Para 1 - Cengage



CHAPTER 23

Prosperity Decade, 1920-1928

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After you read and analyze this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Explain how the economic changes of the 1920s transformed older expectations, removed former constraints, and opened new choices to consumers.

2. Tell how new expectations and choices reflected or contributed to the important social changes of the period.

3. Discuss how some Americans tried to restore traditional social expectations and values during the 1920s and describe the outcomes of their efforts.

4. Evaluate the expectations and constraints based on race and gender during the 1920s.

5. Describe the expectations of the Republican administrations of the 1920s and their resulting policy choices.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Prosperity Decade

A. The Economics of Prosperity

1. The end of World War I brought cancellation of orders for war supplies, and, at the same time, large numbers of recently discharged military and naval personnel swelled the ranks of job seekers.

2. Such postwar conditions have often brought on recession or depression, but there was no immediate economic collapse after World War I.

a) Pent-up demand resulting from wartime shortages and overtime pay caused American consumers to be eager to spend.

b) This delayed the postwar slump until 1920 and 1921.

3. The economy quickly rebounded after 1921.

a) The GNP increased by 16 percent between 1921 and 1922, a bigger jump than during the booming war years.

4. Declining prices for agricultural products brought lower prices for food and clothing.

a) Thus, many Americans seemed better off by 1929 than in 1920.

B. Targeting Consumers

1. Persuading Americans to consume an array of products became crucial to keeping the economy healthy.

a) The marketing of Listerine demonstrates the rising importance of creative advertising.

b) The General Foods Company invented Betty Crocker in 1921 to give its baking products a womanly, domestic image.

2. Changes in fashion also increased consumption and, therefore, economic growth.

a) Cigarettes became more fashionable after World War I, as soldiers had found them easier to carry and smoke than pipes or cigars.

b) Style and technology combined to invent disposable products, thereby promoting regular, recurring consumer buying of throw-away items.

3. Technological advances contributed in other ways to the growth of consumer-oriented manufacturing.

a) As the number of residences with electricity increased, advertisers stressed the time and labor that housewives could save by using electrical appliances.

4. Increased consumption contributed to a change in people’s spending habits.

a) In the 1920s, many retailers adopted the installment plan: “Buy now, pay later.”

b) Charge accounts in department stores also became popular, and finance companies grew rapidly.

C. The Automobile: Driving the Economy

1. The automobile, more than any other single product, epitomized the consumer-oriented economy of the 1920s.

2. Henry Ford scored the greatest success by developing a mass-production system that drove down production costs.

a) By the late 1920s, America’s roadways sported nearly one automobile for every five people.

3. Ford’s company also provides an example of efforts by American businesses to reduce labor costs by improving labor efficiency.

4. The automobile industry in the 1920s often led the way in promoting new sales techniques.

a) By 1927, two-thirds of all American automobiles were sold on credit.

D. Changes in Banking and Business

1. A. P. Giannini significantly broadened the base of banking by encouraging working people to open small checking and savings accounts and to borrow for such investments as car purchases.

2. Although the number of corporations increased steadily, a great corporate merger wave also accelerated as the 1920s progressed.

3. Business giants like Henry Ford emerged as popular and respected figures and were widely viewed as socially responsible trustees of the public interest.

E. “Get Rich Quick”: The Speculative Mania

1. Stock market speculating—buying a stock and expecting to make money by selling it at a higher price—ran rampant as more people saw the stock market as a certain route to riches.

2. Just as Americans bought their cars and radios on the installment plan, some also bought stock on credit—this was called buying on the margin.

3. Driven partly by real economic growth and partly by speculation, stock prices rose higher and higher.

4. Operating companies depended upon stock dividends, and any interruption in their disbursement of dividends was likely to bring the collapse of the entire network, swallowing up the investment of speculators.

5. Other speculative opportunities abounded.

a) The mania of the Florida land boom was fed by rapid growth in the population of the state.

