Ch. 32: American Life in the Roaring Twenties

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.

I. 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)

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

II. BUSINESS BOOM

BUSINESS PROSPERITY ECONOMIC PROSPERITY: productivity: up 50% real income: up 25% standard of living: 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 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 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

III. 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 allowed suburbs to sprawl outward 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 Silent films “talkies” (1927) 80 million tickets sold per week by 1930 (population: 100 million) (Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library)

MASS CULTURE: Popular Heroes Charles Lindbergh (National Archives)  Thomas Edison  Charles Lindbergh “Lucky Lindy” first to cross the Atlantic solo  “Babe” Ruth

ROLE OF WOMEN: the “New Woman” Women’s fashions, 1920

ROLE OF WOMEN – the “Flapper” the “flapper” – symbol of independence

ROLE OF WOMEN: Women and Politics Impact of 19 th Amendment League of Women Voters Alice Paul- National Woman’s Party Margaret Sanger Alice Paul

CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART Literature “lost generation” F. Scott Fitzgerald Writings epitomized Jazz Age Philosophy Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald on the Riviera, 1926 (Stock Montage) Eugene O’Neill

CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART African Americans Harlem Renaissance Proud of black culture, argued for a “New Negro” to be a social equal to whites Langston Hughes Louis Armstrong Zora Neal Hurston "Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.“- Zora Neal Hurston

CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART African Americans Langston Hughes Harlem What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

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

IV. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS

ReligionReligion “modernism” vs. “fundamentalism” Scopes Trial Clarence Darrow William Jennings Bryan

SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS: Prohibition Rise of “speakeasies” Al Capone and “gangsterism” “wets” “dries” Alphonse “Scarface” Capone Government agents breaking up an illegal bar during Prohibition

SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS: Xenophobia and Racial Unrest Immigration Act of 1924 Designed to freeze American racial composition and keep out Southern and Easter Europeans deemed “inferior” 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: harmed labor unions 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 Anti foreign, black, Jewish, pacifist, communist (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

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