Old" Culture
"New" Culture
Emphasized Production
Emphasized Consumption
Character Personality
Scarcity Abundance
Religion Science
Idealized the Past
Looked to the Future
Local Culture
Mass Culture
Substance Image
Decade notable for obsessive interest in celebrities
Sex becomes an all-consuming topic of interest in popular entertainment
Eat, drink & be merry, for tomorrow we die
Return to normalcy US turned inward---isolationism Jazz Age first modern era in the U.S.
The Second Industrial Revolution
U.S. develops the highest standard of living in the world
The twenties and the second revolution– electricity replaces steam – Henry Ford’s modern assembly line
introduced Rise of the airline industry Modern appliances and
conveniences begin to change American society
The Automobile Industry Auto makers stimulate sales
through model changes, advertising
Auto industry fostered the growth of other businesses
Autos encourage movement and more individual freedom.
Glenwood Stove and Washing Machine
Rural Americans identify urban culture with Communism, crime, immorality
Sex becomes an all-consuming topic of interest in popular entertainmentCommunities of home, church, and school are absent in the cities
Conflict: Traditional values vs new ideas found in the cities.
Rural Americans identify urban culture with Communism, crime, immorality
Sex becomes an all-consuming topic of interest in popular entertainmentCommunities of home, church, and school are absent in the cities
Conflict: Traditional values vs new ideas found in the cities.
• 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 A. Mitchell Palmer
at this time, W. Wilson was gravely ill following a stroke
his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, wanted to take a shot at the presidency - he used fears of both immigrants and communism to his advantage
he had J. Edgar Hoover round up suspected radicals, many of which were deported (Palmer Raids)
•The U.S. Government began to restrict certain “undesirable” immigrants from entering the
U.S.•Congress passed the
Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924• Kept out immigrants from
southeastern Europe.
• The U.S. Government began to restrict certain “undesirable” immigrants from entering the U.S.
• Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, in which newcomers from Europe were
restricted at any year to a quota, which was set at 3% of the people of their nationality who lived
in the U.S. in 1910.
• Immigration Act of 1924, the quota down to 2% and the origins base was shifted to that of
1890, when few southeastern Europeans lived in America.
Cartoon from 1919: “Put them out and
keep them out”
• Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
were Italian immigrants charged
with murdering a guard and robbing a
shoe factory in Braintree, Mass.
• The trial lasted 1920-1927. Convicted on circumstantial evidence, many believed they had
been framed for the crime because of their anarchist and pro-union activities.
• In this time period, anti-foreignism was high as well.
• Liberals and radicals rallied around the two men, but they would be executed.
•Goal: was to reduce crime and poverty and improve the quality of life by
making it impossible for people to get their hands on alcohol.
•This "Noble Experiment" was a failure.
•Midnight, January 16th, 1920, US went dry.
•The 18th Amendment, known as the Volstead Act, prohibited the
manufacture, sale and possession of alcohol in America. Prohibition lasted
for thirteen years. •So was born the industry of
bootlegging, speakeasies and Bathtub Gin.
men open cases of liquor from the Blue Valley Distillery Company
Anti-Saloon League Flyer, “How Drink Leads to Immorality”
• People drank more than ever during Prohibition, and there were more deaths
related to alcohol.
• No other law in America has been violated so flagrantly by so many "decent law-
abiding" people.
• Overnight, many became criminals.
• Mobsters controlled liquor created a booming black market economy.
• Gangsters owned speakeasies and by 1925 there were over 100,000 speakeasies in
New York City alone.
Detroit police inspecting equipment
found in a hidden underground brewery during the prohibition
era.
Agent with the U.S. Treasury Department's
Prohibition Bureau during a time when
bootlegging was rampant throughout the
nation.
Chicago gangster during Prohibition who controlled the
“bootlegging” industry.
Al CaponeAl Capone Elliot Ness, part of the
Untouchables
Elliot Ness, part of the
Untouchables
“Prohibition is an awful flop.We like it.
It can't stop what it's meant to stop.We like it.
It's left a trail of graft and slime,It's filled our land with vice and crime,
It can't prohibit worth a dime,Nevertheless we're for it.”
Franklin Pierce Adams, New York World
“It is impossible to stop liquor trickling through a dotted line”
A Prohibition agent
Edwin T. Hunt
"My dad thought that prohibition was an immoral law. So he had no compunction about breaking that law. And dad’s particular job was the bagman for the police department. He decided that patrolmen would get so much and no more per week; sergeants would get so much; lieutenants, captains and so on. So he was the paymaster for the Olmstead Gang."
PROHIBITION - on manuf. and sale of alcohol
adopted in 1919 - 18th AMENDMENT
an outgrowth of the long-time temperance movement
in WWI, temperance became a patriotic mvmt. - drunkenness caused low productivity & inefficiency, and alcohol needed to treat the wounded
a difficult law to enforce... organized crime, speakeasies, bootleggers were on the rise
Al Capone virtually controlled Chicago in this period - capitalism at its zenith…
Prohibition finally ended in 1933 w/ the 21st Amendment
forced organized crime to pursue other interests…
“Flappers” sought individual freedom
Ongoing crusade for equal rights
Most women remain in the “cult of domesticity”
sphereDiscovery of adolescence
Teenaged children no longer needed to work
and indulged their craving for excitement
The Playful flapper here we see,The fairest of the fair.
