Station 1

The Scopes Monkey Trial

When Darwin announced his theory that humans had descended from apes, he sent shock waves through the Western world.

In the years that followed his 1859 declaration, America's churches hotly debated whether to accept the findings of modern science or continue to follow the teachings of ancient scripture. By the 1920s, most of the urban churches of America had been able to reconcile Darwin's theory with the Bible, but rural preachers preferred a stricter interpretation.

Amid the dizzying changes brought by the roaring decade, religious fundamentalists saw the Bible as the only salvation from a materialistic civilization in decline.

Darwin Banned

In 1925, the legislature passed the Butler Law, which forbade the teaching of Darwin's theory of in any public school or university. Other Southern states followed suit.

The American Civil Liberties Union led the charge of evolution's supporters. It offered to fund the legal defense of any Tennessee teacher willing to fight the law in court. Another showdown between modernity and tradition was unfolding.

The man who accepted the challenge was John T. Scopes, a science teacher and football coach in Dayton, Tennessee. In the spring of 1925, he walked into his classroom and read, from Dayton's Tennessee-approved textbook Hunter's Civic , part of a chapter on the evolution of humankind and Darwin's theory of . His arrest soon followed, and a trial date was set.

Darrow versus Bryan

Representing Scopes was the famed trial lawyer . Slick and sophisticated, Darrow epitomized the urban society in which he lived.

The prosecution was led by , three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state. The "Great Commoner" was the perfect representative of the rural values he dedicated his life to defend.

Bryan was a Christian who lobbied for a constitutional amendment banning the teaching of evolution throughout the nation. A Media Circus — with Monkeys

The trial turned into a media circus. When the case was opened on July 14, journalists from across the land descended upon the mountain hamlet of Dayton. Preachers and fortune seekers filled the streets. Entrepreneurs sold everything from food to Bibles to stuffed monkeys. The trial became the first ever to be broadcast on radio.

Scopes himself played a rather small role in the case: the trial was reduced to a verbal contest between Darrow and Bryan. When Judge John Raulston refused to admit expert testimony on the validity of evolutionary theory, Darrow lost his best defense.

He decided that if he was not permitted to validate Darwin, his best shot was to attack the literal interpretation of the Bible. The climax of the trial came when Darrow asked Bryan to take the stand as an expert on the Bible. Darrow hammered Bryan with tough questions on his strict acceptance of several Bible's stories from the creation of Eve from Adam's rib to the swallowing of Jonah by a whale.

The jury sided with the law. Clearly, Scopes was in violation of Tennessee statute by teaching that humans descended from monkeys. He was fined $100 and released. But the battle that played out before the nation proved a victory for supporters of evolutionary theory. A later court dismissed the fine imposed on Scopes, though in the short term, the antievolution law was upheld.

Fundamental Christians were down but not out. Through the radio airwaves, ministers such as Billy Sunday reached audiences of thousands. Aimee Semple McPherson of California preached her fundamentalist message over loudspeakers to arena-sized crowds. At one point, she used a giant electric sports scoreboard to illustrate the triumph of good over evil, foreshadowing generations of televangelists who would follow her lead.

Clearly, the 1920s did not see the end to these conflicts or the answers to their major questions.

Station 2

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper, an American Realist painter whose highly individualistic works are a benchmark of American realism, epitomizes an art awareness that eerily depicts contemporary American life as characterized by isolation, melancholy, and loneliness.

As many young artists do, Hopper wanted to study in France. In October 1906, his wish was fulfilled when, with his parents' aid, he left for the Continent. During that trip, he also visited London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Brussels. Hopper made return visits to Europe in 1909 and 1910. However, after those trips, he never again sojourned in Europe.

Hopper was greatly moved by the works of Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya, Honore Daumier, and Edouard Manet. His early paintings exhibited some of the basic Realism characteristics that he would carry all the way through his career, a balanced, combinative style based on simple, large analytical forms; broad areas of color, and the use of architectural fundamentals in his scenes.

For many years, memories of days abroad dominated Hopper's painting style. His first showing, a painting reminiscent of his “European” style, was a failure. Following that attempt, Hopper renewed his efforts by using homegrown American subjects, for which he is remembered most.

Edward Hopper made his first sale in 1913, at an exposition in New York. Despite his success, he was plagued by doubt and fear following his first one-man exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club, where he was unable to sell anything. For several years after he turned 37, Hopper earned a living as a commercial illustrator.

