The Roaring 20’s

America After WWI

“A Return to Normalcy”

• This became Warren

G. Harding’s

campaign slogan

when he accidentally

messed up the word,

“Normality”

• Americans loved it

and elected him

Fighting the Recession

• After WWI, 2 million

soldiers were looking

for work

• Factories were

closing because they

were no longer

getting orders for

wartime goods from

European nations

Republicans Rule the 1920s

• “HARD”-”COOL”-”HOOV”

• All the presidents of the

1920s were Republican

• The names of the 3

presidents are Harding,

Coolidge, and Hoover

• Warren G. Harding died in

office, probably due to

shock

Warren G.

Harding 1921-

1923 (died in

office)

Calvin

Coolidge

1923-1929

Herbert Hoover 1929-1933

President Harding’s Corrupt

Cabinet

• Secretary of the Treasury: Andrew Mellon,

a wealthy financier

• Secretary of Commerce: Herbert Hoover,

famous for his food raising efforts during

WWI

• “Ohio Gang”: Harding’s old friends from

Ohio who were corrupt and stole money

from the government

Charles Forbes

• One of Harding’s old buddies

• Head of the Veteran’s Bureau

• Stole millions of dollars from the bureau

“I can take care of my enemies all right, but

my…friends, they’re the ones that keep me

walking the floors at night!” –Hoover

Herbert Hoover was very hard-working and honest, but his friends were not

After a bunch of betrayals, Harding died of a heart attack in August, 1923

The Teapot Dome Scandal

• Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall accepted a bribe to lease government land to oil executives

• One of these areas was called “Teapot Dome” in Wyoming

• Fall was sent to prison

Vice President Calvin Coolidge

Becomes President

• “Silent Cal” spoke and spent little (Harding

loved to throw parties and give long

speeches)

• He forced corrupt officials to resign

• He was re-elected in 1924 with the slogan

“Keep Cool With Coolidge”

From War Goods to Consumer

Goods

• Coolidge cut regulations

on businesses

• Americans’ incomes rose

• People began to buy

refrigerators, radios,

vacuums, and other

appliances

• Businesses began to

advertise their products

“Coolidge Prosperity”

“The business of America is business. The man who builds a factory builds a temple. The man who works there worships there.

• Calvin Coolidge

What does President Calvin Coolidge believe American Prosperity rests on?

Buying on Credit

• Installment Buying= Buying on Credit (Buy

now, pay later)

• Demands for goods jumped, but so did

Americans’ debt “If we want anything, all we have to do is go

and buy it on credit. So that leaves us without

any economic problems whatsoever, except

that perhaps some day to have to pay for

them.”

–Comedian Will Rogers

Soaring Stock Market

• By the late 1920s, more people were investing in the stock market

• People became rich overnight

• Bull Market: Period of rapidly increasing stock prices

• Prices of stocks rose more quickly than the value of the companies themselves

American Foreign Policy in the

1920s

• Most all Americans (including Harding and

Coolidge) wanted to remain “isolationist”

HOWEVER:

1. The U.S. still needed to protect economic

interests in Mexico

2. The U.S. gave $10 million in aid to Russia

during a famine

3. The U.S. still signed the “Kellogg-Briand Pact”

with 61 other nations (which outlawed war)

“Hopeful that, encouraged by their example, all the other nations of the world will join in this humane endeavor and by adhering to the present Treaty as soon as it comes into force bring their peoples within the scope of its beneficent provisions, thus uniting the civilized nations of the world in a common renunciation of war as an instrument of their national policy”

-Section of the Kellogg-Briand Pact http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm

Women Gain the Right to Vote

• 19th Amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote

• Carrie Chapman Catt set up the League of Women Voters

• This group tried to educate voters and ensure the right of women to serve on juries

Ana Roque de Duprey

Fought for the right to

vote for women in

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican women

got the right to vote in

1929

Life Changes for Women

• Women were told to go back home when the men came home to the factories after WWI

