(a.k.a. Trying Really Hard to Forget World War I)

The Roaring Twenties

Technology Changes

Technology extended progress into all areas of American life.

Transportation

1. Greater Mobility

2. Creation of Jobs

3. Growth of transportation-related industries, such as oil and steel

4. Movement to suburban areas

The Airplane

The Wright Brothers – Orville and Wilbur

The first successful flight of a motorized airplane was on December 17, 1903.

Henry Ford

Inventor of the conveyor belt

It is a long, moving belt that carries materials past workers in a factory.

Allowed for lower production costs

Communication Changes

1. Increased availability of telephones

2. Development of the radio by Guglielmo Marconi

The broadcast industry developed by David Sarnoff

In 1920, RCA, manufacturers of radios, agreed to put up $2,500 to explore Sarnoff's idea of radios

and broadcasting.

News was delivered faster and to a larger audience.

Americans heard the president, the World Series, radio shows, and

music.

Radio Comes of Age

3. Development of the movies

By Thomas Edison

The movie projector or movie machine

Birth of moviesEven before sound, movies offered a means of escape through romance and comedy.

First sound movie: Jazz Singer (1927)

First animated movie with sound: Steamboat Willie (1928)

By 1930, millions of Americans went to the movies each week.

1. Labor-saving products, such as…

Electrification

washing machines,

…electric stoves and water pumps

2. Electric Lighting

Cultural Changes1920s – 1930s

The 1920s and 1930s was a time of change in manners, culture, and morals in the United States.

1. Changing ways of life

During the 1920s, urbanization continued to grow.For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas.New York City was home to over 5 million people in 1920.Chicago had nearly 3 million.

Throughout the 1920s, Americans found themselves caught between urban (city) and rural (country) cultures.

Urban life was considered a world of anonymous crowds, strangers, moneymakers, and pleasure seekers.

Rural life was considered to be safe, with close personal ties, hard work and morals.

2. Modern Family Emerges

As the 1920s unfolded, many features of the modern family came about.

Marriage was based on romantic love, women managed the household and finances, and children were not considered laborers/ wage earners but developing children who needed nurturing and education.

Americans were also happy

because the difficult years of World War I were over……so they bought lots of

stuff!

3. Consumerism – “Buying”

consumerism = belief that buying and using lots of products and services is

good for people and society

How did they pay for it? credit = money you promise to pay later

They also used credit in the stock market.

•The stock market is where a piece of a company can be bought or sold•Borrowing money to buy stock (little bits of corporations) was called buying “on margin”•Only paid 10% now, 90% later•Can you see a potential problem with this?

New technology and consumerism helped create a mass culture.

In a mass culture (or mass society), people throughout the society live very similarly. This is because most people depend on big business for food, clothes, entertainment, and other parts of life.

Example: From Virginia and Tennessee, country music goes national.Example: From Harlem, New York, jazzgoes national.

4. Mass culture - Everyone was following what was popular.

The new mass culture included the rise of national celebrities.

People crowded into baseball games to see their heroes.

Babe Ruth was a larger-than-life American hero who played for the Yankees.

He hit 60 homers in 1927.

The golfer Bobby Jones was admired for his talent and gentlemanly manners.

Lindbergh’s Flight

America’s most beloved hero of the time wasn’t an athlete but a small-town pilot named Charles Lindbergh.Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo trans-Atlantic flight.He took off from NYC in the Spirit of St. Louis and arrived in Paris 33 hours later to a hero’s welcome.

The first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Ireland – May 20, 1932

Amelia Earhart

Famed composers George Gershwin and Aaron Copland merged traditional elements with American Jazz.

Painters like Edward Hopper depicted the loneliness of American life.

Music & Arts

Georgia O’ Keefe captured the grandeur of New York using intensely colored canvasses. She painted city life, desert scenes, and flowers.

Georgia O’Keeffe lived part of her early life in Virginia.

Writers of the 1920s

Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the phrase “Jazz Age” to describe the 1920s.Fitzgerald wrote Paradise Lost and The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby reflected the emptiness of New York elite society.

Writers of the 1920s

Writer John Steinbeck wrote about migrant workers and their struggles.

Writers of the 1920s

Ernest Hemingway, wounded in World War I, became one of the best-known authors of the era.

In his novels, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, he criticized the glorification of war.

His simple, straightforward style of writing set the literary standard.

5. Modern Women

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed giving women the right to vote.

In the 1920s, prosperity and leisure time increased, and so young women led the youth

craze by dressing in a different fashion…and were nicknamed “flappers”.

The Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance began the rebirth of

African-American culture.

Harlem in New York City was a place where African American artists, writers, and musicians revealed the

freshness and variety of their culture.

