1. the Communist Revolution

1. The Communist Revolution

Early in WWI, Russia undertook two invasions of eastern Germany and Austria, but were driven back with heavy losses. Counterattacks by the Central Powers destroyed Russia’s defenses and forced the Russian army to retreat hundreds of miles inside the country’s borders. By the end of 1916 Russia was in turmoil. Its army lacked weapons and supplies, thousands of soldiers were deserting, and its government lost support of the people. People from all classes were seeking economic and social change and an end to the war. In the spring of 1917, the autocratic czarist regime, led by Czar Nicholas II, was overthrown. A provisional government assumed control, and attempted to restore order and carry on the war. But conditions continued to worsen. In the fall of 1917 a radical Marxist group called the Bolsheviks seized power. Heeding the widespread clamor for peace, the new Soviet government agreed to accept Germany’s harsh territorial and monetary demands, signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and in March, 1918, took Russia out of the war. Under the leadership of Vladimir I. Lenin, the revolutionary government established a state based on the social and economic system of communism. Two years after the revolution, the Third Communist International meeting was held in Moscow. At the meeting the communists advocated world-wide revolution—the destruction of the capitalist system and the abolition of free enterprise and private property.

2. The Red Scare

In response to the Communist call for international revolution, about 70,000 radicals joined the newly formed Communist Party in the United States. This U.S. branch of the Communist Party included members of the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, as well as radicals from many walks of life. In total, less than one-tenth of one percent of Americans joined the party. But the Communist talk about abolishing private property and substituting government ownership of factories, railroads, and other businesses frightened the public. The symbolic color of the Communist Revolution is red, and those who supported the idea of worldwide communist revolution were known as Reds, and so the controlled panic in the United States came to be known as the Red Scare. The fear began to intensify after several occasions where anarchists and radicals mailed bombs to prominent political and business leaders throughout the United States. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer decided to take action to combat the Reds, or communists, in the United States.

3. The Palmer Raids

A. Mitchell Palmer had had a distinguished career as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives before accepting an appointment as alien property custodian during WWI and attorney general in 1919. His ambitions extended to the presidency, leading some people to believe he needed a campaign issue for the 1920 election. Palmer was convinced that radicals were undermining American values. In August 1919, Palmer appointed J. Edgar Hoover to head the new antiradical division in the Justice Department – the division later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Palmer sent government agents to hunt down suspected Communists, socialists, and anarchists, or those who opposed any and all forms of government. In their zeal, the agents ran roughshod over the people’s civil rights, invading private homes, meeting halls, and offices without search warrants. They jailed suspects for weeks at a time without allowing them to see lawyers, and they arrested those who came to visit the suspects. The government deported hundreds of alien radicals without trying them in courts. Palmer’s raids, however, failed to turn up evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy. Nor did agents discover explosives, and they only found three pistols in their search for weapons. Them Palmer warned the nation of a Communist plot to overthrow the government on May 1, 1920, which was May Day, the international workers’ holiday. When the day passed without incident, the public decided that Palmer didn’t know what he was talking about.

Palmer’s Washington, D.C., home was damaged after a small explosive device, presumably planted by radicals angry about his ongoing investigations, detonated.

4. Sacco and Vanzetti

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had three strikes against them. They were Italian. They were immigrants. And they were anarchists. In 1920, those traits won no popularity contests in America. When a payroll holdup at a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts, left two men dead, an eyewitness said that two of the robbers “looked Italian.” On the strength of that, Sacco and Vanzetti, known anarchists, were arrested. They were carrying guns at the time of their arrest. A few weeks earlier, another Italian anarchist had died when he “jumped” from the fourteenth floor of a building where he was in police custody. Sacco and Vanzetti were quickly tried by a judge whose mind was already made up about what he called “those anarchist bastards.” The two men became darlings of the intellectual and leftist world. Despite protests throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America, the pair died in the electric chair in 1927. In 1961, a ballistics test done on the gun found on Sacco proved that it was indeed the gun that had killed one of the guards of the payroll. There was, however, never any evidence presented that could prove that either of the two men had pulled the trigger. FBI files and the ballistics reports seem to show that Sacco was guilty and Vanzetti was innocent. Guilty or not, the pair died because the country was in a frenzied, lynch-mob mood created by President Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. After a bomb exploded outside his home in 1919, Palmer unleashed a hysterical “Red Scare”. To most Americans in 1919, the world had been turned upside down. The country went through an economic downturn of the sort that typically follows a high-powered wartime economy. Inflation was high and unemployment rose, ushering in a new era of labor unrest and social problems. “In my life I have never stole [sic], never killed, never spilled blood…We were tried during a time…when there was hysteria of resentment and hate against the people of our principles, against the foreigner…I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian and indeed I am an Italian… 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.”