F. Agriculture: Depression in the Midst of Prosperity

1. Prosperity never extended to agriculture, since many farmers did not recover from the postwar recession and struggled to survive financially throughout the 1920s.

2. Many had expanded their operations during the war in response to government demands for more food.

3. After the war, as European farmers resumed production and American production increased, the glut of agricultural goods on world markets caused prices to fall.

a) Prices fell as a consequence of this overproduction; corn and wheat sold for about half their wartime prices.

4. Although farm income fell, farmers’ mortgage payments more than doubled from prewar levels, partly because of debts incurred to expand production during the war.

5. Throughout the 1920s, farmers pressed the government for help.

a) A congressional Farm Bloc promoted legislation to assist farmers.

b) Legislative efforts did not staunch the hemorrhaging of the farm economy.

II. The “Roaring Twenties”

A. Putting a People on Wheels: The Automobile and American Life

1. During the 1920s, the automobile profoundly changed American patterns of living.

a) Highways significantly shortened the traveling time from cities to rural areas, thereby reducing the isolation of farm life.

b) Trucks allowed farmers to take products to market more quickly and conveniently than ever before.

c) The spread of gasoline-powered farm vehicles also reduced the need for human farm labor and so stimulated migration to urban areas.

d) If the automobile changed rural life, it had an even more profound impact on life in the cities; suburbs mushroomed, for example.

B. Los Angeles: Automobile Metropolis

1. Los Angeles was the fastest growing major city of the early twentieth century.

2. By 1925, Los Angeles had one automobile for every three people, almost twice the national average.

C. A Homogenized Culture Searches for Heroes

1. Restrictive immigration laws were closing the door to immigrants from abroad.

2. Together with the new technologies of radio and film, the automobile and restrictive immigration laws began to homogenize the culture.

3. Radio and film joined newspapers and magazines—the media—in prompting national trends and fashions as Americans pursued one fad after another.

a) Such fads, in turn, created markets for newfangled consumer goods.

4. The media also contributed to the development of national sports heroes.

5. The rapid spread of movie theaters created a new category of fame—the movie star.

D. Alienated Intellectuals

1. Some Americans went to Paris and other European cities in the 1920s to escape what they considered America’s dull conventionalism and dangerous materialism.

2. American writers bemoaned what they saw as the shallowness, greed, and homogenization of American life.

a) Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, and H. L. Mencken were among these critics.

3. Other writers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, expressed a rejection of traditional values, disillusionment with postwar society, and a search for self.

E. Renaissance among African Americans

1. A striking outpouring of literature, music, and art flowed from African Americans in the 1920s.

2. Harlem emerged as a large, predominantly black neighborhood in New York City and quickly became a symbol of the new, urban life of African Americans.

3. The term Harlem Renaissance describes a literary and artistic movement in which black artists and writers insisted on the value of black culture and used African and African American traditions to shape an abundance of literature, painting, and sculpture.

a) Among the movement’s poets, Langston Hughes became the best known.

4. The Renaissance included jazz, which was becoming a central element in distinctly American music.

F. “Flaming Youth”

1. The stereotype of flaming youth reflected striking changes among many white college-age youths of middle- and upper-class backgrounds.

2. The prosperity of the 1920s allowed many middle-class families to send their children to college.

3. Some young women, called flappers, scandalized their elders by wearing skirts that stopped at the knee, short hair, and generous amounts of rouge and lipstick.

a) Women’s sexual activity outside marriage had begun to increase before the war, especially among working-class women and radicals.

b) Such changes in behavior were often linked to the automobile.

III. Traditional America Roars Back

A. Prohibition

1. In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages.

2. Many Americans simply ignored the Eighteenth Amendment from the beginning, and it grew less popular the longer it lasted.

3. Prohibition did reduce drinking, and it apparently produced a decline in drunkenness and in the number of deaths from alcoholism, but it also produced unintended consequences such as speakeasies and bootlegging.

a) In the cities, the high demand for alcohol provided criminals with a fresh and lucrative source of income, part of which they used to buy influence in city politics, protection from police, fast cars, and submachine guns.