Edward Hopper's banner year was 1924. His second one-man exhibition at the Rehn Gallery in New York, was a sell-out that year. The following year, he painted “The House by the Railroad,” which is now proclaimed as his first entirely realized painting. In that work, he commenced what was to become typical of all his creations, a deliberate and disciplined sparseness. His paintings would thereafter be a blend of deceptively mismatched character. They were Modern in their austerity and cleanness, but also complete in reminiscence of the unsophisticated virtues of the American past. Hopper’s career took off and would be remarkably unaffected by The Great Depression of the Thirties. Edward Hopper had made his mark on the world.

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) held a 1929 exhibition, Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans, which included Hopper's work. A year later, “The House by the Railroad” became part of its permanent collection, and “Early Sunday Morning,” was purchased by the Whitney Museum. In 1933 and 1950, Hopper was honored with retrospective exhibitions by MOMA and the Whitney, respectively. Although his work lay outside the mainstream of mid-20th-century abstraction, his simplified schematic style was one of the influences on the later representational revival, and on pop art.

Station 3

Charles A. Lindbergh

Human flight was essentially a novelty in the early 1920s, the domain of dashing barnstormers who performed stunts to delight the crowds at county fairs. In the military realm, the record of the air force in World War I had not won universal admiration. Many influential officers stoutly resisted the pleas from Billy Mitchell and a handful of others who believed that the future of warfare would be closely linked to the airplane. The U.S. Post Office had contracted with a number of firms to transport the mails by air, but still regarded the program as experimental.

An important force in changing attitudes toward flight was found in Raymond Orteig, a New York restaurateur of French descent. Orteig was a great airplane enthusiast and offered a prize of $25,000 for the first flight to be completed nonstop between New York and France. A number of famed aviators and adventurers accepted the challenge, including Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the famed polar explorer*; several were injured and killed in their attempts to claim the prize.

Charles Lindbergh had been commissioned in the Air Corps Reserve in 1925 and worked for four years as an air mail pilot operating out of St. Louis, Missouri. He decided to enter the competition and attracted financial support from a group of local businessmen. The other aspirants concentrated on developing large two- or three-engine airplanes that could carry multi-person crews. Lindbergh took a minimal view and constructed the Spirit of St. Louis as a single-engine, one-man aircraft; every effort was made to avoid amenities in order to maximize the amount of space available for fuel storage.

During the development and testing phases of Lindbergh’s venture, he became a well-known public figure, flying the Spirit from California to New York, and setting new speed and distance records in the process.

Several aviators were on the verge of attempting the transatlantic crossing in the spring of 1927, but Charles Lindbergh seized the opportunity when unexpectedly favorable weather appeared on May 20. He departed from Roosevelt Field on Long Island at 7:52 a.m., successfully getting his plane into the air — no mean feat given the weight of the fuel.

Once under way, his prime concerns were avoiding ice build-up on the wings, keeping his bearings and staying awake. He completed the 3,600-mile journey in 33 hours and 32 minutes and landed at Le Bourget Field outside Paris at 10 p.m. on May 21. A crowd of more than 100,000 cheering Frenchmen welcomed the new hero, who was variously dubbed by the world press as “Lucky Lindy” or the “Lone Eagle.”

In March 1932, the Lindbergh’s infant son was kidnapped from the family home in New Jersey. A few weeks after paying a $50,000 ransom, the body of Charles Jr. was discovered. Bruno Richard Hauptman, a German immigrant, was arrested two years later and charged with murder. He was convicted of the crime in a highly publicized trial and was executed in April 1936. The tragedy deepened Lindbergh’s reclusive nature. The couple moved to England in 1935, in an effort to avoid the public eye. Station 4

The Jazz Age

In 1920's America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties - everybody seemed to have money. The nightmare that was the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, was inconceivable right up until it happened. The 1920’s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. The Great War had destroyed old perceived social conventions and new ones developed.

The young set themselves free especially, the young women. They shocked the older generation with their new hair style (a short bob) and the clothes that they wore were often much shorter than had been seen and tended to expose their legs and knees. The wearing of what were considered skimpy beach wear in public could get the Flappers, as they were known, arrested for indecent exposure. They wore silk stockings rolled just above the knee and they got their hair cut at male barbers. The President of Florida University said the low cut gowns and short skirts "are born of the devil they are carrying the present generation to destruction".

