Transcript File - APUSH

1920s
1918-1929
The End of the War
• The first American troops arrived in France in
the Spring 1918
• The doughboys participated in the last great
counteroffensive which marked the start of the
end for Germany
• Initially the Americans were under the command
of the French but they were later assigned to
General John J. (Black Jack) Pershing
• Before the end of the war President Wilson
formulated his Fourteen Points as the basis for
peace
• Germany signed the armistice on November 11,
1918 mainly because of the potential of the
American forces
• Wilson became a hero to the people of a liberated
Europe
• During the war partisan politics did not afflict
Congress as the country united behind the war
effort
• In 1918 Wilson asked for a Democratic victory,
but the Republicans ended up with a narrow
advantage
• Wilson went to Paris for the peace talks and left
the country in the hands of a Republican
Congress
• Wilson was the first president to travel to Europe
but he alienated the Republicans by not inviting
one republican to the Peace Conference
• The chairman of the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations, Henry Cabot Lodge of
Massachusetts was particularly angered
• Lodge and Wilson shared a mutual hatred
• The Paris Conference was dominated by the Big
Four – Wilson, Lloyd George of Britain, Orlando
of Italy, and Clemenceau of France
• The matter which caused the greatest concern
was stopping the spread of Communism
• Wilson’s main goal was to establish a League of
Nations
• He imagined an organization of representative
who would meet to discuss world problems
• When Wilson returned to America he found that
few, especially among the Republicans, shared his
enthusiasm for a League of Nations
• The Republicans declared they would not
approve the League in its current form
• Opposition from the Republicans weakened
Wilson’s diplomatic power in Paris
• When he did return to Paris he found that the
opinion of the major powers had become much
more aggressive
The Versailles Treaty
•
•
•
•
France was determined to occupy the GermanRhineland and the Saar Valley
Wilson persuaded the French to accept
occupation of the region by the League of
Nations for 15 years
France also received a security pledge from
Britain and America – both countries promised
to help if Germany re-armed
The final treaty was given to the Germans to
sign in June 1919
• When the Germans saw the treaty they were
shocked to see so few of Wilson’s Fourteen
Points, which had been the basis under which
they had surrendered
• Wilson had been forced to compromise his
original ideals to keep the bickering Europeans
happy
• As soon as he returned to America, Wilson was
confronted with a hostile Congress
• Isolationists wanted no part of foreign treaties
• Some thought the agreement did not punish
Germany enough for starting the war
• Irish-Americans, German-Americans and
Italian-Americans all hated Wilson
The End of Wilson
• Wilson still felt confident the Versailles Treaty
would be ratified. Even Lodge only wanted to
make the treaty more “American”
• The Treaty became bogged down in Senate as
Lodge examined every page
• Wilson set off around the country to muster
public support – even though he was advised
against such a move by his own physicians
• While in Colorado in September, 1919, Wilson
collapsed from exhaustion
• He was quickly returned to Washington, but
suffered a stroke only days later
• Wilson remained out of circulation for over six
months
• Lodge saw the opportunity to step up. Lodge had
failed to get the Treaty amended but now was his
chance
• Critics were especially annoyed over Article X
which promised the United States would give aid
to any country that faced external aggression
• Lodge attached a series of amendment to the
original treaty so the Republicans could claim
some of the credit
• Wilson told the Democrats to vote against the
amended treaty
• The treaty was defeated in the Senate
• The public was angry and upset that the Senate
could not agree on a simple resolution and they
demanded a second ballot
• The Democrats would have to accept the
amended packet otherwise the whole treaty
would fail
