Chapter 10: The “Roaring Twenties”

The End of Progressivism • Remember that at the

end of The Great War Americans were ready to return to their isolationist and conservative roots

• The Republican party came back very conservatively after the Bull Moose Party split

• The Republican party controlled the White House in the 1920s

Nativism in the 1920s • “Old Stock” Americans

saw the seeds of sedition ( like socialism & anarchism) with the foreign-born

• Emergency Immigration Act of 1921

• The Immigration Act of 1924

• These laws favored immigrants from northern and Western Europe

Nativism & Sacco and Vanzetti

• May 5, 1920 they were arrested for killing two men and stealing $16,000

• Both were Italian-born anarchists

• They were sentenced to death & executed

• Even though there was doubt as to their guilt

Nativism & the Ku Klux Klan• The New Klan wanted

100% Americanism• Membership restricted

to native-born, white Protestants (WASP)

• They were against African Americans, Roman Catholics, Jews, & immigrants

• At its peak in 1924, it had 4 million members

Harding said the nation needed to “return to normalcy”

• After World War I most Americans were weary of Wilson’s crusading idealism & wanted isolationism

• There was a post-war recession 1919-1922

• Harding favored laissez-faire policies

• Hawley-Smoot Tariff• Lower Taxes on Wealthy and

Corporations• Lax Enforcement of Antitrust

Laws and Regulations President Warren Harding

Attempts at Disarmament & To Outlaw War

• Harding sponsored the Washington Navel Conference and US membership in the World Court

• Five-Power Treaty (1922)• Four-Power Treaty• Nine-Power Treaty• The Kellogg-Briand Pact

in 1928

The Kellogg-Briand Signing

Harding to Silent Cal

• One thing that Harding was a visionary during this era was Civil Rights

• Harding dies in 1923 due to food poisoning

• Calvin Coolidge was able to keep clear of the scandals that hurt the Harding Administration

The 1924 Presidential Election

RepublicanCalvin Coolidge

won the election by keeping focus on La Follette b/c he

was a communistic & socialist treat to

the U.S.

Democrats finally got behind

John W. Davis, after 103 ballots at

their convention

The Progressive Party and the

Socialist parties both nominated

Robert M. La FolletteHe received more

votes than any other 3rd party

The Growing Consumerism of the 1920s

• Home Entertainment was bolstered by the huge growth of the radio

• People of the 1920s also bought a large number of automobiles & home appliances

• Americans also went to motion pictures like never before in the 1920s

Airplanes & Automobiles

• Wright Brothers in Kitty Hawk NC – 1903

• Airplanes in WWI and the airmail

• Charles A. Lindbergh & Amelia Earhart

• Auto invented in 1895 but Ford makes cars affordable because of the moving assembly line

Lindbergh Ford

The Business of Farming• During the 1920s,

agriculture remained the weakest sector in the economy

• There was massive overproduction

• Most farmers were struggling to survive

• Congress passed the McNary-Haugen Bill twice but Coolidge vetoed it twice

Setback for the Unions

• With the Conservatives back in the White House and the progressives out of power Unions faired poorly

• During this time labor unions lost about 1.5 million members

The Gastonia Strike of 1929

Presidential Election of 1928

DemocratAl Smith

New Yorker &Catholic

RepublicanHerbert Hoover

Protestant

The Scopes Trail a.k.a. The Monkey Trail

• Teacher John Scopes went against state law and tough evolution

• William Jennings Bryan took his religious-fundamentalism & made it a crusade against evolution

• The result of the trail in Tennessee was that Scopes was guilty Clarence Darrow & W.J. Bryan

The Anti-Saloon League & Prohibition

• By the 1910s the Anti-Saloon League had become one of the most effective pressure groups in U.S. History

• Prohibition had a racist element against Germans and Italians

• They wanted to police the behavior of the poor, the foreign-born, and the working class

Prohibition & the Rise of Organized Crime

• Prohibition did not give birth to Organized Crime however, it did give criminals a huge source of new income

• The rise of Speakeasies, bootlegging, hip flasks, and cocktail parties

• Most celebrated gangster was Al Capone

Al Capone

The Roaring 20s:The Jazz Age• F. Scott Fitzgerald called

the postwar era the Jazz Age b/c young people were willing to experiment

• Jazz blended African and European musical traditions

• This new music bubbled up from New Orleans to K.C., Memphis, NY, & Chicago

The New Morality • The guardians of

morality or the old timers were in shock b/c of this “Jazz Age”

• Fitzgerald wrote about “petting parties”

• Other writers informed the nation about the new woman w/ bobbed hair, heavy makeup, skirts above the ankle and smoke and drank Flappers

The Great Migration• The movement of

southern Blacks to the North began in 1915-1916 w/ the expanding war industries

• The legal restrictions on immigration continued the movement in the 1920s

• In the 1910s 323,000 blacks moved North

• In the 1920s 615,000 blacks moved North

The Universal Negro Improvement Association

• Was lad by Marcus Garvey• Garvey told African Americas

to liberate themselves from white culture

• Garvey declared blacks should go to Africa and start their own republic

• Many of Garvey’s ideas would reemerge later under the slogan of black power