Chapter 31
American Life in the “Roaring Twenties”
1919-1929

• Seeing Red
• Americans were paranoid after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which spawned a tiny communist party in America.
• The Big red scare of 1919-1920 resulted in a nationwide crusade against left-wingers.
• Various states joined the pack in the outcry against the radicals
• Legislatures passed criminals syndicalism laws – made unlawful there mere advocacy of violence.
• The conservative Businessmen used the red scare to their advantage to break the union’s backs.
• Lots of feelings of anti-redism and anti-foreignism
• Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK
• A new Ku Klux Klan, Spawned by the post war reaction mushroomed in the early 1920’s.
• It was an anti-foreign, anti-catholic, anti-black, Anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist anti-communist, anti-internationalist, anti-evolutionist, anti-bootlegger, anti-gambling, anti-adultery and anti-birth control.
• It was also pro-Anglo-Saxon, pro- “native” American and pro-protestant.
• In short they were a force against diversity and modernity
• The Klan spread with astonishing rapidity
• Especially in the Midwest where protestant fundamentalism thrived.
• This reign of hooded horror collapsed suddenly in the late 1920’s.
• Stemming the Foreign Flood
•  Isolationist America of the 1920a had little use for the immigrants flooding in.
• Congress temporarily stopped the influx with the Emergency quotea act 1921. New comers from Europe were restricted to 3% or the people of their nationality who had been living in the US in 1910.
• That legislation was replaced by the immigration act of 1925, quotas were cut to two percent of what they were in 1890.
• Southern Europeans denounced this as unfair, the “nativist” belief was that the northern Europeans were of better blood.
• A discriminatory section of the act slammed the door on Japanese immigrants.
• Canadians and Latin American were exempt from the quota system because of their proximity.
• The immigration act of 1924 marked the end of an era- a period of virtually unrestricted immigration.
• The Prohibition “Experiment”
• The Eighteenth Amendment- Prohibition and the Volstead Act made the world “safe for hypocrisy ”
• Legal abolition of alcohol was especially popular in the South west because they were eager to keep stimulants out of black hands and it kept drunken vices away/
• It got strong opposition in the larger eastern cities because many foreign born people were used to drinking a lot.
• Prohibitionists were naïve
• They overlooked the weak government control over private lives and many people disregarded the law.
• Prohibition might have started off on a better foot if there had been a larger army of enforcement officials.
• People bribed officers and smuggled drinks or even tried making their own alcohol which sometimes resulted in death.
• Yet the “noble experiment” was not entirely a failure.
• Bank saving increased, and absenteeism in industry decreased.
• On the whole probably less alcohol was consumed than in the days before prohibition.
• The Golden Age of Gangsterism
• Prohibition spawned shocking crimes, violent wars broke out in the big cities between rivals gangs- often in immigrant neighborhoods- trying to get the best market to sell the illegal booze.
• Competitors were killed, arrests were few and convictions were even fewer.
• Chicago was the most spectacular example of lawlessness.
• In 1925 “Scarface” Al Capone began six years of warfare that made him rich.
• He was branded “public enemy number one” but couldn’t be convicted of his massacres and eventually imprisoned for income-tax evasion.
• Gangsters quickly moved to other profitable and illicit activities: Prostitution, gambling and narcotics.
• Honest merchants had to pay “protection money”.
• Organized crime had come to be one of the nation’s biggest businesses.
• Monkey Business in Tennessee
• Education was growing in the 1920 more and more states were requiring young people to remain in school until 16, 18 or graduation.
• Professor John Dewey formed the foundation of progressive education.
• Science advanced wondrously.
• Public-health programs wiped out hookworm. Better nutrition and health care helped increase the life expectancy from 50 to 59.
• However born science and progressive education in the 1920’s were disliked by fundamentalists who said that the teaching of Darwinism destroyed faith in God and the bible.
• The Mass-Consumption Economy
• Prosperity put much of the “roar” into the twenties
• The economy sprinted forwards for nearly 7 years
• Rapid- expansion of capital investments was favored
• Ingenious machines were powered relatively cheaply- increasing labor of productivity.