 Bartolomeo Vanzetti 5. Limiting Immigration

Nativist sentiments had been present in the U.S. since the 1880s, when the “New Immigrants”, those coming from southern and eastern Europe, began emigrating to the U.S. in large numbers. These feelings increased after WWI when the demand for unskilled labor drastically decreased. Immigrants generally filled these low-skill jobs, so when the number of these jobs decreased, American workers reasoned that the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. should also be decreased. Nativist feelings were also fueled by the fact that some of the people involved in the postwar labor disputes were immigrant anarchists and socialists who many Americans believed were actually revolutionary radicals and Communists. While anarchists, socialists, and Communists are all distinct, the American press lumped them all together. Thus, the increasing nativist feelings in the U.S. were very much linked to the “Red Scare.” Congress, in response to nativist pressure, decided to limit immigration from Europe by passing the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. This quota system limited the number of immigrants who could enter the U.S. each year from any one country. The law limited immigration from each European nation to 2% of the number of its nationals living in the U.S. in 1890. This provision discriminated against people from eastern and southern Europe – mostly Roman Catholics and Jews – who had not started coming in large numbers until after 1890. Later, the National Origins Act of 1929 shifted the base year to 1920, but it reduced the number of persons to be admitted in any one year to 150,000. The “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (quote inscribed on Statue of Liberty) would have to hold their breath a little longer. The immigration laws excluded Japanese immigrants altogether. The national origins quota system did not apply to immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. During the 1920s, about a million Canadians and 500,000 Mexicans crossed into the U.S. The goal of the quota system was to sharply cut European immigration to the U.S. – a goal that the system achieved.

6. Klan Resurgence

With official America on the warpath against “foreign influences,” private America joined the hunt. The Ku Klux Klan revived once more, with a vengeance. The economic dislocation following the war gave the Klan its opening. The Klan fed off the growing unemployment, blaming non-whites for the problems facing the economy. New leadership gave the Klan a respectability it had lacked before. But its violence was as deadly as ever. While blacks remained the chief target of Klan venom, the new message of hate spread to include Jews, Catholics, and foreigners. By 1924 the “new” Klan claimed between four and five million members, not limited to the South. Klan members, as Grand Wizard Hiram Evans explained, were “plain people … the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized, but entirely unspoiled ... citizens of the old stock.” In other words, they were people who felt threatened by changes in American society. Klan members resented the small advances made by African Americans during WWI. They also felt that their moral values were being attacked by urban intellectuals, and they feared job competition from immigrants. They were convinced that foreigners were going to threaten the American way of life. Klan members vented some of their frustrations through racial violence. The pace of lynchings, which had slackened during the war years, was revived with a vicious frenzy. The Klan also tried to influence national, state, and local politics. At times during the 1920s, the Klan dominated state politics in Arkansas, California, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Crimes committed by Klan leaders in Indiana resulted in a major decrease in the Klan’s power nationwide by the end of the 1920s.

7. Postwar Labor Unrest

Another severe postwar conflict formed between labor and management. During the war, workers had not been allowed to strike because the government would allow nothing to interfere with the war effort. However, 1919 saw more than 3,000 strikes, during which some 4 million workers walked off the job at one time or another. Wages had not kept up with prices, but employers did not want to give their employees raises. Nor did they want their employees to join labor unions. Some employers, either out of sincere belief or because they saw a way to keep wages down, attempted to show that union members were planning revolution. Newspaper headlines screamed: “Crimes Against Society,” “Conspiracies Against the Government,” and “Plots to Establish Communism.” Three strikes in particular grabbed national attention: the Boston Police Strike, the Steel Mill Strike, and the Coal Miners Strike.