She's not what Grandma used to be,You might say, au contraire.
Her girlish ways may make a stir,Her manners cause a scene,
But there is no more harm in herThan in a submarine.
She nightly knocks for many a goalThe usual dancing men.
Her speed is great, but her controlIs something else again.
All spotlights focus on her pranks.All tongues her prowess herald.
For which she well may render thanksTo God and Scott Fitzgerald.
Her golden rule is plain enough -Just get them young and treat them
rough.
by Dorothy Parker
1925
The first conflict between religion vs. science being
taught in school was in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.
John T. Scopes
Respected high school biology
teacher arrested in Dayton,
Tennessee for teaching
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
Clarence Darrow
Famous trial lawyer who represented
Scopes
William J. BryanSec. of State for
President Wilson, ran for president three times, turned evangelical
leader. Represented the
prosecution.
Dayton, Tennessee
Small town in the south became
protective against the
encroachment of modern times and secular teachings.
The trial is conducted in a carnival-like atmosphere. The
people of Dayton are seen as ‘backward’ by
the country.
The right to teach and protect Biblical
teachings in schools.
The acceptance of science and that all
species have evolved from lower forms of
beings over billions of years.
• Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA was a world pioneer
of commercial radio broadcasting.
• Transmitted 100 watts on a wavelength of 360 meters.
• KDKA first broadcast was the Harding-Cox
Presidential election returns on November 2, 1920.
• 220 stations eighteen months after KDKA took the plunge. • $50 to $150 for first radios
• 3,000,000 homes had them by 1922.
• 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
CelebritiesBabe Ruth &Ty Cobb
Jack Dempsey
Charles Lindbergh The Spirit of St. Louis
The 1920 ElectionThe 1920 Election
The 1920 ElectionThe 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…
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…
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 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 ElectionThe 1920 Election
Harding and CoolidgeHarding 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.
• 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.
+ + = $$REPUBLICAN ECONOMY SUPPORTED LAISSEZ FAIRE
AND BIG BUSINESS……….
Lower Taxes Less Federal Higher Strong Spending Tariffs National
Economy
Fordney-McCumber Tariff---1923Hawley-Smoot Tariff ---1930
raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%!!!
Art, Music and Literature during the 1920’s
Literature during the 1920’s
Literature- The Lost Generation – term by Stein discussing AM and European Artists disenchanted by WWI, only applied to survivors of the war who had been unable or unwilling to settle back into the routines of peacetime life
Harlem Renaissance- literature directed toward the plight and problems of African-Americans
"That's not it at all, that's not what I meant at all"--from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T.S. Eliot
Writers after World War I
The era following World War I, – social upheaval and economic and political
devastation, gave rise to modernism. Because modernism was an international
movement, it was seen by some to conflict with American literary traditions.
Women writers also contributed in vital ways to the difference of the literature during the interwar period.
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises Gertrude Stein – tutored Lost Generation, coined the term, lived in
Paris as an ex-pat., cubism paintings, The Making of Americans 27, Rue de Fleurus
T.S. Elliot – Wrote “The Wasteland”, “Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
Amy Lowell, poet, Imagism, wrote free verse and were devoted to "clarity of
expression through the use of precise visual images”., “Patterns” concept of New Woman- independent of a man, in her case inherited wealth
Ezra Pound , Imagist, wrote “In a Station of the Metro” Edna St. Vincent Millay, lyric poet William Faulkner – Southern Author, As I Lay Dying Eudora Welty, , topics about rural south, Delta South
F. Scott Fitzgerald William Faulkner Ernest Hemingway Gertrude Stein
T.S. Elliot Amy Lowell Edna St. Vincent Millay Ezra Pound
Common Themes
the journey of the human soul searching for redemption. – T.S. Elliot, Wasteland
Tin Pan Alley American popular
music comprised the commercial music of songwriters– Ballads– Dance music– Vaudeville
Famous Performers– Scott Joplin– Ira Gershwin– Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Ira Gershwin
Scott Joplin – Maple Leaf Rag
Harlem Renaissance Authors
Langston Hughes, , various poems, poet, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Countee Cullen, poet — “The Black Christ and Other Poems”
Left – Zora N. Hurston,
Right Countee Cullen
Bottom – Langston Hughes
Jazz Jazz music influenced all aspects of
society. Jazz poetry, fashion, and industry were
effected by the "basement" music. Jazz music also exacerbated the racial
tensions in the post war period– New Orleans- Birthplace– Chicago- moved as part of Great Migration– New York – part of Harlem Renaissance
•Beginning of the Jazz Age in New York City
•Acceptance of African American culture
•African American literature and music
Jazz as a part of the women’s movement?????
Lift Every Voice and Sing
Written by James Weldon Johnson
From Jacksonville, FL Former Principal of
Stanton School This song is considered
the Black National Anthem
Art of the Harlem Renaissance Period
W. E. B. Du Bois – “all Art is propaganda…”
Art of the Harlem Renaissance
Aaron Douglas “Into Bondage” African
sculptures, jazz music, dance and geometric forms
Ellis Wilson
“Summer Magic Everyday scenes depicted a young
woman leaning against a tree, possibly resting from farm work and day dreaming, while horses graze in the background.
James Van Der Zee- Photography
Photos of Marcus Garvey
Countee Cullen
Famous A-A Events
