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Chapter 31: American Life in the “Roaring Twenties”. EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR I. Americans denounced “radical” foreign ideas, condemned “un-American” lifestyles, and restricted immigration. Incomes and living standards rose for Americans, which seemed unreal.
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EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR I • Americans denounced “radical” foreign ideas, condemned “un-American” lifestyles, and restricted immigration. • Incomes and living standards rose for Americans, which seemed unreal. • New technologies, new consumer products, and new forms of leisure and entertainment. • America was losing sight of its traditional ways.
COMMUNIST PARTY IN AMERICA • After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, fears arose of a communist party in America. • Americans jumped to the conclusion that high prices and strikes were stimulated by Bolsheviks. • Strike in Seattle in 1919, though modest and orderly, prompted call to head off “the anarchy of Russia”. • America against the left-wing.
ATTORNEY GENERAL A. MITCHELL PALMER • “saw red” too easily. • “fighting Quaker” • Excessive zeal in rounding up communist suspects. • Home bombed in june 1919.
BUFORD (“SOVIET ARK”) • Late in December 1919, 249 suspected alien radicals were deported on the Buford to “workers’ paradise” of Russia. • September 1920---An unexplained bomb exploded on wall street. • Killed 38 people and wounded hundreds.
REACTION TO RED SCARE • In 1919-1920 legislatures passed criminal syndicalism laws. • Made unlawful encouragement of violence to secure social change. • Critics protested that mere words were not crimes. • Iww members were prosecuted. • In 1920 5 members of new York legislature were denied their seats because they were Socialists.
RED SCARE AFFECTS LABOR UNIONS • Labor unions’ call for “closed” shop was denounced as “Sovietism in disguise”. • Employers proclaimed their antiunion campaign for “open” ship and “the American plan”.
NICOLA SACCO AND BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI • Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of murder of a Massachusetts paymaster and his guard in 1921. • Prejudice because they were Italian, atheist, anarchist, and draft dodgers. • The two men were electrocuted. • Outcome might have been only a prison term if case was not prejudice. • Martyrs to Communists and other radicals.
A NEW KU KLUX KLAN • More closely resembled anti-foreign “nativist” movements of 1850s than antiblack movements of 1860s. • Antiforeign, anti-Catholic, antiblack, anti-Jewish, antipacifist, anti-communist, anti-internationalist, antievolutionist, anti-bootlegger, antigambling, antiadultery, and anti-birth control. • Pro-Anglo-Saxon, pro-”native” American, and pro-protestant. • Against diversity and modernity that was transforming American culture.
Spread rapidly, especially in the Midwest and the “bible belt” south. • Capitalized on the American love of on-the-edge adventure and brotherhood. • Adolescent passion for secret ritual. • Most impressive displays were “konclaves” and huge flag-waving parades. • Chief warning was the blazing cross. • Principal weapon was the bloodied lash, reinforced by tar and feathers.
Collapse of the kkk in the late 1920s • Americans drew back from the terrorism. • Scandalous embezzling by Klan officials launched a congressional investigation. • KKK was exposed of having a $10 initiation fee, $4 of which was kicked back to local organizers as an incentive to recruit.
New immigrants • About 800,000 immigrants came to America in 1920-1921. • About two-thirds from southern and eastern Europe. • “One-hundred-percent Americans” claimed that sick Europe was vomiting on America.
Emergency quota act of 1921 • Immigrants from Europe were restricted to a definite quota, which was set at 3 percent of the people of their nationality who had been living in the united states in 1910. • Many southern and eastern Europeans had already arrived by 1910.
Immigration act of 1924 • Replaced emergency quota act of 1921. • Quotas for foreigners were cut from 3 percent to 2 percent. • NATIONAL-ORIGNS BASE WAS SHIFTED FROM CONSUS OF 1910 TO THE ONE OF 1890. • WHEN FEW SOUTHERN EUROPEANS HAD ARRIVED. • SOUTHERN EUROPEANS DENOUNCED THIS AS UNFAIR AND DISCRIMINATORY.
PURPOSE WAS TO FREEZE THE UNITED STATES’ RACIAL COMPOSITION. • NORTHERN EUROPEAN • A DISCRIMINATORY SECTION SLAMMED THE DOOR AGAINST JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS. • CANADIANS AND LATIN AMERICANS WERE EXEMPTED. • NEARNESS MADE IT EASE TO SEND THEM BACK HOME WHEN TIMES WERE BAD.
EFFECTS OF THE QUOTA SYSTEM • CLAIMED THAT THE UNITED STATES WAS FILLING UP, SO IMMIGRATION DECREASED. • BY 1931, MORE FOREIGNERS LEFT THAN ARRIVED. • CAUSED THE UNITED STATES TO SACRIFICE ITS TRADITION OF FREEDOM AND SPPORUTNITY AND ITS FURTURE ETHNIC DIVERSITY.
Left on American shores ethnic communities separated from each other and society by language, religion, and customs. • Recent arrivals, including Italians, Jews, and poles, lived in isolated areas (ghettos) with their own houses of worship, newspapers, and theaters.
Labor unions affected by quotas • Ethnic differences hindered efforts to organize labor unions. • Language barriers • Employers played on ethnic rivalries to keep workers divided and powerless.
