The American JourneyA History of the United States, 7th Edition

By: Goldfield • Abbott • Anderson • Argersinger • Argersinger • Barney • Weir

Chapter

•Toward a Modern

America: The 1920s

24

Toward a Modern America:

The 1920s

The Economy That Roared

The Business of Government

Cities and Suburbs

Mass Culture in the Jazz Age

Culture Wars

A New Era in the World?

Herbert Hoover and the Final Triumph of the New Era

Learning Objectives

What contributed to the economic boom of the 1920s?

What was the relationship between big business and

government in the 1920s?

What factors contributed to the growth of America’s cities

and suburbs in the 1920s?

Learning Objectives (cont'd)

How did new systems of distribution, marketing, and mass

communication shape American culture?

What forces fueled the culture wars of the 1920s?

What rold did the United States play in international

diplomacy in the decade after World War I?

Learning Objectives (cont'd)

What factors contributed to Herbert Hoover’s victory in 1928

over his Democratic opponent, Alfred E. Smith?

In what ways did Hoover epitomize the policies of the New

Era?

The Economy That Roared

Boom Industries

Interrelated forces stimulated the economic expansion of

the 1920s.

Wartime and past war profits supplied investment capital to

mechanize mass production techniques that stressed

standardization of parts and the assembly line.

Boom Industries (cont'd)

The expansion of electricity cuts costs and improved

manufacturing while spurring demand for new home

products.

The automobile industry drove the economy and stimulated

related industries.

The aviation, chemicals, radio, and motion pictures

industries also experienced rapid growth.

FIGURE 24–1 Registered Motor Vehicles,

1913–1929

Corporate Consolidation

Corporate mergers rivaled those of the turn of the 20th

century.

The spread of oligopoly, the control of an industry by a few

companies, was particularly evident.

The automobile, electric light and power, banking, and

national chain stores led the corporate consolidation.

Corporate Consolidation (cont'd)

Americans accepted the idea that size brought efficiency

and productivity.

Oligopoly

An industry, such as steel making or automobile manufacturing, that is

controlled by a few large companies.

Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism

In the 1920s, business attacked labor seeking the open

shop to break union-shop contracts and collective

bargaining.

Businesses used boycotts, yellow dog contracts, spies and

strikebreakers to weaken unions.

Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)

Welfare capitalism was presented as an alternative to

unions and provided medical services, insurance

programs, pensions, and vacations for workers.

Companies also promoted company unions.

Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)

Union membership fell from 5.1 million in 1920 to 3.6 million

in 1929, partly from business pressures and partly from

conservative union policies that neglected ethnic and

black workers.

Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)

Open shop

Factory or business employing workers whether or not they are union

members; in practice, such a business usually refuses to hire union

members and follows antiunion policies.

Yellow-dog contracts

Employment agreements binding workers not to join a union.

Open Shops and Welfare Capitalism (cont'd)

Welfare capitalism

A paternalistic system of labor relations emphasizing management

responsibility for employee well-being. While providing some limited

benefits, its function was primarily to forestall the formation of unions

or public intervention.

FIGURE 24–2 Growing Income Inequality in the

1920s

Sick Industries

Not all industries prospered in the 1920s.

Coal mining, textile and garment manufacturing, and

railroads declined as a result of excess capacity, shrinking

demands, low returns, and labor-management conflicts.

Sick Industries (cont’d)

American agriculture never recovered from the 1921

depression with surpluses and shrinking demand forcing

down prices despite improved techniques and

mechanization.

Racial discrimination worsened conditions for Hispanics and

African American in farming.

The Business of Government

Republican Ascendancy

Republicans gained control of Congress and the White

House in 1920.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and Secretary of

the Treasury Andrew Mellon shaped economic policy

throughout the 1920s.

Republican Ascendancy (cont'd)

Hoover worked to expand prosperity by building ties with

leading sectors of the economy and supporting business

efficiency. Mellon pushed for tax reduction on businesses

and the wealthy.

Republicans also curtailed government regulation seeking a

more collaborative relationship with business.

Government Corruption

Harding’s administration witnessed substantial corruption,

including the Teapot Dome Scandal that leased

government oil reserves to oil companies.

Coolidge Prosperity

Coolidge confined government’s role to helping business

and won reelection on the platform of Coolidge prosperity.

The Fate of Reform

Reformers experienced few successes.

