Chapter 23: The Twenties
Chapter 31: American Life in the “Roaring Twenties”, 1919 - 1929
p. 720 – 745
Postwar Prosperity and its Price
- enormous increase in the efficiency of production, a steady climb in real wages, a decline in the length of the average employees workweek, and a boom in consumer goods industries
- postwar prosperity was unevenly distributed
The Second Industrial Revolution
- Technological innovations – increase in industrial output w/out expanding the labor force
o Electricity replaced steam
o Older machinery replaced with more efficient and flexible electric machinery
o In 1914 – 30% of nations factories electrified; 1929 – 70%
- Electric Machinery
o Could be operated by unskilled workers
o Employed more workers than any other manufacturing sector
o Supplied 35% of the world market
- Mass Production
o Pioneered by machine tools, RR’s, iron, and steel (durable goods)
o 1920’s – automobiles, radios, washing machines, telephones (large profits at affordable prices)
o other industries – canning, chemicals, synthetics, plastics (consumables)
o doubling of production in the 1920’s
▪ more efficient management
▪ greater mechanization
▪ intensive product research
▪ new sales and advertising methods
- Construction industry boom
o Residential, business, and public projects
o Suburb expansion – growth in car ownership and mass transit
o Commercial banks, S & L’s, and insurance
o Residential debt rose from $8billion in 1919 to $27 billion in 1929
The Modern Corporation
- 1920’s – Managerial Revolution – divorce ownership of corporate stock from the everyday control of business
o salaried executives, plant managers, and engineers made corporate policy without themselves having a controlling interest in the companies
o use scientific management and latest theories of behavioral psychology to make workplaces more productive, stable, profitable
- Transformation from industrial use to consumer goods
o Integration of production and distribution
o Product diversification
o Expansion of industrial research
o DuPont – transformed from chemical manufacturer (gunpowder) to paints, fabrics, dyes, sponges
o GE and Westinghouse – transformed from lighting and power to household appliances (radios, washing machines, refrigerators)
- Oligopoly – control of a market by a few large producers
o 1929 – 200 largest corporations owned nearly ½ the nations corporate wealth (physical plant, stock,, property)
o 1929 – 100 largest corporations owned ½ the total industrial income (revenue from sales of goods)
▪ 4 companies rolled 9 of every 10 cigarettes
▪ 1 grocery chain (A&P) accounted for 10% of all retail food sales
Welfare Capitalism
- challenge the appeal of labor unions by promoting programs designed to improve worker well being and morale
o encourage workers to acquire property through stock-purchase plans – 1927 – 800k employees had more than $1 billion invested in more than 300 companies
o insurance policies covering accidents, illness, old age, and death – 1928 – 6 million workers had group insurance coverage valued at $7.5 billion
o improvement in safety conditions, medical services, and sports and recreation programs
- problems continuesd to give sympathy to unions – seasonal unemployment, low wages, long hours, and unhealthy factory conditions
- Anti-Union campaigns – “The American Plan”
o Open shop – no employee could be compelled to join a union; iif a union existed, nonmembers would still get whatever wages and rights the union had won
o Union shop – new employees had to join an existing union
o Closed shop – employers agreed to hire only union members
o Company unions were established to substitute largely symbolic employee representation in management conferences for the more confrontational process of collective bargaining
- Decline in union membership
o Dropped from about 5 million in 1920 to 3.5 million in 1926
o Samuel Gompers died in 1924, replaced by William Green – more conservative, showed no real interest in getting unorganized workers, such as those in the growing mass production industries of cars, steel, and electrical goods into unions
