1. Ch. 32: American Life in the Roaring Twenties

2. 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.

3. 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)

4. 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?

5. II. BUSINESS BOOM

6. 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, 1920-1930 Unemployment, 1920-1930

7. 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 (1863-1947) 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

8. Auto Manufacturing

9. PROBLEMS FOR WORKERS Income Distribution, 1929 65% 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

10. III. SOCIETY, CULTURE & VALUES

11. Farm vs. Nonfarm Population, 1880-1980 1920 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

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

14. 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: 1913 - 1.2 million registered; 1929 - 26.5 million registered (=almost one per family) Passenger Car Sales, 1920-1929 Filling Station, Maryland in 1921

15. Impact of the Automobile: Trains and Automobiles, 1900-1980 Jones, Created Equal

16. 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

17. CONSUMERISM & Automobiles Chevrolet Advertisement 1925 Ford Motor Company showroom 1925

18. July 4, Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts, early 1920s

19. 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

20. MASS CULTURE: Movies Silent films 1903-1927 “talkies” (1927) 80 million tickets sold per week by 1930 (population: 100 million) (Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library)

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

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

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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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?

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

29. IV. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS

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

31. 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

32. 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, 1891-1920 and 1921-1940 Percentage of Population Foreign Born, 1850-1990

33. Immigration, 1921-1960

34. 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

35. 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

36. 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, 1923. The Klan opposed all who were not “true Americans”. (c) 2000 IRC

37. Black Population, 1920

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

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

40. SOURCESSOURCES http://www.wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/image_b ank_US/1920_1930.html Brinkley, American History: A Survey Kennedy, American Pageant 13e (History Companion) Faragher, Out of Many, 3 rd Ed.; http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_faragher_outofmany_ap/ http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_faragher_outofmany_ap/ Jones, et al., Created Equal Nash America: Pathways to the Present