Politics of the Roaring 20s

The Roaring 20’s 1920-29• Post War Issues

– Economy – had to adjust from making guns to making butter again

• Cost of living had doubled

– Harding campaigns for President “Return to Normalcy”

– Labor troubles• Jobs taken away from women and African Americans – given

back to returning GIs

Isolationism

• Did not want to get involved in another war like WWI – pulled away from world affairs– Feelings of nativism (prejudice against foreign born

people) increased

Communism• Russian revolution – Lenin’s Bolsheviks overthrew

tsar - established communist government

Red Scare

• Fear of Communism led to the Red Scare– Palmer Raids – suspected

communists hunted down

• Rights were taken away

• Not one single credible threat was found

– Young J Edgar Hoover predicts May 1, 1920 Communist Rebellion in US – nothing happens

Sacco and Vanzetti

• Italian anarchists• Charged with robbery and

murder – convicted even though evidence was circumstantial

• Executed• Example of discrimination

against radical beliefs during the Red Scare

Ku Klux Klan• Grows over Red Scare and anti-immigrant feelings

• By 1924, the Klan had 4.5 million members

• Didn’t like; – foreigners, – immigrants, – unions, – Catholics, – Jews, – or alcohol

Eugenics

• A pseudoscience that claimed to improve society through selective breeding

• 60,000 people were forcibly sterilized (“feeble minded, epileptic, insane, inebriate, blind, deaf, deformed, orphans, tramps, homeless, paupers”)

• 28 states made interracial marriage illegal

Better Baby Contests

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=43&search=&matches=

Congress Limits Immigration• Limited immigration from southern and eastern

Europe

• The Emergency Quota Act of 1921

• In 1924 amended – groups were limited to 2% of their US pop. In 1890

Race in the 1920’s – Who is “white?”Ozawa v. U.S.

• A Japanese immigrant, Takeo Ozawa, attempted to become a full U.S. citizen, despite a 1906 policy limiting naturalization to whites and Africans.

• Rather than challenging the constitutionality of the statute himself (which, under the racist Court, would have probably been a waste of time anyway), he simply attempted to establish that Japanese Americans were white. The Court rejected this logic.

United States v. Thind 1923

• An Indian-American U.S. Army veteran named Bhagat Singh Thind attempted the same strategy as Takeo Ozawa

• His attempt at naturalization was rejected in a ruling establishing that Indians, too, are not Caucasian.

• Three years later he was quietly granted citizenship in New York; he went on to earn a Ph.D. and teach at the University of California at Berkeley.

http://www.bhagatsinghthind.com/about.html

Warren G. Harding Administration

– Kellogg-Briand Pact - renounced war as a means of national policy

– Tariffs raised - made it hard for foreign countries to sell in U.S. (will contribute to Great Depression)

– Reduces taxes on Americans– Dawes Plan - solved problem of post-war debt - provided

loans to Germany to pay France/Britain who then paid the U.S

TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL • government set aside oil-rich public land in Teapot,

WY

• Secretary of Interior Albert Fall secretly leased the land to two oil companies

• Fall received $400,000 from the oil companies and a felony conviction from the courts

THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA

• Coolidge - “The chief business of the American people is business . . .the man who builds a factory builds a temple – the man who works there worships there”

President Calvin Coolidge 1924-1928

Life in the 1920s• Age of consumption

• Increased production efficiency (like assembly line) leads to…

Automobile• Henry Ford’s Model T

• altered American landscape and society

• 80% of all registered motor vehicles in the world were in the U.S.

• Urban sprawl – people could live farther from work

AMERICAN STANDARD OF LIVING SOARS

• Americans owned 40% of the world’s wealth

• The average annual income rose 35% in 1920’s

• Discretionary income increased

MODERN ADVERTISING EMERGES

• Ad agencies no longer sought to merely “inform” the public about their products

• They hired psychologists to study how best to appeal to Americans’ desire for youthfulness, beauty, health and wealth

• “Say it with Flowers” slogan actually doubled sales between 1912-1924

A SUPERFICIAL PROSPERITY

• Many during the 1920s believed the prosperity would go on forever

• Wages, production, GNP, and the stock market all rose significantly

• But. . . .

PROBLEMS ON THE HORIZON?• Businesses expanded recklessly• Iron & railroad industries faded• Farms were overproducing• Too much was bought on credit (installment plans)

including stocks