o Federal gov’t reverted to a more probusiness posture
o Supreme Court consistently upheld the use of injunctions to prevent strikes, picketing, and other union activities
The Auto Age
- 1920’s – US made 85% of all the worlds passenger cars; 30 million by 1929
- Henry Ford
o Continuous assembly line
o 1914 – Highland Park plant – Michigan
o 1925 – 1 car produced every 10 seconds
o 1914 - $5 for an 8 hour day – new wage scale (workers as consumers helped boost sales of Ford cars); reduced high turnover rate and increased worker efficiency
o Labor force – 2/3 were immigrants from S and E Europe; Ford employed about 5000 African Americans, more than any other large US corporation
o Model T – cost just under $300 in 1924 (3 months wages); good compared to today
- General Motors and Alfred P. Sloan
o Ford’s major competition
o 3 separate divisions, each appealing to a different market
▪ Cadillac – wealthy buyer; Oldsmobile – middle; Chevrolet – working, lower middle
- matched production with demand through sophisticated market research and sales forecasting, becomes the model for large US corporations
- Effects of the auto industry
o Large market for makers of steel, rubber, glass, petroleum
o Stimulated public spending for roads, and extended the housing boom in the suburbs
o Showrooms, repair shops, and gas stations
o Motels, billboard advertising, roadside diners
o Rapid development of FL and CA
o Shopping in nearby cities and vacation (made leisure a more regular part of everyday life)
o Changed courtship patterns of America’s youth – privacy and distance from their parents
o Growth of urban population
Cities and Suburbs
- 1920 – first census in which urban population exceeded rural areas
- Steady increase in the number of big cities
o 1910 – 60 cities with more than 100k
o 1920 – 68 cities over 100k
o 1930 – 92 cities over 100k
o NYC – 7 million – 20% growth in the 1920’s
o Detroit – “The Motor City” – 2 million people – 100% growth in the 20’s
- Causes
o Job opportunities
o Immigrants – attracted by established ethnic communities
o African Americans – continuation of the Great Migration
- Vertical and Horizontal Growth
o 1930 – more than 400 buildings over 20 stories
o 1931 – Empire State Building – 1250 feet; 25k commercial and residential tenants
o Houston – demand for petroleum increased size from 75k in 1910 to 300k in 1920 – auto, cheap land, and the absence of zoning ordinances; decentralized, low densit city, sprawling miles in each direction
o Other sunbelt cities – LA, Miami, San Diego
- Suburban cities – grew at twice the rate of their core cities; residential heighborhoods, and encouraged the movement of workplaces out of the central city
Exceptions: Agriculture, Ailing Industries
- 1920’s – ¼ of all US workers employed in agriculture
o 1914-19 – golden age of nations farmers (record prices for food)
▪ increased wartime demand
▪ devastation of European agriculture
▪ food administration policies encouraged production
o 1920 – prices began to drop
▪ cotton fell from 37 cents a pound to 14 cents a pound
▪ hog and cattle prices declined nearly 50%
▪ land values dropped, wiping out billions in capital investment
▪ personal tragedies
o heavy debt from wartime borrowing (land and machinery)
▪ 1910 – mortgages totaled $3.3 billion
▪ 1920 – totaled $6.7 billion
▪ 1925 – totaled $9.4 billion
o increased competition from European farmers, and expanding output in Canada, Argentina, and Australia
- South – “King Cotton”
o Most farms were one/two mile farms on less that 50 acres
o Least diversified and poorest of the regions
o Average S farm had land and buildings worth $3525
o Average N farm had land and buildings worth $11,029
o Editors, state officials, and reformers preached the need for greater variety of crops, but S farmers actually raised less corn and livestock by the end of the decade
o White tenant famrers increased by 200k while black tenantry declined due to the Great Migration
o 700k southerners labored as share croppers
o modern conveniences – electric, indoor plumbing, cars – remained beyond the reach of the great majority of S farmers