The cartoon on the left shows patriotic Americans workers what they should do to “foreign extremists” who attempt to organize labor into unions. The cartoon on the right shows a Bolshevik (Communist) trying to sell Communism to the American worker as a cure to all of society’s ills, with the strong American replying, “Say – do I look sick?” 8. The Boston Police Strike

The police of Boston were angry. They had not had a raise since the beginning of WWI, and by 1919 the cost of living had doubled. The police sent representatives to the police commissioner to ask for what they considered a living wage. The commissioner promptly fired everyone in the group, and the remaining police responded by going out on strike. After Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge called out the National Guard to restore order, the police called off the strike. The police commissioner, however, refused to allow the men to return to their jobs. Instead, he hired new men for his police force who, ironically, received everything the strikers had asked for. Months later, the president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Samuel Gompers, appealed to Coolidge on behalf of the fired men. Coolidge replied, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time.” People praised Coolidge for saving Boston, if not the nation, from communism and anarchy. His handling of the Boston Police Strike brought him into the spotlight as a popular national figure. In the 1920 election he became Warren G. Harding’s running mate.

Governor of Massachusetts Calvin Coolidge (far right) stands in review of the National Guardsmen called in to restore order during the Boston Police Strike

9. The Steel Mill Strike

Working conditions in the steel industry were extremely difficult and dangerous. Many laborers worked seven 12-hour workdays a week, in hot and noisy foundries. When the U.S. Steel Corporation refused to meet with union representatives in September 1919, 350,000 steel workers walked off the job. They demanded the right as organized workers to bargain collectively with their employer for shorter working hours and a living wage. One of the leaders of the strike, William Z. Foster, was a former member of the International Workers of the World (IWW) and a militant labor organizer. His participation in the strike caused management to claim that the labor activities were led by radicals. Steel companies hired strikebreakers and used force. For example, U.S. Steel security forces, state militias, and federal troops killed 18 workers and wounded or beat hundreds more. The companies also instituted a widespread propaganda campaign seeking to link strikers to Communists. In October 1919, President Woodrow Wilson made a written plea to both sides of the dispute, but the president’s plea did not resolve the dispute. The steel strike, however, was finally broken in January 1920. The fact that strike leader William Z. Foster later joined the Communist Party did not help the image of labor unions. At first the public was relieved that another threat by “un-American elements” had been turned back. Then, in 1923, a committee published a report on the severe working conditions in the steel mills. The report shocked the public, and the steel companies agreed to establish an eight-hour day. However, the steel workers remained without a union. 10. The Coal Miners Strike

Unionism was more successful in America’s coalfields. In 1919, the United Mine Workers, organized since 1890, got a new president – John L. Lewis. In protest of low wages and long workdays, Lewis called his union’s members out on strike on November 1, 1919. Attorney General Palmer obtained a court order sending the miners back to work. Lewis then declared the strike over, but he quietly gave the word for the strike to continue. In defiance of the court order, the mines stayed closed another month. Then President Wilson appointed an arbitrator to decide the outstanding issues between the miners and the mine owners. In due course, the coal miners received a 27 percent wage increase, and John L. Lewis became a national figure. The miners, however, did not achieve a shorter workday and a five-day workweek until the 1930s.

This cartoon, entitled “A Burning Question,” depicts a miner and a mine operator refusing to speak to each other while Uncle Sam reminds them of “The Freezing Public.” 11. Labor Movement Loses Appeal

In spite of gains by the coal miners, the 1920s hurt the labor movement badly. Many Americans believed labor unions fostered communism, and membership in unions declined for a number of reasons.  Much of the work force consisted of immigrants who had no choice but to work in poor conditions.  Since immigrants spoke a multitude of languages, unions had difficulty trying to organize them.  Farmers who had migrated to cities to find factory jobs were difficult to unionize because they were used to relying on themselves. Thousands of African Americans who had migrated from the South to take factory jobs in the North were likely candidates for unionization, but most unions excluded them. Only about 82,000 African Americans held union memberships by 1929.