Along with jazz went the ‘crazies’ when people would do crazy things for fun such as sitting on top of a flag pole for as long as possible; marathon dances that went on until everybody had dropped and wing flying when you stood strapped onto the wing of a flying plane until it landed.

This was also the era of great sports champions such as Babe Ruth the baseball player and Bobby Jones "the greatest amateur golfer of all time."

The 1920’s made Hollywood. 100 million people a week went to the movies. In the 1910’s the stars of movies were never named (especially true for women) but by the 1920’s stars were world famous. For many films, the star was more important than the film itself and they could earn a fortune. Slapstick comedy was dominated by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and Fatty Arbuckle. The leading women were Clara Bow and Mary Pickford and the leading male star was Rudolf Valentino. When he died in 1926 aged just 31 people queued for miles to see his embalmed body and riots broke out.

The decade saw the first "talkie" - "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. Many silent screen stars lost their jobs as their voices sounded too strange or their accents were difficult to understand.

The stars lived lavish lifestyles - Beverley Hills was the place to live and they cultivated in peoples minds the belief that you could succeed in America regardless of who you were.

Even murderous gang bosses achieved stardom. The most famous of all was Al Capone - the gangster boss who all but controlled Chicago. His fame rivaled that of Hollywood's superstars.

Station 5

The Lost Generation

The "Lost Generation" is a term which refers to the generation of young people who came of age during and shortly after World War I, alternatively known as the World War I generation. In Europe, they are mostly known as the "Generation of 1914," for the year World War I began. In France, the country in which many expatriates settled, they were sometimes called the Génération au Feu, the "generation in flames." The term "lost generation" was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. The novel epitomizes the post-war expatriate generation. In that volume, Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron.

In A Moveable Feast, which was published after Hemingway and Stein were both dead and after a literary feud that lasted much of their life, Hemingway reveals that the phrase was actually originated by the garage owner who serviced Stein's car. When a young mechanic failed to repair the car in a way satisfactory to Stein, the garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-twenties to thirties, the men who had been through World War I, whom he considered a "lost generation"—une génération perdue. Stein, in telling Hemingway the story, added, "That is what you are. That's what you all are...all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation."

This generation included distinguished artists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Waldo Peirce, Alan Seeger, and Erich Maria Remarque.

Station 6

Consumerism, Installment Plans, and Advertising

Mass-produced consumer goods like automobiles and ready-to-wear clothes were not new to the 1920s, nor were advertising or mail-order catalogues. But something was new about Americans' relationship with manufactured products, and it was accelerating faster than it could be defined. Not only did the latest goods become necessities, consumption itself became a necessity, it seemed. Was that good for America? Yes, said some—people can live in unprecedented comfort and material security. Not so fast, said others—can we predict where consumerism will take us before we're inextricably there?

Manufacturers realized they could expand their profits if they could grow their markets and so installment selling was introduced. The increased production volumes reduced the unit cost of items making them more affordable, and easy terms made for easy sales.

Two strategies that were used by advertisers to drive sales were largely targeted at stay-at-home wives. The first was the time-saving factor of new appliances. Advertisers appealed to housewives to free themselves up from the drudgery of housework and have more leisure time by using mechanical devices to speed up labor-intensive tasks. The second was that savings in costs from using new and improved products would leave more disposable income which could then be spent on life’s luxuries. Processed food advertisements also stressed the time saved in food preparation.

The 1920s was a decade of increasing conveniences for the middle class. New products made household chores easier and led to more leisure time. Products previously too expensive became affordable. New forms of financing allowed every family to spend beyond their current means. Advertising capitalized on people's hopes and fears to sell more and more goods.

Station 7

Cultural Movements of 1920’s

Art Deco

Art Deco was a dominant style in design and architecture of the 1920s. Originating in Europe, it spread throughout western Europe and North America in the mid-1920s. In the United States, New York City's Chrysler Building typified the Art Deco style, which was characterized by pure and geometric forms. Artists often drew inspiration from nature and initially favored curved lines, though rectilinear designs would become increasingly popular. In Europe, the 1920s also saw the emergence of Expressionism and Surrealism. German Expressionism began before World War I and exerted a strong influence throughout the 1920s. However, many artists began to oppose Expressionist tendencies as the decade advanced.