- Wheat farmers
o Production jumped more than 300%
o Mechanized farms created a new class of wheat entrepreneurs on the plains
o Long range ecological impact of destroying so much native vegetation became evident in the dust storms of the 1930’s
- Improved transportation and chain supermarkets – citrus, dairy, and truck farmers profited from the growing importance of national markets
- Growing disparity b/t farm workers and industrial workers
o 1929 – avg income per person was only $223 for farmers but $870 for nonfarm workers
o 1930 – 42% of all farmers were tenants as compared to only 37% in 1919
- Farm Relief initiatives
o 1927 McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bills – designed to prop up and stabilize farm prices – gov’t would purchase farm surpluses and either store them until prices rose or sell them on the world market
o vetoed by Pres Coolidge as unwarranted federal interference in the economy
- Coal Mines – decreased in importance as oil and natural gas production expanded
o Labor force reduced by ¼ - lower demand, new mining technology, series of losing labor strikes
o United Mine Workers – strongest union in the AFL in 1920 shrunk from 500k to 75k in 1928
o Economic hardship, especially in Appalachia and the southern Midwest
- Railroads – number of miles of track actually decreased as cars and trucks began to displace trains
- Textiles – shrinking demand and overcapacity
o Women’s fashions of the 1920’s required less material
o Competition from synthetic fibers (rayon) depressed demand for cotton
o Textile shops in New England switched production to the South where nonunion shops and substandard wages became the rule
o B/t 1923-1933, 40% of New England’s textile factories closed and nearly 100k lost their jobs
o Center of the American textile industry shifted permanently to the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina
▪ By 1933 the Carolinas employed nearly 70% of textile workers
▪ Operated night/day, used newest labor saving machinery, and cut back on the wage gains of WWI
The New Mass Culture
- The “Roaring Twenties” – image and sound making machinery that came to dominate American life: movies, radio, new kinds of journalism, the recording industry and a more sophisticated advertising industry led to the emergence of clelbrity as a defining element
- Media established national standards and norms for much of our culture – habit, dress, language, sounds, social behavior: “The good life”
Movie-Made America
- early movie industry – centered in NY
o 1914 – 18k movie houses, nickelodeons; 7 million daily admissions and $300 million in annual revenues
o most movies were short
o studios – made longer, more expensive movies called “features”
▪ Paramount, Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Universal, Warner Brothers
- The Studio System
o Each studio combined the 3 functions of production, distribution and exhibition
o Each controlled hundreds of movie theaters around the country
- New Genres
o End of silent films – The Jazz Singer – 1927 – first talking picture
o Musicals, gangster films, and screwball comedies
o Higher costs associated with “talkies” increased the studios reliance on Wall Street investors and banks for working capital
- Star system, and cult of celebrity
- Movie Palaces – the Roxy Theater (midtown Manhattan)
- Public Image
o Permissiveness associated with Hollywood life led to states creating censorship boards to screen movies before allowing them to be shown in theaters
o Hollywood studies began to censor themselves
- Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (Will Hays
- Will Hays, Indiana Republican and elder in the Presbyterian Church personified Protestant respectability
- Radio Broadcasting
o Westinghouse and KDKA (Pittsburgh)
▪ Presidential election returns in Nov 1920 – beginning of nightly broadcasts
▪ By 1923, 600 stations had been licensed by the Dept of Commerce and about 600k Americans had purchased radios
▪ By 1930, 12 million homes (40%) had radios