B. Fundamentalism and the Crusade against Evolution

1. Another effort to maintain traditional values came with the growth of fundamentalism, which emerged from a conflict between Christian modernism and orthodoxy.

2. Fundamentalists rejected anything incompatible with a literal reading of the Scriptures and argued that the Bible’s every word is the revealed word of God.

3. In the early 1920s, some fundamentalists focused especially on evolution as contrary to the Bible; this controversy resulted in the Scopes trial.

C. Nativism and Immigration Restriction

1. Laws designed to restrict immigration resulted in major part from nativist antagonism against immigrants, especially those who did not appear to assimilate as readily as earlier immigrants had.

2. The National Origins Act of 1924 limited total immigration to 150,000 people each year, with quotas for each country in an attempt to freeze the ethnic composition of the nation.

D. The Ku Klux Klan

1. Nativism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and fear of radicalism all contributed to the spectacular growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s as it declared itself to be the defender of old-fashioned Protestant morality.

IV. Patterns of Ethnicity, Race, and Gender

A. Ethnicity and Race: North, South, and West

1. Race relations changed little during the 1920s, and terror against African Americans continued, as well as discrimination against other minority groups.

B. Beginnings of Change in Federal Indian Policy

1. Resistance to the previous allotment and assimilationist policies laid the basis for a significant shift in federal policy in the 1920s.

a) John Collier and the American Indian Defense Association led the way.

C. Mexicans in California and the Southwest

1. Revolution in Mexico increased the number of Mexicans moving north across the border, especially in southern California and Texas.

2. Efforts to organize and strike for better pay and working conditions often sparked violent opposition.

D. Labor on the Defensive

1. There were difficulties in establishing unions among workers during the 1920s, especially in the face of many companies’ anti-union drives.

E. Changes in Women’s Lives

1. Significant changes occurred in two areas of women’s lives during the 1920s: the size and structure of the family and politics.

a) Birth control became more widely recognized and available.

b) The Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised women over the age of 21.

F. Emergence of a Gay and Lesbian Subculture

1. An identifiable gay and lesbian subculture emerged, especially in cities.

V. The Politics of Prosperity

A. Harding’s Failed Presidency

1. Harding gave hundreds of government jobs to his cronies and political supporters, who betrayed his trust and turned his administration into one of the most corrupt in history, including the Teapot Dome scandal.

B. The Three-Way Election of 1924

1. The Republicans nominated Coolidge, who had become president upon Harding’s death, while the Democrats nominated John W. Davis, a compromise candidate, and the Progressives nominated Robert M. La Follette.

2. Coolidge won with nearly 16 million votes and 54 percent of the total, as voters seemed to champion the status quo.

C. The Politics of Business

1. Having once announced that, “the business of America is business,” Coolidge believed that the free market and free operation of business leadership would best sustain economic prosperity for all.

a) Coolidge cut federal spending and staffed Washington’s agencies with people who shared his distaste for government.

D. The 1928 Campaign and the Election of Hoover

1. Coolidge’s announcement not to run surprised many, while Hoover’s candidacy sounded the theme of American prosperity.

2. The Democrats nominated Al Smith, and the Republicans made him the main issue of the campaign by attacking his religion and his big-city connections.

3. Hoover won easily with 58 percent of the popular vote.

a) Hoover believed that the government should help those in need, not solve their problems.

VI. The Diplomacy of Prosperity

A. Diplomacy in the 1920s

1. Two realities shaped American foreign policy in the 1920s:

a) The rejection of Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism following World War I.

b) The continuing quest for economic expansion by American business.

2. President Harding dismissed any U.S. role in the League of Nations and refused the Treaty of Versailles.

a) Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes concluded separate peace treaties to end the U.S. role in World War I.

3. Hughes supported efforts by American banks and corporations to expand as a result of international economic changes caused by World War I.

a) American businesses had become the world’s major producers.

b) American businesses shaped the global economy by lending money.

