The Good Ol' Days

Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History William P. Tishler, Producer

Lecture 16

The Politics of Frustration: The 1920s

Not all Americans benefited from the "politics of prosperity" in the 1920s. Many servicemen had trouble finding jobs when they returned home from World War I. Furthermore, the nation experienced an upswing in racism and xenophobia. Moreover, by the 1920s, many Americans had grown weary of two decades of crusades for reform, seemingly endless attempts to pass moral legislation, and involvement in a brutal war. Many longed for a time when life was simpler, even if these "good old days" existed only in the popular imagination. This lecture highlights the frustrations and anxieties that many Americans dealt with during the 1920s.

Some questions to keep in mind:

1. Warren G. Harding promoted a "return to normalcy." What sort of "normalcy" was Harding referring to? Did America return to "normalcy" in the 1920s? 2. How can we distinguish "Cultural Fundamentalism" from religious fundamentalism? 3. How did the rise of the "Invisible Empire" foster a new definition of "Americanism?"

The "Good Ol' Days"

Many people longed for the lost elements of a "Bygone America:"

1. Free of labor and racial strife 2. Fewer "foreigners" 3. No radical ideologies 4. More attuned to the rhythms of small-town life 5. More devout in Fundamentalist Christianity 6. Less government interference in their lives The Return to "Normalcy"

In 1920, Warren G. Harding was elected President of the United States. Harding, a Republican, appealed to popular feelings of nostalgia in his 1921 inaugural address by promising a return to "normalcy," a word Harding himself had coined. As the decade unfolded, it became clear that "normalcy" included three major trends:

1. Redefinition of "Americanism" 2. Resumption of racial antagonism 3. Resurrection of "old-time religion"

"Cultural Fundamentalism"

The 1920s was a time when many adherents of "Cultural Fundamentalism" attempted to ensure that all Americans followed the right patterns of thought:

 Quest for certainty and predictability in social relationships (governed by social and moral values)  An order in human affairs that was at once familiar, comfortable, and unthreatening  Nostalgia for the idealized, non-industrial society of their parents

The Politics of Frustration

A suspicion and fear of anything foreign that threatened the quest of Cultural Fundamentalist was the driving force behind some notorious events and trends in the United States during the 1920s. We will focus on four particular events and trends:

1. The Red Scare 2. Sacco and Vanzetti trial 3. The rise of a new Ku Klux Klan 4. The Scopes Trial

The Red Scare

World War I saw the fall of the German Kaiser, the Russian Tsar, and the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. But if Americans no longer feared the power of unrestrained monarchs, they now feared the unrestrained mob, exemplified by the "Bolsheviks." The Bolshevik--or October--Revolution of November 1917, brought the doctrine of Communism to Russia. It was supposed to be the first in a chain of workers' revolutions that would spread throughout the world under the slogan "Workers of the World Unite." In March 1919, Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, founded the Communist International to rally far-left Socialists abroad. Bourgeois Europeans and Americans, however, withstood post-war unrest, strikes, and rallies. Moreover, with a bloody civil war to fight at home, the Russian Communist Party had neither the time nor the resources to really work for global Communism.

Only a handful of Americans knew who Lenin was; even fewer had heard of Karl Marx. However, growing numbers of Americans tied the "Bolshevik menace" to domestic labor unrest and mob violence. They feared that, given the right circumstances, America would also fall to Communism. A huge wave of strikes occurred in the United States in 1919 and reinforced such fears. There was a general strike in Seattle, then a nationwide strike of steelworkers, followed by a walkout by the Boston police force. In the case of the steelworkers' strike, the protesters were unskilled and semiskilled workers, many of whom were recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Therefore, many opponents of labor labeled the strike un-American and claimed that unrest was being fomented solely by radical immigrants.

In addition to workers' strikes, bomb threats also fueled the Red Scare. In April of 1919, a United States Senator from Georgia, Thomas Hartwick, received a package which exploded when his maid opened it. Thanks to an observant New York City mail clerk, similar packages were discovered before they reached their targets. In all, authorities found sixteen homemade bombs wrapped up and addressed to such prominent members of commerce and government as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Although there was no evidence, many claimed this was part of a radical, Bolshevik conspiracy to take over the nation. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was one of the targets of an attempted bombing, which made him a convert to the Red Scare. Beginning in the fall of 1919, Palmer organized a new group of crime fighters, whose job it was to arrest and deport potential radicals. Palmer appointed J. Edgar Hoover--the future director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation--head of the General Intelligence Division. Palmer made use of the wartime Sedition Act (1918) to arrest and prosecute so-called "radicals."