o commercial (toll) broadcasting – dominant operators (GE, Westinghouse, RCA, and AT&T) settled on the idea that advertisers should foot the bill for radio
- Radio Networks – National Broadcasting Company (1926); Columbia Broadcasting System (1928)
- Popular Shows
o Variety shows – hosted by vaudeville comedians – Amos and Andy Show (1928) was direct descendant of “blackface” minstrel entertainment
o Commercialized previously isolated forms of American music, Blues and Jazz
o Baseball Games
- helped shape broadcasting in both Canada and Mexico – amplified American commercialism throughout the hemisphere
New Forms of Journalism – The Tabloid
- New York Daily News, founded by Joseph M. Patterson
o Folded in half page size – convenient to read on subways and buses
o Devoted much of its space to photographs and other illustrations
o Terse, lively reporting style that emphasized sex, scandal, and sports
o Circulation of 400k by 1922 and 1.3 million by 1929
o Adopted across America
o Did not effect the circulation of existing papers
▪ Discovered an audience of millions who had never read newspapers before
▪ Most readers were poorly educated working class city dwellers, especially immigrants
- The gossip column
o Walter Winchell – former vaudevillian; distinctive, rapid-fire, slangy style
o Scores of newspapers “syndicated” his column, making him the most widely read journalist in America
- Consolidation and mergers
o The Hearst Group
▪ 1930’s – 26 dailies in 18 cities, accounting for 14% of the nations newspaper circulation
▪ 1:4 papers sold on Sunday was controlled by Hearst
▪ contributed to a national consumer community
- Advertising Modernity
o Before the 1920’s
▪ Confined mostly to staid newspapers and magazines
▪ Offered little more than basic product information
▪ Total advertising volume in all media increased from $1.4 billion in 1919 to $3billion in 1929
- Market Research – reflected and encouraged the growing importance of consumer goods
o Utilized psychology – focusing on the needs, desires, and anxieties of the consumer rather than on the qualities of the product
o Made Fleischmann’s, Kleenex, and Listerine household names
o Celebrated consumption itself as a positive good
The Phonograph and the Recording Industry
- originally marketed in the 1890’s using cylinders, but quality was poor
- transformed the music business – records introduced in WWI; quality of sound was greatly improved; replaced sheet music as major source of music in the home
o Other effects:
▪ Dance crazes – fox trot, tango, grizzly bear
▪ Dixieland Jazz became very popular
▪ 1921 – more than 200 companies produced some 2 million records with annual sales exceeding $100 million
▪ discovered lucrative regional and ethnic markets
▪ record sales began to decline at the end of the decade due to radio, but the combination of both started a cross fertilization of American music styles
Sports and Celebrity
- image of the modern athlete – rich, famous, glamorous, and often a rebel against social convention came into being in the 20’s
- Major League Baseball
o George Herman “Babe” Ruth – The Sultan of Swat
o Attendance reached 10 million in 1929
▪ Urban newspapers increased their baseball coverage (sports sections)
▪ William K. Wrigley (Chicago) used radio broadcasts to win fans
o Supreme Court exempted baseball from antitrust protection (1922) ruling it was not “trade or commerce in the commonly accepted use of those words”; ensured control of owners over their players
o Excluded African Americans, who were banned by an 1890’s “gentlemen’s agreement” among the owners
▪ Negro National League (1920)
- College Football
o Illinois’s Harold E. “Red” Grange and Stanford’s Ernie Nevers
o Knute Rockne, and the “Four Horsemen of Notre Dame” backfield
o Big money in college football shifted emphasis from Ivy League to the Midwest and Pacific
o Most start were second generation Irish, Italians, and Slavs
- Other Sports
o Boxing – Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney
o Tennis – Bill Tilden and Helen Wills
o Swimming – Gertrude Ederle and Johnny Weismuller
A New Morality?