The perception that labor unions were setting the stage for a violent Communist revolution where the workers would take control of the means of production was just one of the reasons for the decline in unionization during the 1920s. 12. The Election of 1920

As the Republicans gathered in Chicago in the summer of 1920 to nominate their candidate for president, they wanted to retake the White House. The American public seemed tired of the push for reform that had marked the Progressive Era – particularly the Wilson administration. The GOP (nickname for Republican Party, stands for “Grand Old Party”) finally nominated Warren G. Harding, a U.S. Senator from Ohio. Although his knowledge was limited and his judgement turned out to be poor, he was a good-natured man who, according to one of his followers, “looked like a president ought to look,” and the public loved his soothing speeches. An excerpt from one of his campaign speeches follows:

“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums [pet schemes for fixing social or political problems], but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; … not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Harding’s speeches called for America to look back to the “Good Old Days” for guidance, back to the simpler time before the upheavals of the Progressive Era and World War I. The catch phrase of Harding’s campaign was “Return to Normalcy.” This type of talk so appealed to war-weary Americans that Warren G. Harding and his running mate Calvin Coolidge won the election of 1920 in a landslide over James M. Cox and a young Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Although Harding looked presidential, he is today ranked by historians as one of the worst presidents in all of U.S. history. 13. The Kellogg-Briand Pact

Just as Woodrow Wilson had dreamed up the League of Nations as a means of reducing the threat of war, other attempts were made throughout the 1920s to maintain peace in the international system. One such attempt was the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Under the sponsorship of Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, a pact was drawn up in 1928 and signed by most nations of the world. They agreed to outlaw war as a means of settling international disputes. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, however, provided no means of enforcement. It was hoped that public opinion would compel those nations who signed the pact to live up to their pledge. Future events proved that the pact was an empty gesture. Nations bent on conquest broke their promises and continued to resort to force to reach their objectives. 14. The Washington Conference

At the invitation of President Warren G. Harding, the major powers met in Washington in 1921 to discuss Far Eastern problems and the reduction of naval armaments. The five leading naval powers (the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy) agreed to scrap some of their large warships and to limit the number of their battleships and heavy cruisers, according to a specific formula. The powers also agreed to respect one another’s interests in the Far East and to support the Open Door Policy in China.

15. London Conferences on Naval Disarmament

At a conference held in London in 1930, the United States, Britain, and Japan agreed to continue restrictions on the construction of large warships. They also imposed limits on the building of smaller naval vessels. France and Italy refused to become parties to this agreement. Five years later, as the agreement of 1930 was nearing its expiration date, a second London Conference was held. Whereas the earlier agreement had allowed Japan a navy roughly two-thirds the size of those of the United States and Great Britain, Japan now demanded naval equality. When its demand was rejected, Japan withdrew from the talks, and the race for naval superiority resumed.

The Washington and London naval conferences represented the first time in history that such powerful nations had agreed to disarm. 16. High Tariffs and Reparations