4. Neither President Harding nor President Coolidge had any expertise or interest in foreign affairs and deferred making and implementing policy to their secretaries of state.

a) Their secretaries supported “independent internationalism”: avoiding political and international responsibilities while expanding economic opportunities overseas.

b) Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover also promoted American business abroad.

c) While successes in Asia and the Middle East were limited, efforts in Latin America and Europe were quite successful.

B. The United States and Latin America

1. The U.S. role in Latin America, especially Central America and the Caribbean, was influenced by the Monroe Doctrine, direct American investments, and control of the Panama Canal.

2. When necessary, the United States used direct armed intervention in the region.

a) In 1921, the United States had troops in Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua to ensure continued U.S. influence and order.

b) The United States maintained control over the nation’s finances and installed American-trained national guards as police forces.

c) U.S. troops left the Dominican Republic in 1924 and Haiti in 1934, leaving better roads, improved sanitary systems, governments favorable to the United States, and well-equipped national guards.

d) U.S. forces had not advanced the educational systems, national economies, or standards of living for most people.

3. In Nicaragua, the U.S. Marines had protected a conservative pro-American government since 1911, and, as they left, political turmoil and civil war broke out.

a) By mid-1926, Coolidge had reintroduced U.S. forces to protect the government and sent special envoy Stimson to negotiate a truce.

b) Nicaraguan leader Augusto Sandino rejected the treaty and carried on a guerrilla war against government and American forces.

c) Between 1932 and 1934, the United States withdrew, leaving a U.S.-trained national guard.

d) Somoza, the U.S.-supported leader, had Sandino murdered and then he remained in power until 1979, when the Sandinistas drove Somoza out of Nicaragua.

4. Elsewhere in Latin America, the 1920s saw U.S. commercial intervention in the region.

a) U.S. firms like the United Fruit Company purchased land in Central America.

b) U.S. oil companies obtained drilling rights in Venezuela and Colombia.

5. Oil also played a key role in U.S. relations with Mexico, since the 1917 Mexican Constitution nationalized Mexico’s subsurface resources.

a) Coolidge sent Dwight W. Morrow as the U.S. ambassador “to keep us out of war” since Morrow understood Mexican nationalism and pride.

b) Morrow reached a compromise with the Mexican government that reduced tensions and delayed nationalization.

C. America and the European Economy

1. World War I shattered most of Europe physically and economically, and the United States had become the world’s leading creditor nation.

a) The United States sought to expand its exports and reduce its imports.

b) High tariffs inched higher throughout the 1920s, including the 1922 Fordney-McCumber Tariff, which set high protective rates for industrial goods.

c) Through the Dawes Plan, U.S. bankers loaned $2.5 million to Germany so that it could repay the other European nations and they could repay the United States.

D. Encouraging International Cooperation

1. The Washington Conference on Naval Disarmament was an attempt to control naval buildups.

2. The Kellogg-Briand Pact (1929) renounced war “as an instrument of national policy.”

3. U.S. independent internationalism seemed to be a flourishing success.

a) Business investments and loans were fueling the world economy and American prosperity.

b) The United States was avoiding entangling alliances and protecting its presence in the Pacific.

c) The United States was promoting the idealism of world disarmament and peace, and in Latin America, it was moderating its interventionist image.

IDENTIFICATIONS

Identify the following items and explain the significance of each. While you should include any relevant historical terms, using your own words to write these definitions will help you better remember these items for your next exam.

1. Clara Bow

2. Scopes trial

3. evolution

4. “fundamentals”

5. “modernists”

6. ACLU

7. consumer goods

8. gross national product

9. automobile

10. bobby pin

11. finance company

12. Henry Ford

13. Model T

14. A. P. Giannini

15. bullish

16. speculative mania

17. operating company

18. overproduction

19. homogenize

20. vamp

21. Charles Lindbergh

22. expatriate

23. Sinclair Lewis

24. Harlem Renaissance

25. Paul Robeson

26. jazz

27. “flaming youth”