- The Flapper
o Usually portrayed on screen, in novels, and in the press as a young, sexually aggressive woman with bobbed hair, rouged cheeks and short skirt
o Loved to dance to jazz music, enjoyed smoking cigarettes, and drank bootleg liquor in cabarets and dance halls
o Neither as new nor as widespread a phenomenon as the image suggests
o What was new was that it spread to middle class whites and colleges
- Causes:
o Troops in WWI were exposed to gov’t sex education
o New psychological theories (Ellis, Key, Freud) stressed the central role of sexuality
o Pioneering efforts of Margaret Sanger in educating women about birth control
o Advertisers routinely used sex appeal to sell products
o Tabloids exploited sex to sell papers
o Movies featured powerful sex symbols such as Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, John Gilbert, and Clara Bow
o Women born after the turn of the century were twice as likely to have had premarital sex as those born before 1900 (68% as compared to 26%)
The State, the Economy, and Business
- Republican party dominated national politics
Harding and Coolidge
- Warren Harding – Ohio
o Compromise candidate
o Shallow and intellectually weak
o “The Ohio Gang” – close circle of friends and advisors
- Scandals:
o To Kansas journalist William Allen White, Harding once quipped “…this is a hell of a job! I have no trouble with my enemies…but my damned friends…”
o Senate investigations (attorney general Harry M. Daugherty)
▪ Received bribes from violators of the Prohibition laws
▪ Failed to investigate graft in the Vets Bureau, where Charles R. Forbes had pocketed a large chunk of the $250 million spent on hospitals
▪ Teapot Dome Scandal (Interior Secretary Albert Fall) – Fall received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs when he secretly leased navy oil reserves in Teapot Dome, WY and Elks Hills, CA to 2 private oil developers
- Sec of Treasury Andrew Mellon
o Pittsburgh banker and a leading investor in the Aluminum Corporation of America
o Believed gov’t should be run on the same principles as a corporation
o Leading voice for trimming the fed budget and cutting taxes on invomes, corporate profits, and inheritances
o Succeeded in rolling back much of the progressive taxation of Wilson
- Calvin Coolidge
o Succeeded to presidency in 1923 when Harding died of heart attack
o “Silent Cal” taciturn, genteel, completely honest
o “The business of America is business”
o defeated Democrat candidate John W. Davis and Progressive Robert M. LaFollette in 1924
o dedicated his terms to reducing federal spending, lowering taxes, and blocking congressional initiatives
o believed American businesses were the agents of the era’s unprecedented prosperity
- Herbert Hoover and the “Associative State”
o Sec of Commerce Herbert Hoover
▪ Believed enlightened business, encouraged and informed by the gov’t would act in the public interest
o The Associative State – The Dept of Commerce
▪ Gov’t would encourage voluntary cooperation among corporations, consumers, workers, farmers, and small businessmen
▪ The Bureau of Standards became one of the leading research centers, setting engineering standards for key American industries such as machine tools and autos
▪ The Bureau of Standards also helped standardize the styles, sizes, and designs of many consumer products such as canned goods and refrigerators
o actively encouraged the creation and expansion of national trade associations
▪ encouraged mutual cooperation in figuring prices and costs and then publishing the info
▪ idea was to improve efficiency by reducing competition
▪ 1920’s Justice Department Antitrust Division took a lax view
▪ Supreme Court consistently upheld the legality of trade associations
▪ Presidential appointments to regulatory commissions – men worked for the very firms the commissions had been designed to supervise – industry leaders brought technical expertise, but also conflict of interest
- Concentration of corporate wealth and power
o 1929 – the 200 largest corporations owned ½ total corporate wealth and about 1/5 of the total national wealth
o concentration was particularly strong in manufacturing, retailing, mining, banking, and utilities
o vertical integration was common
War Debts, Reparations and Keeping the Peace
- WWI transformed the US from the world’s leading debtor to its largest creditor
o European countries owed the US $10 billion I 1919
o WWI started a trend which expanded US investment abroad
o NY replaced London as the center of international finance and capital markets
- War Debts and France/Britain
o France and GB resented that the US did not forgive the debt
o 1922 – US Foreign Debt Commission negotiated an agreement with the debtor nations that called for them to repay $11.5 billion over a 62 year period