Behind the international glow of the Washington Naval Conference and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Harding administration was actually pursuing an isolationist foreign policy. Nevertheless, the U.S. was trying to head off trouble in Asia and to reduce the amount of money spent on armaments. At the same time, it was not retreating from its stand on war debts. Britain and France had borrowed more than $10 billion from American bankers during WWI and now were having trouble repaying the loans while rebuilding their economies. They could raise the money in only two ways: by exporting more goods to the U.S. or through reparations, which were payments made by Germany to the Allies for war damages. Neither alternative worked. For one thing, in 1922 the U.S. adopted the Fordney- McCumber Tariff, which raised the tax on imports to its highest ever – almost 60 percent. The act was designed to protect American businesses, especially chemical and metal industries, from foreign competition. As a result of such a high tariff, Britain and France were unable to sell their goods in the U.S. and could not earn the revenue to repay their war debts. Britain and France then demanded that Germany pay its promised reparations, but the economically ruined Germany could not pay. Then at the end of 1922, French troops marched into Germany’s Ruhr Valley, its industrial region, presumably to take over factories and sell the goods produced to repay Germany’s debt. To avoid a new war, the U.S. became involved in the situation. It sent American banker Charles G. Dawes, soon to be President Coolidge’s vice-president, to negotiate loans from American investors to Germany. Through the Dawes Plan, U.S. banks loaned Germany $2.5 billion, which Germany was able to use to pay reparations to Britain and France. Those countries then turned around and paid on their war debts to the U.S. Thus, the U.S., in effect, arranged to be repaid with its own money. This solution caused bad feelings all around. Britain and France considered the U.S. a miser for not paying a fair share of the costs of WWI. Their people had died while America profited! At the same time, the U.S. considered the two nations financially irresponsible for being unwilling to repay their debts. As President Calvin Coolidge, who succeeded Harding, reportedly remarked, “They hired the money, didn’t they?”

17. The Harding Administration

Elected in 1920, Warren G. Harding (Republican – Ohio) called for a “return to normalcy.” He wanted the nation to retreat from the progressivism of the previous two decades. He also sought to reverse the course of American foreign policy to a more isolationist posture. During Harding’s term: (1) A separate Veterans’ Bureau (later called the Veterans Administration) was established to supervise the various federal programs of aid to the nation’s ex-soldiers. (2) A Bureau of the Budget (now known as the Office of Management and Budget) was created to coordinate federal expenditures and receipts, thus making government operations more business-like. (3) The Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act reversed the tariff policy of the Wilson administration by raising tariffs to a new high level. (4) The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 sharply limited immigration into the U.S. (5) The Washington Naval Conference was held. Harding’s administration was marred by a series of scandals involving several of his appointive officials. The head of the Veterans’ Bureau and the Custodian of Alien Property were imprisoned for defrauding the government of huge sums of money. The Attorney General was charged with receiving bribes and failing to prosecute grafters, and was forced to resign his office. But the scandal which got the most attention involved Harding’s Secretary of the Interior and a place called Teapot Dome.

The scandals of the Harding administration muddied the reputation of the Republican Party. This cartoon shows Harding trying to “clean up” the image of the Republican Party (symbolized by the elephant). Notice he is using a teapot to bathe the elephant (symbolic of the Teapot Dome Scandal). 18. The Teapot Dome Scandal

Harding’s was a classic Republican administration. Tax cuts. Help for big business. An America-first foreign policy that rejected Wilson’s League of Nations and set up stiff tariffs to protect American industry. But his administration would also soon be dogged by what came to be called the Harding Scandals. The first of these involved the siphoning of millions of dollars allocated for Veterans Administration hospitals. In another seamy episode, Harding’s Attorney General Harry Daugherty was implicated in fraud related to the return of German assets seized during the war, and only avoided conviction by invoking the Fifth Amendment. But the most famous of the Harding Scandals involved a place called Teapot Dome. Two federal oil reserves – one in Elk Hills, California, and the other in Teapot Dome, Wyoming – were marked for future use of the U.S. Navy. But the Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, contrived to have these lands turned over to his department. He then sold off drilling leases to private developers in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks in the form of cash, stock, and cattle. In August 1923, as this scandal was being uncovered by a Senate investigation, Harding suffered a fatal heart attack – misdiagnosed by an incompetent Surgeon General as food poisoning – while in San Francisco on his way home from a trip to Alaska. Interior Secretary Fall was later convicted for accepting a bribe, thereby achieving the distinction of becoming the first Cabinet officer in American history to go to jail. Calvin Coolidge, untainted by the scandals, took Harding’s place and handily won reelection in 1924.