The leaders of the Harlem Renaissance drew upon the heritage of black culture…to establish themselves as

powerful forces for cultural change.…

The Cotton Club was a famous place in Harlem during this time…

…and people from everywhere filled the club every night to listen to the

African-American jazz bands.

MUSIC

Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong were two of the jazz musicians of the era.

Ellington was also a jazz composer and band leader.

Louis Armstrong (“Satchmo”) was a famous trumpet player and singer…

…and Bessie Smith was a famous jazz and blues singer.

Her nickname was “the Empress of Blues.”

She was one of the first major female African American recording artists.

Other Great Diva's

Ella Fitzgerald Josephine Baker

ART

Jacob Lawrence…a painter…

…chronicled the experiences of the Great Migration north through art

LITERATURE

Langston Hughes…a famous poet who wrote about the African

American experience in the U.S.

Wanted Equality

Prohibition1920 - 1933

The Temperance Movement convinced Congress and the United States that the country would be better off with

NO alcohol to drink.

What was the Temperance Movement? It was a campaign against the sale or

manufacture of alcohol.

The 18th Amendment

Prohibition was imposed by the 18th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution…

…that made it illegal to manufacture, transport, and sell alcoholic beverages.

Prohibition was intended as a “noble experiment”…

…to reduce poverty, unemployment, and violence in the home.

Drugstores could legally sell alcohol to people with a doctor's prescription. Those stores that sold alcohol illegally could be

shut down.

Prohibition Led to Problems

1. Speakeasies were created as places for people to drink alcoholic beverages.

What were speakeasies? illegal bars or clubs

2. Organized crime grew strong. Bootleggers smuggled illegal

alcohol.

People like Al “Scarface” Capone began to smuggle alcohol in from

Canada and the Caribbean.

He was the Chicago crime boss. (like the business version of political

bosses…except they often paid off the political bosses)

3. Federal agents could not enforce the law. For the whole country there

were only 1,500 agents.

The Results Were…

The experiment of the 18th Amendment failed.

The 21st Amendment

This amendment repealed or cancelled the 18th Amendment.

Reforms could not legislate how people behaved.

American Problems of the 1920s

ISOLATIONISMExhausted from World War

Isolationism meant pulling away from involvement in world affairs that might get us

into more European wars.

Were we really “isolated” (cut off)?

• We did business with other countries.

• We signed treaties to try to prevent wars (but other countries would not always cooperate).

Nativism- lead to laws and violence

nativist (anti-immigrant) attitudes reached a peak, the KKK was more popular than ever (especially in the Midwest)

By 1924, the Klan had 4.5 million members.

The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 restricted immigration: “Do not let anyone in!”

Quota = Limit

THE HARDING PRESIDENCY

The president’s main problem was that he didn’t understand many of the issues

Warren G. Harding’s successes include the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which said, “Peace not War.”Dawes Plan provided loans to Germany to pay France/Britain who then paid U.S.

Harding 1920-1924

SCANDAL HITS HARDINGHis appointee’s were caught illegally selling government supplies to private companies.

The 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.

Coolidge Presidency

The new president, Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge, fit the pro-business spirit of the 1920s very well.

His famous quote: “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

AMERICAN BUSINESS Boomsperiod when the stock market and economy are

growing quickly(Business is good!)

Pres. Coolidge and then Pres. Hoover kept taxes down and business profits up.Kept tariffs high; it helped American manufacturers.Government tried to stay out of businesses’ business.Wages were increasing.

but…

PROBLEMS ON THE HORIZON?

Businesses expanded too fast, leading to inflation.Iron & railroad industries lost jobs.Farms nationwide suffered losses due to overproduction.Too much was bought on credit (installment plans) including stocks…

on margin = stocks bought with loaned money

Economic Problems Leading to the Depression

1. Farmers and manufacturers overproduced products. (too much = price low, so make

less money)

2. Use of Credit (borrowed money) …People could NOT repay their credit,

loans or other bills…

3. Stock-Market Crash In the late 1920s many people used credit in

the stock market… trying to make a quick profit…

…and this made the stock market go higher and higher……but on October 24,

1929 “Black Thursday” , thousands of investors wanted to sell their stock, NOT

buy them…

…and so on October 29, 1929, “Black Tuesday” prices on the stock market

crashed and nearly everyone lost their money.

Businesses failed, and people lost their jobs.

The stock market crash day is remembered as “Black Tuesday.”

4. Failure of Banks

Banks had also borrowed money and risked it on the stock

market.

After the crash…

Many banks collapsed or closed, and the federal banking system failed.

5. The amount of money in circulation was suddenly reduced after a long

period of inflation.

6. High tariffs or taxes reduced international trade (trade with

other countries) …

and so other countries raised tariffs on U.S. goods in retaliation… …and then the lack of sales to other countries led

to moreunemployment