o late 1920’s – European financial situation had become so desperate that the US agreed to cancel a large part of these debts
o continued insistence by the US that the Europeans pay at least a portion of the debt fed anti-American feeling in Europe and isolationism at home
- War reparations and the Dawes Plan
o Germans were saddled with such massive debt that they did not have the means to repay it
o 1924 – the Dawes Plan – Hoover and Chicago banker Charles Dawes worked out a plan to aid the recovery of the German economy – reduced Germany’s debt, stretched out the repayment period, and arranged for American bankers to lend funds to Germany
o Measures helped stabilize Germany’s currency and allowed it to make reparations payments to France/GB, which enabled them to better pay their war debts to the US
- The Washington Naval Conference (1921) and Treaty (1922)
o 1921 – Sec of State Charles Evans Hughes – initiative on arms limitations w/ Great Britain, Japan, Italy, France, and China
o set ratios for tonnage based upon areas of responsibility – Pacific, Atlantic, Mediterranean: US (5), GB (5), Japan (3), Italy (1)
o 10 year moratorium on the construction of new battleships and cruisers, and limits on tonnage
o Japanese and Italians later complained about the limitations and abandoned the treaty
- Other international involvement
o US joined the World Court in 1926
o US signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact – renounced the principle of war by outlawing it
▪ Lacked powers of enforcement and relied solely on the moral force of world opinion
▪ Within weeks of its ratification the US Congress appropriated $250 million for new battleships
Commerce and Foreign Policy
- Sec of State Charles Evans Hughes
o US should seek “to establish a Pax Americana maintained not by arms but by mutual respect and good will and the tranquilizing processes of reason”
o Belief that US’s economic wealth – not military or political power could help create a new and prosperous international system free of the rivalries that had led to WWI
- Foreign Investment
o R leaders urged close cooperation b/t bankers and the gov’t as a strategy for expanding American investment and economic influence
o Investments in the Soviet Union and on non-productive enterprises such as munitions and weapons were strongly discouraged
o Investment bankers routinely submitted loan projects to Highes and Sec of Commerce Hoover for approval
- Growing World Market
o Oil, cars, farm machinery, and electrical equipment
o Direct investment abroad increased from $3.8 billion in 1919 to $7.5 billion in 1929
- Latin America
o US investment led to single commodity economies
▪ Chile – copper; Venezuela – oil; Guetemala – bananas
o negotiated a resolution to disputes w/ Mexico over oil and mining
o hampered the growth of democratic gov’t by favoring autocratic military regimes that could protect American interests
Resistance to Modernity
- Postwar Red Scare gave strength to the forces of antiradicalism in politics and traditionalism in politics and traditionalism in culture
- Resentments over the growing power of urban culture were very strong in rural and small-town Amercia
- Prohibition
o 18th Amend – banned the manufacture, sale, and transporation of alcoholic beverages – Jan 1920
o Supporters – “Drys” – women’s temperance groups; middle class progressives; rural protestants
o Volstead Act – 1919 – established a federal Prohibition Bureau to enforce the 18th – severely understaffed, only 1500 agents in entire country
o Opposition – “Wets” – big cities; bootlegging; illegal stills and breweries; “Speakeasy” – local law enforcement bribed
- Effects
o Organized crime: Al “Scarface” Capone – “Everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a businessman. When I sell liquor its bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, its hospitality”
o Consumption decreased from 2.6 gallons per person in 1920 to less than a gallon in 1934 (high price)
- Immigration Restriction
o 1891-1920 – 10.5 million immigrants from S and E Europe
o mostly catholic and Jewish
o darker skin, poorer, less willing and able to assimilate to the nations political and cultural values
o Immigration Restriction League – founded in 1894 by prominent Harvard grads Henry Cabor Lodge and John Fiske
o Contributing Factors
▪ Eugenics – pseudoscientific thinking sought to explain historical and social development solely as a function of racial differences
▪ 100% American fervor of WWI
▪ Red Scare of 1919-20
▪ Postwar depression brought massive immigration and job competition; AFL proposed stopping all immigration for 2 years