League of Women Voters

Group formed in 1920 from the National American Woman Suffrage

Association to encourage informed voting and social reforms.

Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921

The first federal social welfare law; funded infant and maternity health

care programs in local hospitals.

Cities and Suburbs

Expanding Cities

Urbanization impacted every region.

Older industrial cities of the Northeast and upper Midwest

grew the most, attracting migrants from the rural South

and Appalachia.

Rural Southerners also flocked to southern cities.

Expanding Cities (cont'd)

Western cities grew rapidly, especially Los Angeles that

became the nation’s fifth largest city in 1930.

The population growth altered the urban landscape as land

values soared and developers built skyscrapers.

MAP 24–1 Population Shifts, 1920–1930

The Great Black Migration

While southern segregation and violence made migration

attractive to African Americans, northern job opportunities

made it possible.

Over a million and a half African Americans moved to

northern cities in the 1920s where they crowded into

ghettos and worked at jobs that offered salaries less than

those of whites.

The Great Black Migration (cont'd)

Migration brought African American

communities political and

economic power, autonomy, and

increased racial consciousness.

Marcus Garvey’s United Negro

Improvement Association

espoused racial pride and black

nationalism.

The Great Black Migration (cont'd)

Great Migration

The mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the

urban North, spurred especially by new job opportunities during World

War I and the 1920s.

Harlem Renaissance

A new African-American cultural awareness that flourished in literature,

art, and music in the 1920s.

THE MOST FAMOUS PEOPLE OF THE HARLEM

RENAISSANCE

Louis Armstrong.

Musician. It’s a

Wonderful World.

• Langston Hughes. Poet,

Novelist, Playwright.

Weary Blues, The Ways

of White Folks

Zora Neale

Hurston, folklorist,

anthropologist, and

novelist. Their

Eyes were

Watching God.

Claude McKay,

poet, journalist,

novelist. If We

Must Die, Home

to Harlem.

Duke Ellington,

Jazz Musician. Josephine Baker,

Dance, Singer,

Fashion Icon.

Barrios

Hispanic migrants also came to the

city in the 1920s, creating

communities called barrios.

Puerto Ricans migrated to New

York City but Mexico supplied

the most immigrants.

Racism restricted Hispanics to

racially defined districts.

Barrios (cont'd)

In 1929, the League of United

Latin American Citizens

organized to advance civil

rights for Hispanics.

The Road to Suburbia

Suburbs grew twice as fast as cities in the 1920s.

Automobiles created the modern suburb which was

sprawling and dispersed and the single-family home

surrounded by a green lawn became the social ideal.

Many suburbs excluded Jews, African American, Hispanics,

and working-class people.

The Road to Suburbia (cont’d)

The rise of suburbs stimulated highway construction and

with the automobile led to the creation of new industries,

including shopping centers, drive-in restaurants, and fast

food franchises.

Mass Culture in the Jazz Age

Advertising in Consumer Society

Advertising’s focus on consumption helped shape the new

society. Traditional virtues of thrift, prudence, and

avoidance of debt were replaced by consumption.

Via print, skywriting, and new media, advertisers exhorted

Americans to buy a growing number of goods and

services.

Advertising in Consumer Society (cont'd)

Advertisers sought to create a single mass market that

consumed brand-name products.

The home as the focus of consumerism, especially as

electricity spawned new household appliances.

Leisure and Entertainment

Recreation and leisure were important features of the new

mass society.

Elaborately decorated theaters attracted moviegoers.

Movies helped spread common values and helped set

societal trends.

Radio and the phonograph also expanded entertainment

and popular culture.

Leisure and Entertainment (cont’d)

Country, blues, and especially jazz music became popular.

Professional sports also prospered and became more

commercialized. Baseball, boxing, and football drew huge

crowds.

Jazz Age

The 1920s, so called for the popular music of the day as a symbol of the

many changes taking place in the mass culture.

The New Morality

The promoting of consumption and immediate gratification

weakened traditional self-restraint and fueled the need for

personal fulfillment.

Sexual pleasure became an open objective.

The New Morality (cont'd)

Young people embodied the

new morality, embracing

new dances, bootleg

liquor, smoking, revealing

clothing, and sexual

experimentation.

The new morality was not as

widespread or as new

critics and advocates

suggested.

The Searching Twenties

Many writers rejected the materialism, conformity, and

provincialism of the developing mass culture. Their

criticism made the 1920s a fertile literary decade.