This cartoon, entitled “The First Good Laugh They’ve Had In Years”, depicts the Democratic Party (upper left) laughing as the Republican Party (symbolized by the elephant) tries in vain to distance itself from the Teapot Dome Scandal. 19. The Coolidge Administration

When Harding died suddenly in the summer of 1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts succeeded him. After completing Harding’s term, he ran for President in his own right in 1924 and was returned to office by a huge majority. Coolidge believed that “the business of America is business.” He opposed government interference with private enterprise. He, along with his successor Herbert Hoover, believed that government should not burden business with regulations, but should allow business to flourish. He worked to reduce to public debt, to lower the cost of government, and to cut taxes. During his term, immigration was further restricted, a Soldiers’ Bonus Act was passed (over his veto), and the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed.

20. The Prosperous Twenties

During Coolidge’s administration, the country enjoyed an unprecedented business boom. Industrial activity rose to a new high level, and the national wealth and standard of living soared. Wages were high, and the average family enjoyed a larger income than ever before. The nation went on a buying spree. Automobiles, radios, new homes, and furniture were in great demand. Not content with purchasing from current income or savings, many people bought on the installment plan. That is, they made a small down payment and promised to pay the balance in the future. Many also used their savings to speculate wildly on the stock market in an effort to get rich quickly. Optimism ran riot, and people expected prosperity to continue forever. American farmers, however, did not share in this prosperity. During the war they had expanded production to meet the increased demand for foodstuffs. After the war overseas demand fell off, and farm prices dropped sharply. All through the 1920s, while most other sections of the economy were enjoying a boom, farmers had to cope with surplus crops, heavy debts, and declining income.

The decade of the 1920s saw one of the largest economic expansions in American history. Consumerism ran riot as Americans had more money, and bought more, than ever before. 21. Impact of the Automobile

The automobile literally changed the American landscape. Its most visible effect was the construction of paved roads suitable for year-round driving in all weather. Architectural styles changed, as new houses typically came equipped with a garage or carport and driveway – and smaller lawns as a result. The automobile also launched the furious construction of gasoline stations, repair shops, public garages, motels, tourist camps, and shopping centers. The first automatic traffic signals began linking Detroit in the early 1920s. The Holland Tunnel, the first underwater tunnel designed specifically for motor vehicles, opened in 1927 to connect New York City and Jersey City, New Jersey. The automobile liberated the isolated rural family, who could now travel to the city for shopping and entertainment, and it gave families the opportunity to vacation in new and faraway places. It allowed both women and young people to become more independent through increased mobility. It allowed workers to live miles from their jobs, resulting in urban sprawl as cities spread in all directions. The automobile industry also provided an economic underpinning for such cities as Akron in Ohio, and Detroit, Dearborn, Flint, and Pontiac in Michigan. The industry drew people to such oil-producing states as California and Texas. The auto industry was also largely responsible for leading the economic growth of the 1920s. As a result of Henry Ford’s mass production of automobiles using the assembly line, the price of automobiles decreased dramatically. Now, you did not have to be rich to own your own car. As the demand for more automobiles rose as the price went down, the demand for goods produced in other industries – rubber, glass, steel, oil, and plastics – also rose. These industries had to expand to meet the growing demand, which created thousands of new jobs. The spin-offs of the success of the automobile included new industries – road construction, filling stations, repair shops, billboard advertising, etc. The auto industry symbolized the success of the free enterprise system. Nowhere else in the world could people with little money own their own transportation and go wherever they wanted. By the late 1920s, around 80% of all registered motor vehicles in the world were in the United States – about one automobile for every five people in America. Comedian Will Rogers remarked to Henry Ford, “It will take a hundred years to tell us whether you have helped us or hurt us, but you certainly didn’t leave us like you found us.”

Henry Ford’s first mass- produced automobile – the Model T – changed the face of the American landscape and led to profound social changes. 22. The Young Airplane Industry

The airplane industry began its growth by carrying mail for the government. Although the first such flight in 1918 was a disaster, soon after, a number of successful flights established the airplane as a useful peacetime means of transportation. With the development of weather forecasting, planes began carrying radios and navigational instruments. In the 1920s and 1930s spectacular flights aroused the nation’s interest in aviation. Richard E. Byrd flew over the North Pole (1926). Charles A. Lindbergh, “Lucky Lindy”, flew his plane, the “Spirit of St. Louis”, on a solo, nonstop flight from New York to Paris (1927). Howard Hughes would fly around the world in 91 hours in 1938. The airplane had come a long way in the few decades since Orville and Wilbur Wright had first achieved a successful flight in a heavier-than-air flying machine at Kittyhawk, North Carolina in 1903.

