Countries of Origin, and Percentage of Population Foreign Born,

Immigration,

SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS: Xenophobia and Racial Unrest Communist International 3 rd 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

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

SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS: Xenophobia and Racial Unrest Birth of a Nation - D.W. Griffith “new” Ku Klux Klan Leo Frank (Picture Research Consultants & Archives) Ku Klux Klan initiation, The Klan opposed all who were not “true Americans”. (c) 2000 IRC

Black Population, 1920

Ku Klux Klan (mid-1920s) (Private Collection) Copyright 1997 State Historical Society of Wisconsin

Ku Klux Klan Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 1926

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)

BUSINESS – FRIENDLY GOVERNMENT Calvin Coolidge “The business of America is business” President Calvin Coolidge Coolidge throwing out first pitch 1924

BUSINESS – FRIENDLY GOVERNMENT Herbert Hoover Al Smith Herbert Hoover Election of 1928

Hoover, Ford, Edison, and Firestone Feb 11, 1929

The Great Crash Stock Market Prices, 1921–1932 Stock Market crash: October 24, 1929 (Corbis-Bettmann) New York Times, Friday, October 25, 1929

SOURCESSOURCES ank_US/1920_1930.html Brinkley, American History: A Survey Kennedy, American Pageant 13e (History Companion) Faragher, Out of Many, 3 rd Ed.; Jones, et al., Created Equal Nash America: Pathways to the Present