• Great new industries sprouted
• The car became the carriage of the common man.
• New aim of commerce came into play: advertising: seduction and persuasion were ways to convince Americans that they wanted to buy more.
• Sports became big business in the consumer economy- sports heroes were well known and families bought many tickets.
• Buying on credit was a new idea too. “Posses today and pay tomorrow”.
• Putting America on Rubber Tires
• A new industrial revolution came about in the 1920’s out of all the inventions of the era, the automobile was the most important
• It used new amazing industrial system based on assembly-line methods and mass production techniques.
• Best known from the new crop of industrial wizards was Henry Ford- he went through some hard times getting his models to work but  fully applied the technique of the moving assembly line- this method was called Fordism.
• His methods were so economical that he was selling his Ford Roadster for $260.
• The Advent of the Gasoline Age
• The impact of the self-propelled carnage helped the industry develop and create more jobs.
• The petroleum business experienced an explosive development.
• Railroads were hit hard by the competition of passenger cars, trucks and buses.
• Speedy marketing of perishable food stuffs was accelerated.
• The era of mud had ended as the nation made haste to construct hard-surfaced roadways.
• Cars were agents of social change- at first a luxury, they rapidly became a necessity.
• By the late 1920s Americans owned more automobiles than bathtubs. “I can’t go to town in a bathtub”.
• Sprawling suburbs spread out even further from the urban core as America became a nation of commuters.
• The demon machine, on the other hand exacted a death toll. The one millionth American had died in a motorcar accident by 1951.
• Yet no sane American would plead for return of the old horse and buggy with its fly-breeding manure
• The car brought more convenience pleasure into peoples’ lives more than any other invention.
• Humans Develop Wings
• Gasoline engines also provided the power needed for airplanes
• On December 17, 1903 – Orville Wright managed to stay airborne for 12 seconds and 120 feet.
• As aviation got off the ground, the world slowly shrank.
• Private companies began to operate passenger lines and airmail.
• Charles A. Lindbergh travelled from New York to Paris in 1927.
• He did much to dramatize and popularize flying.
• A giant new industry was given birth to.
• The floundering railroad received another setback though the loss of passengers and mail.
• A lethal new method was given to the gods of war.
• The Radio Revolution
• Communication developed quickly
• Wireless telegraphy- 1890’s, then voice carrying radios. Transatlantic wireless phonographs, radiotelephones and television
• The radio was drawing families and neighbors back home
• Educationally and culturally the radio made significant contribution
• Sports were further stimulated, politicians had to adjust their speaking techniques to the new medium and finally the music of famous artists and symphony orchestras was beamed into countless homes.
•  Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies
• The real birth of the movie came in 1903 when the first story sequence.
• A fascinating industry was this launched. Hollywood, in southern California soon became the movie capital of the world for it had maximum sunshine and other advantages.
• The motion picture really arrived during WWiI when it was used as an engine of anti-German propaganda.
• A new era began in 1927- “talkie”
• Success, the age of the “silents” was ushered out and color films started to be produced.
• Movie stars got higher salaries than the president.
• The Dynamic Decade
• There were new changes in lifestyles and values.
• Many taboos flew out the window: once modest maidens took up flapper dresses and shocked elders with one piece bathing suits.
• Jazz and new music came about.
• New racial pride blossomed in the black communities.
• Cultural Liberator
• In the decade after the war a new generation of writers and artists burst onto the scene from different ethnic and religious backgrounds.
• War had jolted many young writers out of their complacency about traditional values and literary standards. They probed for new codes of morals and understanding.
• The “lost generation” was formed by expatriates in postwar Europe.
• In an outpouring of creative expression- the Harlem renaissance- artists exulted in their black cultures and argued for a “new negro”  a dull citizen and a white’s social equal.
• Wall Street’s Big Bull Market
• Signals abounded that the economic joyride might end in a crash.
• As the 1920’s lurched forward, everyone seemed to be buying stocks.
• Little was done by Washington to curb money-mad speculators.
• Lots of taxes were abolished and the rich ahd to pay less taxes.