This trimotor airplane was produced by the Ford Motor Company in 1926 and could carry up to ten passengers. 23. Electrical Conveniences

Gasoline powered much of the economic boom of the 1920s, but electricity also turned on the nation. American factories used electricity to run their machines. Also, the development of an alternating electric current made it possible to distribute electric power by means of a transformer. Now electricity was no longer restricted to central cities but could be transmitted to outlying suburbs. The number of electrified households soared, although most farms still lacked power. Americans used all sorts of electrical appliances, such as radios, phonographs, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines, and others, all power by electricity. By the end of the 1920s, even many working-class homes had electric irons, while well-to-do families used electric refrigerators, electric cooking ranges, and toasters. These electrical appliances made the lives of housewives easier, freed them for other community and leisure activities, and coincided with an increased percentage of women who worked outside the home. The widespread use of electrical appliances, of store- bought clothes and foods, and mass cultural activities (miniature golf, marathon dancing, movie-going, sports, and reading newspapers) resulted in a lifestyle that seemed more conformist than before.

Vacuum Refrigerator Radio 24. Modern Advertising

With new goods flooding the market, business relied increasingly on advertising to sell the products. Advertising people no longer limited themselves to informing the public about products and prices. Instead, they hired psychologists to study how to appeal to buyers. What colors were best for what size packages? What was the most effective way to take advantage of people’s worship of youth, beauty, health, and wealth? Results were impressive. The slogan “Say it with flowers” doubled florists’ business between 1912 and 1924. “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet” lured weight conscious Americans to cigarettes and away from candy. Some variation of “Even your best friend won’t tell you” helped sell a great deal of mouthwash, deodorants, dandruff shampoos, and cures for athlete’s foot. Brand names became familiar from coast to coast, and items that people had formerly considered luxuries now seemed necessities.

An advertisement for Lucky Strikes used in the 1920s: “Instead of eating between meals … instead of fattening sweets … beautiful women keep youthful slenderness these days by smoking Luckies… Lucky Strike is a delightful blend of the world’s finest tobaccos. These tobaccos are toasted – a costly process which develops and improves the flavor. That’s why Luckies are a delightful alternative for fattening sweets. That’s why there’s real health in Lucky Strikes. For years this has been no secret to those who keep fit and trim. They know that Luckies steady their nerves and do not hurt their physical condition. They know that Lucky Strikes are the favorite cigarette of many prominent athletes who must keep in good shape. They respect the opinions of 20,679 physicians who maintain that Luckies are less irritating to the throat than other cigarettes.” 25. A Superficial Prosperity

During the 1920s, most Americans believed that prosperity would go on forever. After all, wasn’t the average factory worker producing 50% more at the end of the decade than at its start? Hadn’t national income frown from $58 billion in 1921 to $83 billion in 1929? Weren’t most major corporations making fortunes? Wasn’t the stock market skyrocketing to new heights? All of these things were in fact true. As productivity increased, businesses expanded in size and attitude. There were numerous mergers of companies that manufactured automobiles, steel, electrical equipment, and public utilities. Chain stores sprouted that sold groceries, drugs, shoes, and clothes. Five-and-dime stores like Woolworth’s also spread rapidly. Banks invented branch banking. But as the number of businesses grew, so did the income gap between workers and managers. There were a number of other clouds in the blue sky of prosperity. The iron and railroad industries, among others, really weren’t prosperous, and mining and farming concerns suffered losses.