• Wilson refused to compromise and ordered the
Democrats to once again vote against the
amended treaty
• The treaty died in the Senate
The Election of 1920
• The Republicans eventually selected Senator
Warren G. Harding of Ohio with Massachusetts
Governor Calvin Coolidge as his running mate
• Coolidge had made a name for himself by
defeating the police strike in Boston
• Democrats nominated Governor James M. Cox
of Ohio with Franklin D. Roosevelt as his
running mate
• In the first election that included women,
(Nineteenth Amendment – 1920) the Republicans
won 404-127
• Harding gained over 7 million more popular
votes
• Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran as a Third party
from the Atlanta penitentiary and gained almost
1 million votes
• The public had shown they were tired of
Wilsonian politics and European affairs – they
wanted what Harding promised – a return to
normalcy
• Unfortunately Harding was a poor choice and
proved to be an even worse president, mainly
because of his poor choice of appointments
The Red Scare
•
•
•
•
In 1917 the Bolshevik Revolution forced Russia
out of the war, changed the Russian
government, created a small Communist party
in America, and caused fear and concern among
non-Communist nations
In the wake of the war the country was gripped
by a series of strikes
Most people assumed the strikes were part of a
Communist/Bolshevik plot
The “red scare” of 1919 created political
careers, ruined some lives, caused pain and
anguish to anguish to many innocent people
• In 1919 a bomb exploded at the home of Attorney
General A. Mitchell Palmer (the Fighting
Quaker) who had been leading the campaign
against possible Bolsheviks
• The explosion caused Palmer to increase his
efforts and gained him enormous public support
• In December 1919 the government deported 249
suspected aliens and Bolshevik sympathizers on
the Buford
• The following year another bomb exploded on
Wall Street and killed nearly forty people
• Many states joined together to pass “anti-red”
legislation
• Critics of the paranoia protested that basic
American rights were been ignored
• But the red scare served the conservatives and
businessmen well – they could now complain
about troublemakers and unions and associate
them with the Bolsheviks
• Unions found it hard to even exist. Any appeal
for a union was seen as un-American
• The most notorious case of anti-foreign sentiment
was the Sacco-Vanzetti case in Massachusetts
Sacco and Vanzetti
• Nicola Sacco a factory worker and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti a fish seller were convicted in 1921 of
murdering a Massachusetts paymaster and his
guard
• The defendants were of Italian descent and
known as anarchists and atheists
• The case lasted six years before both men were
convicted and sentenced to death
• They were executed in 1927
Prohibition
• One of the greatest social experiments in
American history was the attempt to prohibit
alcohol in the 1920s
• The Eighteenth Amendment (1919) (and the
Volstead Act) tried to abolish the manufacturing,
sale, and transportation of alcohol
• The Act was very popular in the South and the
West, but in the East there was strong opposition
• But the idea was flawed because many people,
especially foreign-born Americans found was
around the law
• The authorities had not really considered how to enforce
a law that so many people opposed and that had been a
large part of normal society
• Speakeasies with secret passwords and tiny windows
sprouted in major cities
• Illegal alcohol was shipped from the West Indies or from
Canada by gangsters determined to supply the thirsty
market – and make a fortune
• Bootleggers produced homemade alcohol that often
caused blindness or death
• But there were some benefits to the Prohibition era
• Absenteeism from work decreased and people saved
more money
• The “noble experiment” failed because so many people
simply refused to accept the law
Isolationism
• The large number of immigrants that were
entering the country from Europe worried many
people
• The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 was attempt
to limit immigration by only allowing a certain
quota from each country – 3% of that nationality
