The Roaring Twenties Post-War Prosperity •Boom Time – incomes high – taxes low – credit available – cheap electricity – materialism – farm prices down – labor out of favor – spend, don’t save! Government Policy •Post-War shift – post-war recession – war goods unnecessary – Progressivism over? – protective tariffs – corporate consolidation – isolationist stance – “laissez-faire” little government regulation Prohibition •18th Amendment

– sale and production of alcohol banned – rise in organized crime to provide – seen as town/city fight in politics – difficult to enforce – drain on resources – eventually repealed by 21st Harding “Normalcy”

•Pro-business – streamlined gov’t spending in Budget & Accounting Act – loosened credit for farmers – Teapot Dome Scandal – Fall convicted of bribes New Conservatism

• Regulation lessened - 1922 Coronado Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers – strikes limited trade - 1922 Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. voided child labor restrictions - 1923 Adkins v. Children’s Hospital – women’s minimum wage voided - 1929 Maple Floor Association v. U.S. anti-union groups not trade restraint The “Jazz Age”

• Music of time - African origin - mix of ragtime and blues - energy represented rejection “old generation” values - part of youth culture - dangerous to older generation Duke Ellington

Bessie Smith Irving Berlin

Josephine Baker Cole Porter

George Gershwin Flappers • New Freedoms – young women – short hair, short dresses, rolled stockings, makeup, no corsets – seen as trendy and often immodest – working women more common Movies!

• New mass media – escape value – sign of prosperity – more leisure time – new social custom – popular culture (slang, clothes) – over 100 million tickets sold weekly – “movie morals” questioned Mary Pickford Douglas Fairbanks Buster Keaton

Rudolph Valentino Clara Bow Charlie Chaplin More Mass Media

•Age of radio born – national networks allowed access to same programs – individuality? – music, news, sports, politics – advertisers took advantage! “Monkey Trial”

•John Scopes – test case for 1925 Butler Act banning evolution teaching – Clarence Darrow and W. J. Bryan – Scopes found guilty – urban/rural conflict in media Nativism Grows • “Native white Protestant supremacy” – 1915 KKK reorganized – anti-black, Catholic, Jew, immigrant – vigilante methods, political pressure – affected by Madison Grant’s The Passing of a Great Race (1916) Nativist Policy

• Immigration restrictions - 1921 Johnson Quota Act - 350,000 cap on immigration - limit 3% per nationality in 1910 census - aimed at Eastern/Southern immigrants

- 1924 Johnson-Reed Act - superseded 1921 act - 165,000 cap on immigration - limit 2% per nationality in 1890 census Nativist Policy

- 1929 National Origins Act - 150,000 immigration cap permanent - new quota based on 1920 population - 70% North/Western immigrants and 30% Southern/Eastern

- New laws: - Asian Exclusion Act added - reflected greater intolerance, racism - feared lower wages, unemployment Harlem Renaissance • Great Migration – artistic community – writers, artists – Hughes, Hurston, McKay, Jones – works show •African themes •social injustice •hope for future Harlem Renaissance When I get to be a composer I'm gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent of pine needles And the smell of red clay after rain And long red necks And poppy colored faces And big brown arms And the field daisy eyes Of black and white black white black people And I'm gonna put white hands And black hands and brown and yellow hands And red clay earth hands in it Touching everybody with kind fingers And touching each other natural as dew In that dawn of music when I Get to be a composer And write about daybreak In Alabama.

Langston Hughes, “Daybreak in Alabama” Lost Generation • Post-War despair – shocked by war – many left U.S. – Hemingway, Lewis, Fitzgerald, O’Neill – works show •hopelessness •inhumanity in world •society out of control •longing for past

“It was not so bad where there were only men or else only women; it was when they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was some shame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor--it was some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It was dirtier than any battle-field he had seen, harder to contemplate than any actual hardship molded of mire and sweat and danger, it was an atmosphere wherein birth and marriage and death were loathsome, secret things. He remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in a great funeral wreath of fresh flowers, how the smell of it had suddenly cleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow. ‘I detest poor people,’ thought Amory suddenly. ‘I hate them for being poor. Poverty may have been beautiful once, but it's rotten now. It's the ugliest thing in the world. It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor.’ He seemed to see again a figure whose significance had once impressed him--a well-dressed young man gazing from a club window on Fifth Avenue and saying something to his companion with a look of utter disgust. Probably, thought Amory, what he said was: ‘My God! Aren't people horrible!’”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, 1920 Foreign Affairs • Post-war diplomacy – 1920 Disarmament Conference in Pacific makes Japan leader – 1922 Mussolini takes power in Italy – 1922 Russia becomes Soviet Union –1924 Lenin dies – leadership uncertain The Dawes Plan 1924

U.S. lends Germany GB and France pay $2.5 billion $2.6 billion in war debt back to the U.S.

Germany pays $2 billion in reparations to Allies and develops industry at home Foreign Affairs

• More diplomacy –1925 Locarno Pact vowed to settle disputes peacefully –1925 Hitler publishes Mein Kampf – 1929 Young Plan reduces Germany’s debt further