“cultural pluralists” • Criticized the idea that an American “melting pot” would abolish ethnic differences. • Horace kallen and Randolph Bourne advocated alternative conceptions of immigrants in American society.
Horace kallen • Defended immigrants’ right to practice their ancestral customs during war hysteria of world war I. • Thought America should be protective of ethnic and racial groups preserving their cultural uniqueness. • Thought each immigrant community would harmonize with the others while retaining its own singular identity.
Randolph Bourne • Advocated greater cross-fertilization among immigrants. • Believed that cosmopolitan interchange was destined to make America “not a nationality but a trans-nationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, or many threads of all sizes and colors”. • Believed that the united states should lead a more international and multicultural age.
Effects of kallen and Bourne • Attracted other intellectuals to defend ethnic diversity. • John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Louis Brandeis. • Planted the seeds of “multiculturalism” in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
The eighteenth amendment • The legal abolition of alcohol authorized in 1919. • Supported by crusading churches and women. • Implemented by the Volstead act.
Popularity and opposition • Popular in the south and west. • Southern whites were eager to keep alcohol away from blacks so they would not burst out of “their place”. • Westerners saw prohibition as a way to attack public drunkenness, prostitution, corruption, and crime. • Strong opposition in large eastern cities. • For foreign-born people, Old world life was built around drinking.
Prohibitionists were naive • Overlooked American tradition of drinking and or weak control by central government, especially over private lives. • Forgot that federal government never enforced a law where majority of people were hostile to it. • Lawmakers could not legislate away the thirst of drinking.
Reaction to prohibition • The aftermath of the war led to more drinking. • Hypocritical legislators drank privately. • Workers complained about the loss of cheap beer, while the rich could buy all the alcohol they wanted. • Youth swilled bootleg liquor. • Older citizens engaged in “bar hunts”.
Prohibition needed more enforcement • State and federal agencies were understaffed. • Snoopers, vulnerable to bribery, were underpaid. • Many people were killed by quick-triggered dry agents.
Prohibition did not prohibit • “men only” corner saloons were replaced by “speakeasies”. • Hard liquor was popular because it was difficult transporting and concealing bottles. • Americans often got liquor from Canada.
Effects of bootlegging • The worst of the homemade “rotgut” produced blindness, and even death. • Sometimes bootleggers and undertakers would work together.
The pros of prohibition • Bank savings increased. • Absenteeism in industry decreased. • Sober workers
Prohibition produced crimes • Bribery of the police. • Wars broke in big cities between rival gangs who to corner bootlegging. • Often rooted in immigrant neighborhoods. • Most gang wars in Chicago. • Arrests and convictions were minimal. • Gangsters covered for one another.
“Scarface” al Capone • Grasping and murderous bootlegger. • Began 6 years of gang warfare in which he gained millions of blood-spattered dollars. • Could not be convicted of a massacre, on February 14, 1929, of 7 disarmed members of a rival gang. • Served 11 years in a federal penitentiary for income-tax evasion. • Released with syphilis.
gangsters • Moved into prostitution, gambling, and narcotics. • Merchants had to pay gangsters “protection money” or else their windows would be smashed, their trucks overturned, or their employees or themselves beaten up. • Racketeers invaded ranks of local labor unions as organizers and promoters.
Lindbergh law • In 1932 aviator-hero Charles a. Lindbergh’s son was kidnapped and murdered. • Since the nation was shocked and saddened, congress passed the Lindbergh law. • Made interstate abduction in certain circumstances a death-penalty offense.
Improving education in the 1920s • More states were requiring students to stay in school until age 16 or 18, or until they graduated high school. • The proportion of 17-year-olds who finished high school almost doubled.
John Dewey • Faculty member of Columbia university 1904-1930. • Set forth the principles of “learning by doing” that formed the foundation of progressive education. • Believed the goal of the teacher was to teach “education for life”.
Health in the 1920s • The public-health program of the Rockefeller foundation in the south in 1909 wiped out the disease of hookworm. • Better nutrition and health care increased life expectancy from 50 years in 1901 to 59 years in 1929.
fundamentalists • Accused the teaching of Darwinism of destroying faith in god and the bible, while contributing to the moral breakdown of the youth. • 3 southern states (bible belt south) prohibited teaching evolution. • Included Tennessee, where evangelicalism was strong.
“monkey trial” • John t. scopes was accused of teaching evolution. • William Jennings Bryan joined the prosecution. • Zealous Presbyterian fundamentalist. • Looked foolish by famed criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. • Scopes was found guilty and fined $100.
Prosperity in the economy • War and treasury secretary Andrew Mellon's tax policies favored capital investment. • Ingenious machines increased productivity of labor. • Powered by cheap energy from oil fields. • Assembly-line production reached perfection in henry ford’s rouge river plant that finished automobiles every 10 seconds.
New industries • Electrical power for new machines. • Automobiles became the carriage of the common American. • By 1930 Americans owned almost 30 million cars.
advertising • Founder of this new profession was Bruce Barton. • Published the man nobody knows in 1925. • Provocative thesis that Jesus Christ was the greatest adman of all time.
Sports became big business • Fans bought many baseball tickets that George h. (“babe”) Ruth's park, Yankee stadium, became known as “the house that Ruth built”. • In 1921 heavyweight champion, jack Dempsey, knocked out Georges carpentier. • Attendance had paid more than $1 million. • First of million-dollar “gates” in 1920s.