living in America in 1910
• Favored those from Southern and Eastern
Europe
• Congress approved the Immigration Act of 1924
which cut the quota of foreigners from 3% to 2%
and changed the date to 1890 from 1910
• This new changed favored immigrants from
Northern Europe at the expense of those from the
South and East who called the legislation
discriminatory
• Nativist believed a stronger, better America could
be attained though people with light hair and
blue eyes
• The Act also stopped completely the immigration
of Japanese
• Exempt from the quota system were Canadian
and those from Latin America – because they
were needed to take the lowest paying jobs
• Act ended the belief that all were welcome
The Ku Klux Klan
• Another element of the anti-foreign campaign
was the reemergence of the KKK
• The KKK had been around since the middle of
the nineteenth century, but after the Civil War it
had become known as an antiblack movement
• In the 1920s, the new KKK reinforced the
nativist spirit that was sweeping the country –
they were anti-foreign, antiblack, anti-Jewish,
anti-Communist, anti-Catholic, antiinternational, anti-birth control, anti-drinking,
and anti-gambling
• They were pro-American, pro-Anglo-Saxon, proProtestant – they were ultra-conservative and
dedicated to maintaining traditional American
morals, standards, and culture
• The new KKK had a great deal of support,
especially in the southern “Bible Belt” states
• At its height of popularity it claimed to have over
5 million members
• The organization collapsed in the late twenties
when it was investigated for corruption and
embezzlement
• The KKK was a realization of what can happen
when people are confronted with social change
The Fordney-McCumber Tariff
(1922)
• Mellon also wanted higher tariffs
• The Fordney-McCumber Tariff increased tariffs
against chemicals and metal products that were
been imported from Germany
• During the war the United States had moved
from a creditor to a debtor nation
• The tariff made it harder for European nations to
sell in America and consequently prevented them
from making money and repaying their war debt
• Harding appointed Republicans dedicated to his
ideals to all the main committees
• In 1923 news was leaked about members of the
administration robbing the Veteran’s Bureau
• The official ran away to Europe
• Other cronies were charged with a variety of
crimes
• The biggest scandal was the Teapot Dome scandal
Crime
• Prohibition created untold opportunities for
criminals to make money
• In many major cities like Chicago, virtual gang
wars erupted as rival crime bosses competed for
the millions of dollars associated with alcohol
• The most famous crime boss was “Scarface” Al
Capone who controlled a crime empire that was
worth millions of dollars
• The gangsters were hard to catch and harder to
prosecute
• Capone was eventual found guilty of tax evasion
The “Ohio Gang”
• Many of Harding’s appointments were members
of a group called the “Ohio Gang”
• Harding met with the “Ohio Gang” on a regular
basis and often in places outside the White House
• They earned a reputation as drinking, women,
and gambling even during a time of Prohibition
• Once in office the administration started
dismantling Progressive legislation, especially the
social reforms
• Harding was able to appoint four Supreme Court
justices
McNary-Haugen Bill
• Farmers suffered in the post-war years as they
could not sell their products
• Many looked to farmer cooperatives and
associations to protect their interests and give
them greater political leverage
• In 1924 Senator McNary and Representative
Haugen introduced a bill to help the framers
• The idea was to dump surplus crop on the world
market to raise domestic prices
• In 1927 and 1928 the bill passed both Houses but
was vetoed by Coolidge
• It was clear that the administration was probusiness
• Secretary of Treasury Mellon reduced
government spending and lowered taxes mostly
for the rich
• Mellon believed that by giving money to the rich
they would have more to invest and that would
stimulate the economy
• In 1921 he persuaded Congress to pass the
Budget and Accounting Act, which created the
Bureau of Budget