28. Marcus Garvey

29. black separatism

30. flapper

31. speakeasy

32. Prohibition

33. Eighteenth Amendment

34. repeal

35. bootlegging

36. Al Capone

37. racketeering

38. fundamentalism

39. National Origins Act

40. restrictive covenant

41. Ku Klux Klan

42. American Indian Defense Association

43. American Plan

44. welfare capitalism

45. American Communist Party

46. Nineteenth Amendment

47. Equal Rights Amendment

48. perversion

49. Sigmund Freud

50. subculture

51. Farm Bloc

52. Al Smith

53. McNary-Haugen Bill

54. Railway Labor Act of 1926

55. Calvin Coolidge

56. Herbert Hoover

57. isolationism

58. Peace of Titiapa

59. Augusto Sandino

60. Anastasio Somoza

61. nationalize

62. Fordney-McCumber Tariff

63. Ruhr Valley

64. Dawes Plan

65. Washington Naval Conference

66. capital ships

67. Nine-Power Pact

68. Kellogg-Briand Pact

69. signatory

70. William Jennings Bryan

Multiple-Choice Questions

SELECT THE CORRECT ANSWER.

1. Henry Ford’s innovations

a. depended dangerously on imports from Europe.

b. required government assistance to build his factories.

c. ended in bankruptcy, thereby bringing on the Great Depression.

d. made automobiles available to more and more people.

2. Government during the 1920s

a. actively regulated the economy.

b. was strongly pro-business.

c. created many new programs to assist farmers.

d. backed the creation of labor unions in many industries.

3. The new consumer-driven economy of the 1920s depended on

a. the continued expansion of heavy industry.

b. consumer goods.

c. cessation of antitrust suits by the government.

d. importing huge quantities of goods from America’s wartime allies.

4. Critics of American culture in the 1920s included

a. manufacturer Henry Ford.

b. finance companies, alarmed because of the growth of installment buying.

c. cabinet members Andrew Mellon and Albert Fall.

d. intellectuals and writers, many of whom left the country in disgust.

5. Speculation in the stock market

a. drove stock prices higher and higher.

b. was a criminal activity under federal law.

c. ended when Florida land prices fell.

d. was the brainchild of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon.

6. The nonpartisan Farm Bloc

a. unsuccessfully demanded higher tariffs for foreign-grown produce.

b. urged President Coolidge to veto the McNary-Haugen bill.

c. arose in Congress because the nation’s farmers did not share in the general prosperity.

d. attempted to revive the Populist Party.

7. Los Angeles can be said to have been created by the economy of the 1920s because

a. the decline in government regulation of business unleashed investment there.

b. its development revolved around the automobile.

c. it was the center of feverish speculation in the stock market.

d. many people migrated there from the South and Northeast.

8. The Harlem Renaissance influenced American culture

a. because of its contributions to fundamentalist religious thought and practice.

b. because a growing number of white Americans were determined to put an end to second-class citizenship for African Americans.

c. by making jazz a central feature of modern American music.

d. even though many African American leaders shunned the artists and writers who participated in it.

9. The Eighteenth Amendment launched the national experiment in

a. women’s suffrage.

b. the income tax.

c. Prohibition.

d. racial equality.

10. John T. Scope’s trial attracted attention because it

a. exposed leaders of the Ku Klux Klan as corrupt.

b. focused on Sigmund Freud’s definition of homosexuality.

c. demonstrated the extent of illegal activity by bootleggers.

d. pitted fundamentalism against modern science.

11. Antagonists of immigration from southern and eastern Europe

a. scored no legislative victories during the 1920s.

b. disagreed with the National Origins Act.

c. could agree with many of the views of the Ku Klux Klan.

d. opposed quota systems as the way to limit such immigration.

12. The National Origins Act of 1924

a. liberalized the immigration law excluding Asians.

b. discriminated against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

c. abandoned the quota system of immigration restriction.

d. strictly limited immigrants from the Western Hemisphere.

13. The American Indian Defense Association arose

a. because the government began to shift away from its assimilationist policies.

b. in response to adverse efforts by the secretary of the interior.

c. when the farm depression began to affect agriculture on Indian reservations.

d. because of a sharp increase in Mexican immigration.