▪ Sensational press coverage of organized crime figures
- Immigration Act of 1921 – set max of 375k/year; immigration from Europe limited to 3% of natives counted in 1910 census
- Johnson – Reed Immigration Act 1924
o Revised quotas to 2% counted for each nationality in the 1890 census
o Max total was cut to 164k
o Quotas did not apply to any countries in the west hemisphere
The Ku Klux Klan
- original Klan died out in the 1870’s and was limited to Georgia and Alabama
- Hiram W. Evans – Imperial Wizard (1922)
o Transformed the KKK using modern organization practices
o 100% American and “the faithful maintenance of white supremacy”
o 3 million members by 1924, including President Harding
o Strongest in S and Midwest
o Strong presence at the Democratic National Convention in 1924
- support for prohibition enforcement was the single most important issue – strong support among women; hosted spectacular social events aimed at reinvigorating community life
- began to decline in 1925
o Indiana Grand Dragon became involved in a sordid affair; wrangling among Klan leaders
o Success of immigration restriction
o General economic prosperity
Religious Fundamentalism
- literal interpretation of the Bible, rejecting the tenets of modern science as inconsistent with the revealed word of God
- The Scopes Trial “Monkey Trial” – 1925
o 5 southern states passed laws restricting the teaching of evolution
o John T. Scopes deliberately broke the law, teaching evolution in Tenn
o Defense team – ACLU and Clarence Darrow
o Prosecution – William Jennings Bryan
o Trial – Darrow denied the right to call scientists to testify, so put Bryan on the stand as an expert on the Bible (Bryan dies a week after trial)
o Scopes found guilty, although verdict later thrown out
o State laws continued, but prosecution for teaching evolution ceased
Feminism in Transition
- League of Women Voters, founded 1920
o Reorganized from the National American Woman Suffrage Assoc
o Mainstream of the suffrage movement; politicized domesticity
o Worked to educate the new female electorate, encourage women to run for office and support laws for the protection of women and children
- National Woman’s Party – 1916
o Militant suffragists (Alice Paul)
o Opposed protective legislation for women, claiming such laws reinforced stereotypes
o Focused on passage of and Equal Rights Amendment
▪ Introduced in Congress in 1923: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the US and every place subject to its jurisdiction”
▪ Resisted by the older generation of women reformers b/c it would wipe out legal protections earned previously
▪ Effort to pass ERA defeated in Congress; more women’s groups opposed it than supported it
- Gains made by women
o Amelia Earhart – 1928 trans-Atlantic flight
o Anne O’Hare McCormick – first lady of American journalism
o Sheppard Towner Act – 1921
▪ Estab the first federally funded health care program providing matching funds for states to set up prenatal and child health care centers
▪ Opposed by the AMA who objected to gov’t sponsored health care, and to nurses who functioned outside the supervision of Dr’s
Mexican Immigration
- Mexicans not included in the 1921 and 1924 immigration laws
- 459k entered the US b/t 21-30
- tremendous agricultural pull in the American southwest
- more permanent than previous waves
- mostly confined to barrios
- attempts to limit immigration were defeated by powerful agribusiness
The “New Negro” – Harlem
- population of about 200k African Americans; 120k from immigration in the 1920’s
- demographic and cultural capital of black America
- Caribbean’s made up about ¼ of Harlem’s population
- Slum conditions – overcrowded apartments, unsanitary conditions and the rapid deterioration of housing
- Middle class population
o Intellectuals, artists, musicians, and writers
o “The New Negro” – Alain Locke – optimistic faith that encouraged African Americans to develop and celebrate their distinctive culture
o Politics – Marcus Garvey – created a mass movement that stressed black economic self-determination and unity among the black communities of the US, Caribbean, and Africa
o Entertainment – The Cotton Club – nightclub controlled by white organized crime
▪ Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong
▪ Black entertainment, but only whites in audience
The Election of 1928
- D’s – Alfred Smith – strong in S
o Former NY governor; ran a pro-business, conservative campaign
o D’s remained regionally divided over prohibition, Smith’s religion, and the widening split b/t rural and urban values
- R’s – Herbert Hoover
o One of the best known men in America
o Ran on the theme of continued prosperity and individualism
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