• The Revenue Act of 1926 lowered taxes even
more for the rich
Teapot Dome
• Oil reserves under the Teapot Rock in Wyoming
had been set aside by Albert Fall of the Interior
Department for the naval oil reserves
• Fall signed contracts with private companies
letting them use the oil reserves
• Fall’s standard of living skyrocketed including a
“loan” of $400,000 from the oil companies which
was delivered in a bag
• Harding claimed to have had no knowledge of the
extent of the scandals, but he obviously knew
there was a problem
• In 1923 Harding went to Alaska Territory and on
the way back he stopped in Seattle
• He suffered food poisoning and died
• The public was distraught as they didn’t know
the extent of the problems
• Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president
• Coolidge promised to return the White House to
the Gilded Age philosophies
• Even more than Harding, “silent Cal” advocated
supporting big business “the man who builds a
factory builds a temple”
• He distanced himself from the scandals and
became the Republican nominee for 1924
The Election of 1924
• The Democrats were divided and nominated
John Davis a Wall Street lawyer
• A farmer-labor coalition third party appeared
• The Progressive party led by Robert La Follette
from Wisconsin was backed by the Socialist party
and the American Federation of Labor
• Coolidge accused La Follette of wanting to turn
America into a communist and socialist state
• Coolidge won easily with Davis only winning the
South – the Progressives gained the most third
party votes
Scope Monkey Trial (1925)
• By the 1920s many states required students to
wait until they were 16 before graduating
• The type of education and the quality of
education had changed dramatically as new
philosophies swept the teaching field
• But there was always an issue about how to teach
evolution
• Fundamentalists believed the one true way was to
reinforce biblical teachings about creationism
• Science leaned more toward Darwin and
evolution
• Several states, including Tennessee, passed laws
prohibiting the teaching of evolution
• In 1925, at Dayton Tennessee, a high school
biology teacher, John T. Scopes was indicted for
teaching evolution
• Scopes was defended represented by the
American Civil Liberties Union and by famed
trial lawyer Clarence Darrow an agnostic
• The Fundamentalists hired former presidential
candidate William Jennings Bryan to lead the
prosecution
• Bryan defending creationism was made to look
foolish in the cross examination
• In the end Scopes was found guilty and fined
$100 – the fine was eventually set aside on a
technicality
• The Fundamentalists had won the case but in
doing so they had weakened their own argument
for teaching creationism
Foreign Policy
• Washington Naval Conference (1925) - attempted to
prevent a naval arms race among United States, Britain,
and Japan. Also included France, Italy, the
Netherlands, China, and Portugal and created 3 treaties
• 1. The Five-Power Pact (1922) - U.S., G.B., Japan, Italy,
and France agreed to build no more warships for 10
years. Also limited naval tonnage:
5 tons for U.S. and G.B.
3 tons for Japan
1.75 tons for France and Italy
• 2. Nine-Power Pact - Promised to maintain China’s
territorial integrity and support the “open door” policy
• 3. Four-Power Pact - U.S., G.B., France, and Japan
agreed to respect each other’s rights in the Pacific and
promised to settle disputes through negotiations
Dawes Plan (1924)
• After World War I the European nations owed $26
billion
• Hyperinflation in Germany (1923-4) caused them to
default on their payments forcing other nations to
default
• The French occupied the Ruhr - the Germans stopped
working in protest
• American banker Charles Dawes negotiated large loans
from American banks to help Germany
• Britain and France reduced the amount of reparations
over 5 years
• Geneva Naval Disarmament Conference (1927) Initiated by Coolidge to construct smaller warships, but
only attended by U.S., G.B., and Japan. No agreement
was reached
• Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) - Negotiated by French
Foreign Minister Briand and Secretary of State Kellogg.
It outlawed war as an instrument of national policy.