On January 2, 1920, the Red Scare reached its climax in the United States. On this day, simultaneously in thirty three American cities, Justice Department agents arrested 3,000 "communists, anarchists, and aliens." In actuality, most of these persons had broken no law and were, in fact, American citizens. The government violated their constitutional rights by detaining them without bail and by preventing their contact with lawyers or family members. Government agents also apprehended other Americans for "guilt by association." This series of arrests brought the total number to around 7,000. Of these 7,000, the government deported or imprisoned only 556. Almost no liberal organization escaped Palmer's sweeping crackdown on radical political views. Proponents of the Red Scare, for example, called Hull House founder Jane Addams a communist sympathizer because of her pacifism during the Second World War. Some of Palmer's supporters, moreover, denounced the League of Women Voters as a radical organization. The government also revoked the mailing rights of respected publications like The Nation and The New Republic based on their provocative political views.

Eventually, Palmer's tactics went so far as to offend even conservative Americans, and support for the Red Scare collapsed. Palmer had even tried to exploit the raids to promote his unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination, but revelations about his abuses of power turned the public against him. Because so much public protest was focused on Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover emerged from the Red Scare of 1919 and 1920 relatively unscathed. After Warren G. Harding was elected President, he appointed Hoover assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation (the future FBI). He became director in 1924 and held that post until his death in 1972.

Sacco and Vanzetti Trial

Public distrust of radicals, and especially of foreigners suspected of holding revolutionary political beliefs, reached its peak with the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two anarchists who were arrested for a 1920 robbery and murder. The two men were immigrants from Italy who had lived in the United States for many years by the time of the trial. The trial, which began in July of 1921, was a travesty of justice. Many Americans felt that the prosecution had railroaded the two into, not because they were guilty of the charges brought against them, but because they were immigrants and self- proclaimed radicals. Public opinion was divided: some Americans felt that anyone professing a belief in radicalism was already guilty and should be hanged. Others believed that the true test of a democracy was its ability to protect the rights of those who express unpopular opinions.

Because of protest both at home and abroad, the appeals process continued for six years. Finally, in 1927, the governor of Massachusetts appointed an advisory committee to review the case. The committee charged the original presiding judge of a "grave breach of official decorum," but maintained that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty as charged. In his final statement on April 7, 1927, Vanzetti claimed that the trial had not been about murder, but rather his ideology and ethnic heritage:

"I am suffering because I am a radical. Indeed I am a radical. I have suffered because I was an Italian. Indeed, I am an Italian. I have suffered more for my family and my beloved than for myself. But I am so convinced to be right that if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already. I have finished. Thank you."

On August 23, 1927, the state executed Sacco and Vanzetti for their alleged crimes. The trial revealed the shameful side of Cultural Fundamentalism and left many American intellectuals disillusioned with their government and the nation's justice system. This disillusionment pushed many of them away from liberalism towards more radical political beliefs in the 1930s.

The Rise of a New KKK

The Ku Klux Klan first emerged during Reconstruction. In 1915, Colonel William Joseph Simmons revived the organization. The Klan received a charter of incorporation from the Georgia legislature, but it remained little more than a small, regional organization until 1920. In the spring of 1920, however, two New York con men, hoping to capitalize on the membership fees the Klan charged, started the Southern Publicity Association to promote the Klan's views. In the fall of 1921, some members of the House of Representatives began to investigate this new phenomenon. As often happens, the House investigation provided the Klan with free publicity and its membership grew from 100,000 to 1 million in 1922; by 1925 dues-paying members numbered 2 million.

This new KKK promoted "100% Americanism":

 Education

So what's not 100% American? While officially denying all hatreds, the Klan's qualifications for membership embraced all hatreds. Their main targets were:

1. Roman Catholics. Members of the Klan called the Pope a "political autocrat" intent on taking over the world. They insisted that it was impossible for anyone to be a good American citizen and a good Roman Catholic at the same time.

2. Jews. Klan members denounced Jews as internationalists who could never form the deep attachments to America that came "naturally" to Protestant, Anglo-Saxon Americans.

3. African-Americans. Like its predecessor, this new KKK was also militantly anti-Black. According to Hiram Wesley Evans, an "Imperial Wizard" of the KKK:

"Every instinct, every interest, every dictate of conscience and public spirit insists that white supremacy forever shall be maintained."