Called the Lost Generation, these writers had responded to

the brutality and hypocrisy of the war with disillusionment

and alienation.

Culture Wars

Nativism and Immigration Restriction

After years of campaigning for immigration restriction,

nativists succeeded in passing legislation that imposed a

literacy test on immigrants.

The National Origins Act of 1924 placed strict quotas on

immigration that worked against eastern and southern

Europeans.

Nativism and Immigration Restriction (cont'd)

In western states, Japanese were prohibited from owning or

leasing land and were blocked from becoming citizens.

Filipinos were not subject to the National Origins Act and

migrated in heavy numbers to the United States.

Nativism and Immigration Restriction (cont'd)

National Origins Act

A 1924 law sharply restricting immigration on the basis of immigrants’

national origins and discriminating against southern and eastern

Europeans and Asians.

Nisei

U.S. citizens born of immigrant Japanese parents.

The Ku Klux Klan

A revived Ku Klux Klan attracted several million members

by the mid-1920s.

The Klan had a very public stance, sponsoring public

picnics, parades, charity drives, and other social events.

The Ku Klux Klan (cont'd)

The Klan exploited racial, ethnic, and religious prejudices,

campaigning against alien creeds.

The Klan was rooted in the countryside but attracted many

urban residents.

The Klan showed some political power but scandals and

exposes led to its quick decline.

Issues in the Culture Wars of the 1920s

Prohibition and Crime

To enforce the Eighteenth Amendment, the Volstead Act

was passed to outlaw the manufacture, sale, and

distribution of liquor.

Evasion of prohibition proved easy, especially in urban

areas.

To supply the growing demand for liquor, organized crime

developed elaborate distribution networks.

Prohibition and Crime (cont'd)

Support for prohibition waned throughout the 1920s.

Volstead Act

The 1920 law defining the liquor forbidden under the Eighteenth

Amendment and giving enforcement responsibilities to the Prohibition

Bureau of the Department of the Treasury.

Old-Time Religion and the Scopes Trial

Protestant fundamentalism that stressed the infallibility of

the Bible was challenged by the theory of evolution.

Fundamentalists demanded strict biblical Christianity and

supported efforts to outlaw the teaching of evolution.

Old-Time Religion and the Scopes Trial

John Scopes, a high school biology teacher tested a

Tennessee law leading to a sensational trial where

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan faced off as

opposing attorneys.

• Fundamentalism was mocked before a national audience

but the issue remained unresolved.

A New Era in the World?

War Debts and Economic Expansion

The United States was the world’s major economic power in

the 1920s. The war had changed it from a debtor to a

creditor nation.

An unstable system of American loans, high tariffs, and

European payments was installed to pay off war debts. A

constant flow of money from the United States kept the

system afloat.

War Debts and Economic Expansion (cont'd)

As exports of manufactured good soared, American

businesses became multinational companies.

The government helped open doors for American

businesses in other nations.

Multinational corporation

Firm with direct investments, branches, factories, and offices in a number

of countries.

Rejecting War

Popular reaction against World War I stimulated a strong

peace movement.

Naval disarmament conferences were held in Washington in

the early 1920s.

In 1928, the United States helped draft the Kellogg-Briand

Pact that renounced war and was signed by 64 nations.

Rejecting War

Kellogg-Briand Pact

1928 international treaty that denounced aggression and war but lacked

provisions for enforcement.

Managing the Hemisphere

The United States continued to dominate Latin America to

support its interests.

The Inter-American Conference denied the right of any

nation to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation.

Herbert Hoover and the Final

Triumph of the New Era

Herbert Hoover and the Final Triumph of the New

Era

In the 1928 election, Republican Herbert Hoover faced

Democratic candidate Al Smith in a campaign that pitted

rural fundamentalism, anti-Catholicism, prohibition, and

nativism against an urban Catholic opponent of

prohibition connected to an immigrant constituency.

Hoover was elected president in 1928 on the boast of the

final triumph over poverty.

MAP 24–2 The Election of 1928

Conclusion

Conclusion

The New Era of the 1920s changed the United States.

Technological and business innovations combined with new

labor patterns, a growing concentration of corporate

power, and government policies to alter the economy.

Conclusion (cont'd)

Social changes included a massive migration from rural to

urban areas, the rise of consumerism, new media, and

growing tensions between traditional and modern culture.

The impact of the decade’s trends was uneven as some

profited while others lost as change proceeded.