Signed by 48 countries, but no means of enforcement
• Young Plan (1929) - Reworked the Dawes Plan to reduce
the payments even more and allow Germany even more
time
Consumerism
• Business and industry saw the election of
Coolidge as a vindication of their practices
• The American economy changed dramatically as
consumerism became the order of the day
• Leisure and advertising became huge enterprises
as the economy moved from thrift and saving to
spending and consumption
• During the first part of the decade many people
invested in real estate, especially in Florida
• People eager to make money gambled with
property, but in 1926 the bubble burst
• Treasury Secretary Mellon reduced more taxes to
keep the economy flowing
• People shifted their money to Wall Street and
purchased stock on margin
• For a small payment investors could buy stocks
with a promise of paying later
• Between 1927 and 1929 the number of broker
loans doubled
• But consumption was reaching saturation point
The Election of 1928
• Coolidge decided not to seek re-election in 1928
• The Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover
• The Democrats nominated Governor Alfred
Smith of New York
• Hoover represented big business and middle
America
• Smith, the son of immigrants and a Catholic
represented big cities
• Hoover won 444-87 in a vindication of
Republicanism
• 1929 promised continued prosperity, but there
were some signs of problems
• Also in 1929 Congress passed the Agricultural
Marketing Act, which created the Federal Farm
Board to allow loans to farmers
• The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 sent duties to
an all-time high
• Over 1,000 economist petitioned Hoover to veto
the bill as it would hurt consumers
• Hoover ignored the appeal
Life in the Roaring Twenties
• Life in the twenties was based on a fast-paced,
big city mentality. Living in small towns with
small town values was frowned upon
• In 1920 Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street about
the cramped life of a prairie town
• F. Scott Fitzgerald dubbed the twenties the Jazz
Age symbolized by experimentation with music
and sexuality
• African and European music blended to form
jazz which became popular with the younger
crowd
• New music meant new dances and the gyrations
of the Charleston and the Black Bottom became
all the rage
• The development of the radio allowed people all
over the country to be connected
• Now ideas from one area could be spread almost
immediately across the country
• People listened to jazz and rag time, but even
more popular were sporting events
• The movies became the entertainment of choice
as people thrilled at action on the big screen
• In 1927 the introduction of sound increased the
popularity of movies
• One of the biggest changes witnessed during the
decade came from a shift in morality
• Traditional values of what was acceptable were
cast aside as the twenties created a “new woman”
• Novels, magazines, and the movies quickly
showed the public what life was going to be like
for these independent females who wore make
up, smoked, drank, and were often kissed in
public.
• At the start of the decades skirts were expected to
be just off the ground. By 1927 skirt length was
at the knee.
• The women who wore these short skirts were
called “flappers” and they came to represent the
new feminism of the twenties
• The most controversial issue of the 1920s was
birth control
• Margaret Sanger promoted the use of birth
control in 1912.
• Sanger opened the first family- planning clinic in
New York in 1916 by asking women if they could
afford to keep having large families?
• By 1920 women found themselves able to gain
access to contraception
• In 1921 she started the American Birth Control
League
Women’s Right
• Women had supported the plight of emancipation
and rights for the former slaves and many were
disappointed when they were not included in
legislation
• The women’s suffrage movement which had
started much earlier became a focal point in the
years prior to the 1920s
• In 1912 Alice Paul became the head of the
National American Woman Suffrage
Association’s Congressional Committee
• Paul was very militant and urged woman to go on
the offensive for their rights
• Carrie Chapman Catt became the head of the
National Suffrage Association in 1915
• In 1916 Alice Paul helped create the Woman’s
party which copied the tactics of British
suffragettes
• In 1917 Paul and some followers were arrested
for picketing the White House. In prison they
went on hunger strike
• President Wilson avoided the issue until 1916
when he supported women’s suffrage as part of
the Democratic platform
• In 1918 the “Anthony Amendment” passed the
House but failed in the Senate by 2 votes
• Eventually it was passed in 1919, but was not
ratified as the Nineteenth Amendment for
another 14 months
• In 1919 the League of Women Voters was formed
• After attained the franchise many women
stopped working for more rights
• Paul and the Woman’s party introduced an
Equal Rights Amendment into Congress in 1923,
but her amendment would not be adopted until
1972
African Americans
• Starting in roughly 1915 thousands of African
Americans migrated north to the cities to work in
the factories
• With the sudden and large increase in African
Americans there were some noticeable changes in
society, particularly in politics