According to figures on the 1920s compiled by the Brookings Institution, the decade’s reputed bubble of prosperity was never as big as it seemed. A handful of people did indeed make fortunes in the stock market and in real estate, but most people were not so lucky. In 1929 only 2.3 percent of American families enjoyed an income in excess of $10,000 a year. Just 8 percent had incomes greater than $5,000. Of the others, 71 percent lived on incomes below $2,500; 60 percent on incomes below $2,000. And over 21 percent had incomes of less than $1,000. The Brookings study established that families living on less than $2,000 did not have enough money to meet the bare necessities of life. Which means that in the golden year of 1929, 60 percent of American families were living in poverty, and another 10 percent were close to it.

Supermarkets were one sign of the prosperity of the 1920s. While businesses and managers did increase their wealth during the 1920s, the prosperity of the decade did not reach everyone. 26. Buying Goods on Credit

In addition to advertising, industry provided another solution to the problem of luring consumers to purchase the mountain of goods produced each year: easy credit, or “a dollar down and a dollar forever.” The installment plan, as it was then called, enabled people to buy goods over an extended period, without having to put down much money at the time of purchase. Banks provided the money at low interest rates, while advertisers pushed the idea with such slogans as “You furnish the girl, we’ll furnish the home” and “Enjoy while you pay.” Some economists worried that installment buying might be getting out of hand and that it was really a sign of a rather careless and superficial prosperity. One business owner even wrote to President Coolidge and related a conversation he had overheard on a train.

“Have you an automobile yet?” “No, I talked it over with John and he felt we could not afford one.” “Mr. Budge who lives in your town has one and they are not as well off as you are.” “Yes, I know. Their second installment came due, and they had no money to pay it.” “What did they do? Lose the car?” “No, they got the money and paid the installment.” “How did they get the money?” “They sold the cook-stove.” “How could they get along without a cook-stove?” “They didn’t. They bought another on the installment plan.”

Still, most Americans focused their attention on the present, with little concern for the future. What could possibly go wrong with the nation’s economy? The decade of the 1920s had brought about many technological and economic changes. Life definitely seemed easier and more enjoyable for thousands of Americans. Harding Collage

 Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, once remarked that “Harding was not a bad man. He was just a slob.”  e.e. cummings described Harding in a poem as:

The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors.

 Harding was once heard to remark: “Oftentimes…I don’t seem to grasp that I am President.”  Harding accomplished little during his term of office, but he did have one claim to fame: he was the first president to know how to drive an automobile.  Harding’s sudden death shocked the nation but not Dr. Emmanuel Libman, a heart specialist. Eight months before Harding died, Libman observed the President at a party and predicted to a friend that Harding would suffer a fatal coronary within six months.

President Harding was a die-hard baseball fan who once hosted Babe Ruth at the White House. Here he is at the season opener in 1922, which he attended with his wife and then Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. Hoover would later become the despised U.S. President during the early years of the Great Depression. Coolidge Collage

 In 1924, Coolidge’s son died after getting a blister on his toe while playing lawn tennis.  Calvin Coolidge was the only president sworn in as president by his father. Coolidge had been vacationing at his boyhood home in Vermont when the news came that Warren Harding had died. John Calvin, a notary public, promptly swore in his son as President of the United States.  Coolidge often displayed sadistic tendencies. Once he asked a Secret Service agent to bait his fishhook. Just as the man was hooking the worm, Coolidge jerked the line and drew blood from the agent’s fingers.  Coolidge loved having his head rubbed with Vaseline while he ate breakfast in bed.  Coolidge was an exceedingly stingy man. At the White House he demanded change from servants whom he had given money to for newspapers. When the servants kept the change, Coolidge would wander around the mansion saying, “Somebody owes me seven cents.”  When Hoover was elected president, Coolidge gave him just one bit of advice: “If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called on to repeat it.” Coolidge’s nickname was “Silent Cal.”  Coolidge’s modest ways were revealed by his choice of residence. Both before and after his term of office, he lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, in one half of a rented two-family house.  After Coolidge left the White House, he became a daily columnist, receiving one dollar for every word he wrote, or about $200,000 a year – over three times his salary as president. His skill as a columnist was revealed in his famous explanation of unemployment: “When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.”  When Coolidge died, Dorothy Parker asked, “How can they tell?”