Despite popular perceptions, the Klan was not limited to the Deep South. The KKK, in fact, enjoyed its greatest public support in Indiana, Texas, and Ohio. Klan members were elected to the city councils of such diverse places as Chicago, Indianapolis, Denver, and Dallas. The Klan also captured six governorships, including those of Oregon, Indiana, and Colorado. Although the Klan never won the presidency, they managed to split the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

From 1925 on, rates of membership fell off and the influence of the Klan declined. For one, leaders had promised far more than they could deliver. Second, they lacked a systematic program of action for their goals of restoring the Bible to its place in public schools and returning African-Americans to rural docility. Yet, the Klan's ultimate weakness was its reliance on passions rather than reason. The Ku Klux Klan would regain strength in the mid-1930s and then again after World War II. The rise of the new Klan, in the 1920s and after, demonstrated how palpable Americans' fear of outsiders remained, and how easily savvy people could manipulate this fear for personal and political gain.

The Scopes Trial

On the surface, the Scopes Trial--known popularly as the Monkey Trial--was about academic freedom. In actuality, it pitted two opposing views of society. On one side stood modern, urban, intellectual rationalism and secularism. On the other stood religious dogma and conservative, rural values. By the 1920s, universities and schools around the nation taught Darwin's theory. The Tennessee legislature, however, passed a law prohibiting public school instructors from teaching any theory that conflicted with the Bible's story of Creation. John T. Scopes, a 25-year old teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, challenged the law by teaching evolution in his high school biology class. As a result, police arrested Scopes for violating state law in 1925. At trial, Clarence Darrow, one of the nation's leading lawyers, and a team financed by the American Civil Liberties Union, defended Scopes. The prosecuting attorney was William Jennings Bryan, the former Populist, presidential candidate, and Secretary of State, who had become a leader of the "fundamentalist" movement in American Christianity.

Religious fundamentalists like Bryan were some of the most vocal proponents of cultural fundamentalism during the 1920s. This growing movement in Protestant Christianity took its name from a series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals: A Testament of Truth, published by Milton and Lyman Stewart of Union Oil in California between 1909 and 1912. The pamphlets outlined the following principles:

1. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ 2. Jesus' physical resurrection 3. The second coming of Christ was imminent and physical 4. Every word of the Bible is literally true - from the creation of Eve out of Adam's rib to the visions in Revelations, there are no allegories in the Bible and no subjects open to interpretation

The Fundamentalist movement was strongest in the South, but also had a significant presence in the Midwest and West.

One of the most popular preachers of this period was Billy Sunday, who "hit the gospel circuit with all the subtlety of a runaway train"

Meanwhile, back at the Scopes Trial...

The Christian fundamentalist Bryan faced off against the agnostic Darrow. The judge did not allow any expert scientific testimony about evolution for the defense, so Darrow's chief witness turned out to be Bryan himself. In the end, Darrow humiliated Bryan when he got him to state, under oath, that a "big fish" had swallowed Jonah, that God had literally created women from a piece of Adam's rib, and that, God had flooded the world and killed every creature on Earth except for the fish in the ocean and for the animals on Noah's ark in 2348 B. C.

Although Darrow made Bryan look ridiculous, the jury found Scopes guilty and he was fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court eventually overturned the decision on a technicality. Nevertheless, many Americans saw the fundamentalist cause as the true loser in the trial. Bryan had spoken for an older generation unsettled by the economic and social changes around them. Publicly humiliated, Bryan died just a few days after the trial.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) was a widely read journalist and satirist. Mencken mocked American society for its Puritanism ("the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere may be happy"), anti-intellectualism, and conformity. He summed up his attitudes about the naiveté and moral righteousness of popular American attitudes when he wrote:

"It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is duty- bound to cherish and accept. It was Americans who invented the right thinker."

Mencken also found the American public to be extremely gullible:

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

In the years following World War I, social and cultural conflicts shaped American society. Some of the most fiscally conservative Presidents in American history governed a nation that more than a few Americans believed was being taken over by radical anarchists and socialists. As greater numbers of African-Americans left their rural southern roots and settled in industrial cities, the Ku Klux Klan became a major force in American politics. The advances of science made institutionalized religion less tenable for many Americans and introduced new technologies to daily life. Growing numbers of Americans, however, feared the loss of religious morality and the simplicity of life without machines and rejected science and its modernist implications. There is one more important story to tell about the clashes between conservative and liberal interpretations of American freedom during the 1920s. The story of Prohibition is so important, in fact, that we'll take it up in Lecture 17, "The Politics of Prohibition."