• Blacks felt more inclined to participate in the
political process in the North
• In addition to an economic and political change
there was a social change
• The Harlem Renaissance was a rebirth of the
black cultural spirit
• Claude McKay wrote Harlem Shadows (1922)was
one of the first writers to participate in the
Renaissance spirit
• James Weldon Toomer and Langston Hughes
became widely read black authors
• There was also a new spirit of “Negro
nationalism” which allowed people like Marcus
Garvey to express the importance of black
culture and the uniqueness of being black
• Garvey formed the Universal Negro
Improvement Association in 1916
• Garvey told blacks to liberate themselves from
the whites and his words found a receptive
audience in the racially-heated twenties
• Not all black leaders agreed with Garvey’s
rhetoric – W.E.B. DuBois called Garvey an
enemy of the Negro race
• Garvey spoke at the UNIA convention in 1920
and told blacks that their best hope was to leave
America and move back to Africa
• He was found guilty of mail fraud and sentenced
to prison in 1925 where he stayed until President
Coolidge pardoned him in 1927 and sent him to
Jamaica
• The organization Garvey started would reemerge
much later in the form of the Black Power
Movement
• A more influential organization was the National
association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) which was founded in 1910
• The organization focused on getting public
attention on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments – the Amendments intended to
allow the black man to vote
• Gradually through the work of the Supreme
Court the NAACP was able to make significant
changes to the voting laws
The Automobile
• The policies of Treasury Secretary Andrew
Mellon favored those who were willing to invest
and invest heavily
• Capitalists looked for industrialists and
industrialists looked for a product and a market
• The greatest symbol of American ingenuity was
Henry Ford’s assembly line which turned out a
new car every 10 seconds
• Perhaps nothing symbolizes the 1920s and the
new culture of America than the automobile
• By the middle of the decade Ford’s Model T (the
Tin Lizzie) was cheap enough that most workers
could afford one
• By the end of the decade there were almost 30
million automobiles in the United States
• Thousands of new jobs were created to
accommodate the new automobile industry
• Production of rubber, glass, and steel all
increased dramatically – roads had to be laid –
motels appeared by the side of the road as did gas
stations
• Demand for oil was gripped the nation
• Once a luxury, the automobile became seen as a
necessity
• On a weekend American families would climb
into their cars and visit the countryside
• No longer were city dwellers confined to the cities
• Great areas of the country suddenly became
popular as tourism became a major industry
• Workers no longer had to live in the cities they
could travel to work, so living in the suburbs
became fashionable
Flight
• In 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright created a
plane that stayed in the air for 12 seconds – the
door to air travel had been kicked open
• During the First World War airplanes were
commonly seen above the battlefields – although
they were poorly used and referred to as “flying
coffins”
• After the war private companies started offering
travel by airplane and the first commercial
flights from New York to San Francisco started in
1920
• In 1927 Charles Lindbergh became the first man
to fly west to east across the Atlantic Ocean
• His plane the Spirit of St. Louis flew from new
York to Paris in a little over 33 hours –
Lindbergh was able to claim the $25,000 prize
Sports
• In the 1920s baseball became America’s game
• Babe Ruth, who had been sold by the Boston Red
Sox, became a living legend in New York playing
for the Yankees
• Yankee Stadium became commonly known as the
“house that Ruth built”
• In 1921 Jack Dempsey knocked out Georges
Carpentier in front of the first crowd to pay a
million dollars to see a fight
The Arts
• The first real movie was The Great Train Robbery,
made in 1913 and shown in theaters called
“nickelodeons” because they charged five-cents
• D. W. Griffith produced The Birth of a Nation in
1915 about the Ku Klux Klan during
Reconstruction was one of the first full-length
movies
• Southern California quickly became the center of
the movie making business
The Wall Street Crash
• By 1929 many advised caution but making money
seemed almost too easy
• The president even urged the Stock Market to
discourage speculation
• The Federal Reserve Board raised the interest
rate but with no effect
• In September prices dropped but it was seen as a
slight adjustment and not a problem
• October 29 became the most devastating single
day for the market
• People unable to meet their margin were forced
to sell at a loss
• During October over a third of the value was lost
• In September the New York Times stock average
was 452, in July 1932 it was 52!
• As prices fell companies started laying people off
and increasing unemployment
• Without work there was no income
• Banks started to close, farmers went bankrupt,
and factories closed
• The crash did not cause the Great Depression but
the policies of the government and the reluctance
of the administration to interfere with business
practices prevented any form of recovery