14. Warren G. Harding’s presidency resembled Ulysses S. Grant’s because of

a. disarray within the Republican Party.

b. the high number of positions filled by war heroes.

c. Senate rejection of a treaty to acquire an overseas possession.

d. widespread corruption within his administration.

15. The administration of Calvin Coolidge

a. was sympathetic to distressed farmers.

b. was clearly pro-business and pro-wealth.

c. tightened government regulation of the stock market.

d. promoted a “soak the rich” taxing policy.

Essay Questions

1. THE PROSPEROUS ECONOMY OF THE 1920S WAS THE PRODUCT OF A NEW CONSUMER-BASED ECONOMY. EXPLAIN WHAT IS MEANT BY A CONSUMER-BASED ECONOMY AND HOW IT DIFFERED FROM THE AMERICAN ECONOMY OF EARLIER DECADES. DESCRIBE THE IMPORTANT NEW PRODUCTS, PRODUCTION METHODS, AND MARKETING TECHNIQUES OF THE CONSUMER ECONOMY OF THE 1920S.

DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: Heavy industry dominated the economy of previous decades. Its products—steel, oil, railroads, ships, and the like—were not purchased by the ordinary consumer. The consumer economy, in contrast, depended on the production of consumer goods that were purchased and consumed by a great number of people. Important new products included the automobile (the most important of them all), electrical appliances, and new kinds of mass entertainment (the radio and movies).

The marketing techniques that require attention include advertising and all that it implies about creating new demands for consumer products; changes in fashion and in product design (such as new car models every year); and buying on credit through installment plans.

Mass production was a critical factor in reducing manufacturers’ costs. New production methods also aimed to make labor more efficient. The classic innovator to mention in connection with both is Henry Ford.

2. Just as the cowboy came to symbolize the West, the flapper and the Ku Klux Klansmen represented the 1920s. Do you agree or disagree? If you disagree, who would you designate as an appropriate symbol for that decade?

DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: If you do agree, explain what the flapper and the Ku Klux Klansman reveal about the decade in question.

To some, the flapper symbolized the freedom, liberation, and new opportunities for women in the decade that saw approval of the Nineteenth Amendment. The flapper also reflected the emergence of a new “youth culture.” To others, though, the flapper meant drinking, wantonness, and rebellion—in short, the decline of old and true values.

To his supporters at the time, the Ku Klux Klansman symbolized old and true values that appeared to be in decline. Opposed to Catholics, Jews, immigrants, blacks, bootlegging gangsters, and corrupt politicians, to supporters the Klansman was America’s savior. But to others, the Ku Kluxer symbolized the bigotry, intolerance, and violence against foreigners that flourished and culminated in the National Origins Act of 1924.

Selecting symbols is of course a subjective exercise. If you do not agree that these two are meaningful representatives for the 1920s, then other possibilities might be Henry Ford, Calvin Coolidge, Marcus Garvey, the fictional George F. Babbitt, etc. Whomever you choose, be certain to explain why he or she can stand as a symbol for the decade.

3. “The business of America is business,” declared Calvin Coolidge. How does this statement summarize the position and reputation of business during the 1920s?

DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: Explain that Coolidge favored government disengagement from regulating business and give the reasons he believed business should be left to its own devices. You should also explore the recommendations of Andrew Mellon, secretary of the treasury throughout the 1920s, in support of corporations and the wealthy.

Anything that might compromise business’s right to conduct its affairs as it saw fit faced great obstacles during the 1920s. To provide an important example, discuss the successful efforts by businessmen in many sectors of the economy to roll back the gains made by organized labor at earlier dates.

4. The good economic times of the 1920s came to a resounding end with the stock market crash in 1929, the onset of the worst depression in American history. What weaknesses can be identified in the economy of the 1920s that, in the midst of great prosperity, may have contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s?

DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: The 1920s economy was propelled by a rise in consumer spending, but a number of potentially risky practices accompanied the emergence of an economy based on the consumer. You should explore these—the growth of credit purchases, payment in installments, and speculation—and explain what could go wrong with them. Cite the Florida land boom and crash as an example of what could happen with excessive reliance on credit and too much speculation.

The condition of farmers during the 1920s was another great weakness in the economy. Explain why farmers did not share in the decade’s general prosperity. Because of the depressed farm economy, farmers could not contribute much to the general economy by purchasing goods. The important point to emphasize in this connection is that they were still a very large segment of the nation’s population; the general economy would have benefited greatly had they been able to buy more. You might therefore want to mention that the federal government’s reluctance to assist the farmers was another contributing factor to the weakness of what appeared to be a healthy economy.

Map Exercise

Compare and contrast the results of the election of 1924 with those of 1912. What accounts for the differences, in only 12 years?

Individual Choices

Clara Bow

To answer the following questions, consult the Individual Choices section at the beginning of the chapter.

1. Why was Clara Bow called the “It” Girl?

2. Describe Bow’s childhood. Did it affect her adult life? If so, give examples.

3. What does the author mean when he says that her movies took on a “formulatic quality”? Can you cite any examples of movie stars today who also fit that description?

4. How did the industry change from silent films to talkies affect Bow’s career? Why?

5. Would Bow be seen as controversial in today’s Hollywood? Why or why not?

Individual Voices

Examining a Primary Source: Middletown Parents Bemoan the Movies

To answer the following questions, consult the Individual Voices section at the end of the chapter.

1. How reliable do you think Middletowners’ memories of the 1890s were likely to be? How would you test the validity of those memoires?

2. Is the evidence presented in this text section persuasive that magazines and movies have endangered family relationships? How would you compare the description to the behavior and attitudes of a seventeen-year-old today?

3. The Lynds seem to be inferring the content of the movies from the newspaper advertisements for them. How would you construct a research project to determine whether the movies were as titillating as their advertising suggested?

4. The Lynds infer changes in behavior from their interviews. What sources might you use to research whether there were actual changes in behavior among young people in the 1920s?

RUBRIC: The movies were only one way in which traditional America clashed with a newly emerging nation that challenged traditional assumptions. Research some of the other significant conflicts between old and new during the 1920s and evaluate what their outcome meant for American social history.

|ISSUE OR CONFLICT |“TRADITIONAL AMERICAN VIEW” |“NEW VIEW” |RESULT OF |SIGNIFICANCE OF OUTCOME |

| | | |CONFLICT/CLASH | |

|movies |  |  |  |  |

|Prohibition |  |  |  |  |

|  |  |  |  |  |

Answers to Multiple-Choice Questions

1. D. HIS METHODS LED TO LOWER AND LOWER PRICES FOR CARS. SEE PAGES 716-717.

a. There is no evidence for this. See pages 716-717.

b. There is no evidence to support this. See pages 716-717.

c. There is no evidence for this. See pages 716-717.

2. b. The Republicans who dominated government in the 1920s believed, as Coolidge said, that, “the business of America is business.” See pages 734-735.

a. The Republicans who dominated American government in the 1920s did not believe in regulation but, rather, in an unencumbered market economy. See pages 734-735.

c. President Coolidge, for example, vetoed the McNary-Haugen Bill, designed to provide relief for farmers, on two occasions. See pages 734-735.

d. Organized labor faced an inhospitable climate during the 1920s. The Supreme Court, for example, struck down Progressive-era laws passed to protect workers. See pages 734-735.

3. b. See pages 717-720.

a. The important change in the 1920s was the shift to a consumer-based economy. See pages 717-720.

c. There is no evidence for this. In any case, the government was decidedly pro-business and therefore not likely to aggressively prosecute. See pages 717-720.

d. There is no evidence that imported goods drove the economy. On the contrary, consumers purchased readily available, American-made products, as in the case of the automobile. See pages 717-720.