• Many women stayed in the workforce as typists, cleaners, cooks, servants, seamstresses, teachers, secretaries, and store clerks

• Many women bought ready-made clothing instead of making their own

• Many women bought appliances to help them with housework after working a full day outside of the home

Impact of the Automobile

• Car sales grew rapidly in the 1920s because Henry Ford’s assembly line made them so cheap

• General Motors also became a popular seller of cars

Changing Lifestyles Due to the

Automobile

• Millions of jobs were created through factories, oil refineries, roads, highways, truck stops, gas stations, restaurants and tourist stops

• Many Americans began to move to the suburbs to escape crowded conditions in cities

Mass Culture

• Radio

• Movies

(Above, lines outside a movie theatre)

(Left, family listening to the radio

The Jazz Age

• Fashion Fads,

flappers

• Marathon Dancing

More Fads

Flagpole sitting: Where young people would sit for hours and even days on top of a flagpole. (The record: 21 days!)

The Dance Craze

• The Charleston

• Has a quick beat

• Dancers kick out

their feet

• Popular dance for

Flappers: Women

who wore short

skirts (to the

knees), bright red

lipstick, hair cut

short, smoked

and drank in

public, and drove

fast cars

New Music

Jazz: Born in New Orleans, created by African Americans, combination of West African rhythms, African American songs and spirituals, European harmonies

Listen to the song “Heebie Jeebies- What different rhythms can you recognize?

Famous jazz musicians: Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, “Jelly Roll” Morton

A New Generation of American

Writers

• Depressed about their awful experiences

in World War I

• Criticized Americans for being obsessed

with money and fun

• Many became expatriates (people who

leave their own country to live in a foreign

land) and moved to Europe

Ernest Hemingway

• Wrote about

experiences of

Americans during

WWI and in Europe

• Wrote A Farewell to

Arms, The Sun Also

Rises, The Old Man

in the Sea

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Wrote about wealthy

young people who go

to constant parties

but cannot find

happiness

He wrote The Great

Gatsby

His characters had

flappers,

bootleggers, and

movie makers

Sinclair Lewis

Grew up in a small town in Minnesota and moved to New York City

He wrote books about rural people from a city person’s perspective (making them look stupid)

Wrote Main Street and Babbitt

The Harlem Renaissance

• In the 1920s, many

African American

artists settled in

Harlem, New York

City

• Black artists,

musicians, and

writers celebrated

their African and

American heritage

Harlem Renaissance Poets Claude McKay: From

Jamaica, wrote the

poem, “If We Must

Die” that condemned

lynchings

Countee Cullen: Taught

high school in

Harlem, wrote of the

experiences of African

Americans

Zora Neale Hurston

Write novels, short essays, short stories

Traveled throughout the South in a battered car collecting folk tales, songs, and prayers of black southerners

Published these in her book, “Mules and Men”

Langston Hughes • Most well-known of

the Harlem Renaissance poets

• Also wrote plays, short stories, and essays

• First poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

• Encouraged African Americans to be proud of their heritage

• Protested racism and acts of violence against blacks

“The night is beautiful,

So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,

So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful also, is the sun.

Beautiful also, are the souls of my people.”

-Langston Hughes, “In My People”

Heroes of the 1920s

Athletes:

–Bobby Jones: Won nearly every golfing championship

– Jack Dempsey: Heavyweight boxing champion for 7 years

–Bill Tilden and Helen Willis: Tennis champions

–Gertrude Ederle: 1st woman to swim the English Channel

Babe Ruth

• Grew up in an

orphanage

• Often in trouble as a

boy

• Hit 60 homeruns in

one season, and 714

overall

• Called the “Sultan of

Swat”

Charles Lindbergh

• The greatest hero of the

1920s

• The first person to fly an

airplane across the

Atlantic Ocean alone

• Flew from New York to

Paris

• Called “Lucky Lindy”

because he had to fly for

33 ½ hours and didn’t

carry a parachute, a

radio, or a map

“The Noble Experiment”

Prohibition

How did Prohibition help lead to organized

Crime????