Dadaism

Dada began in Zurich during World War I and became an international phenomenon. Dada artists met and formed groups of like-minded peers in Paris, Berlin, Cologne, and New York City. In Germany, Richard Huelsenbeck established the Berlin group, whose members included Jean Arp, John Heartfield, Wieland Hertzfelde, Johannes Baader, Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, and Hannah Hoch. Machines, technology and Cubist elements were features of their work.

Surrealism

Surrealism was a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s and influenced visual art and writing. Surrealist works featured elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions, and non sequitur. Many Surrealist artists and writers regarded their work as the material expression of the movement's philosophy. The movement's leader, André Breton, emphasized that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of Dada activities during World War I and was centered in Paris. From the 1920s onward, Surrealism spread around the globe and impacted the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries. The movement also informed political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

Station 8

Radio Fever

Commercial radio in America had humble beginnings. Frank Conrad, an engineer for Westinghouse, set up an amateur radio station above his garage in a Pittsburgh suburb. Since the wireless technology was developed by Marconi in the late 19th century, thousands of enthusiasts across the world experimented with the new toy. After World War I, Conrad began broadcasting a variety of programming from his "station." High school music groups performed, phonograph records were played, and news and baseball scores were reported. Conrad had dramatically improved the transmitter, and soon hundreds of people in the Pittsburgh area were sending requests for air time. The bosses of Westinghouse knew that Conrad was on to something and convinced him to make his hobby commercially profitable.

On the night of November 2, 1920, Conrad and his Westinghouse associates announced that Warren G. Harding had defeated James Cox to become the next President. The message was heard as far north as New Hampshire and as far south as Louisiana. The federal government granted the call letters KDKA to the Pittsburgh station and a new industry was born. For nearly a year, KDKA monopolized the airwaves. But competition came fast and furious; by the end of 1922, there were over 500 such stations across the United States. The federal government exercised no regulation over the nascent enterprise, and the result was complete chaos. Stations fought over call letters and frequencies, each trying to outbroadcast the closest competitor. Finally in 1927, Congress created the Federal Radio Commission to restore order.

One of the great attractions to the radio listener was that once the cost of the original equipment was covered, radio was free. Stations made money by selling air time to advertisers. The possibility of reaching millions of listeners at once had advertising executives scrambling to take advantage. By the end of the decade advertisers paid over $10,000 for an hour of premium time.

The Radio Corporation of America created a new dimension to the venture in 1926. By licensing telephone lines, RCA created America's first radio network and called it the National Broadcasting Company. For the first time, citizens of California and New York could listen to the same programming simultaneously. Regional differences began to dissolve as the influence of network broadcasting ballooned. Americans listened to the same sporting events and took up the same fads. Baseball games and boxing matches could now reach those far away from the stadiums and arenas. A mass national entertainment culture was flowering.

Station 9

FOREIGN POLICY: WILSONIAN IDEALISM AND WWI

The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson was characterized by an approach to foreign policy that historians have named Wilsonian idealism. Historians have also called Wilson's approach to foreign policy Missionary Diplomacy because Wilson based his political thinking on the religious and ethical beliefs of Presbyterian theology. In the “real world,” of course, it was not always possible to live out these ideals.

In theory, Wilson was anti-expansionist--America ’s mission in world was not to obtain wealth and power or to bully other nations into doing what suited our agenda. Rather, the U.S. mission was to fulfill a Divine Plan to bring democracy and stability to the world. He adopted a version of what has been called "American Exceptionalism."

In Wilson’s view, the U.S. should intervene militarily only for the highest of moral purposes—to promote stability and democracy in our hemisphere. Using this ideology, Wilson intervened repeatedly in our hemisphere—in Santo Domingo, Cuba, Haiti, and the Mexican Revolution, he repeatedly sent in U.S. troops when he judged these countries' actions inappropriate. He was also drawn into WWI, again, for the highest of ideals.

Wilson shattered one of the most sacred of traditions by engaging in a distant European war. To galvanize the country Wilson declared the twin goals of “A war to end war” and a crusade “to make the world safe for democracy”— America did not fight for riches or territorial conquest. Holding aloft the torch of idealism, the president fired up the public mind to a fever pitch.

Americans bought into Wilson’s ideas during the war, but in the next election, Americans elected Warren G. Harding. It was obvious that Americans had grown tired of such high and lofty ideals. Harding’s promised Americans a ‘return to normalcy’ after the war.