4. d. They attacked and decried American culture. See pages 717-720.

a. Ford did not assail American culture. He became one of its folk heroes. See pages 717-720.

b. Finance companies would not have opposed the installment-buying fever that swept the country, for it made purchasing on credit feasible for many. See pages 717-720.

c. Mellon, for example, was a champion of business and the economic status quo. See pages 739-740.

5 a. See pages 718-720.

b. Never criminal, it became extremely popular in the 1920s. See pages 718-720.

c. There is no evidence at all for this.

d. For stock speculation see pages 718-720.

6. c. Overproduction for the domestic market, coupled with a decline in farm exports, had plunged farmers into economic misery. See page 720.

a. There is no evidence that this was one of their proposals for relieving farmers’ distress. See page 720.

b. The Farm Bloc sponsored this bill for farm relief. See page 720.

d. There was no such attempt to do so; farmers sought to work within the existing political structure. See page 720.

7. b. Modern Los Angeles was made possible by the automobile. See page 721.

a. The city associated in the 1920s with speculative investment was Miami. See page 721.

c. (The nation’s chief stock exchange was in New York.) See page 721.

d. The automobile propelled the development of Los Angeles. See page 721.

8. c. Jazz flourished as part of the Harlem Renaissance and began to influence white musicians, as well. See pages 724-727.

a. This cultural movement centered not on religion but on the general African American experience. See pages 724-727.

b. Race relations remained much the same during the 1920s as they had been. Moreover, the Harlem Renaissance was a black movement. See pages 724-727.

d. There is no evidence for this. See pages 724-727.

9. c. It prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages. See pages 728-729.

a. The Nineteenth Amendment secured the vote for women. See pages 728-729.

b. This was made possible by the Sixteenth Amendment. See pages 728-729.

d. The 1920s were years of great racial tension; there was considerable violence against African Americans and much discrimination against Asian Americans. The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited alcoholic beverages. See pages 728-729.

10. d. Scopes, tried for teaching evolution in the public schools, symbolized modern science. William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, represented the Christian fundamentalist side that opposed the theory of evolution. See pages 728-729.

a. The conviction of an important Klan leader for murder led to revelations about corruption among prominent individuals who were Klan members. See pages 728-729.

b. The trial dealt with the theory of evolution. See pages 728-729.

c. The trial had nothing to do with violations against Prohibition; it dealt with the theory of evolution. See pages .728-729.

11. c. The Klan of the 1920s vilified Jews and Catholics, who comprised the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. See pages 730-731

a. They curtailed immigration through an act passed in 1921 and then with the National Origins Act of 1924. See pages 729-730.

b. They could readily support it. See pages 729-730.

d. They supported quota systems, with the heaviest restrictions falling upon immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. See pages 729-730.

12. b. It established a quota system that favored northern and western Europeans at the expense of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. See pages 729-730.

a. It completely excluded further immigration from Asia. See pages 729-730.

c. It codified it. See pages 729-730.

d. It permitted unlimited immigration from Canada and Latin America. See pages 729-730.

13. b. His efforts to seize Indian lands led to the new organization. See pages 733-734.

a. See pages 733-734.

c. See pages 733-734.

d. There is no evidence for this. See pages 733-734.

14. d. Grant’s was plagued by the Credit Mobilier and Whiskey Ring scandals; Harding’s was humiliated by the Teapot Dome scandal. See Chapter 17 for the Grant administration.

a. This was not a problem that afflicted the Republicans during the 1920s, when they reasserted their status as the majority party. See Chapter 17 for the Grant administration.

b. See 14d. See Chapter 17 for the Grant administration.

c. See 14d. See Chapter 17 for the Grant administration.

15. b. Coolidge opposed any regulation of business, and his administration secured reduced taxes for corporations and for the wealthy. See pages 739-740.

a. Coolidge vetoed the McNary-Haugen bill twice. See page 740.

c. Coolidge resisted regulation of the stock market even after his secretary of commerce recommended it. See pages 739-740.

d. Andrew Mellon, secretary of the treasury, obtained tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. See pages 739-740.

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