Transcript America`s History Seventh Edition

Presidential Bio
Warren G.
Harding
1921-1923
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
A. Racial Strife
1. White Violence
a) African Americans were determined to achieve
citizenship rights after World War I
b) return of black war veterans and increase of black
migrants to the North led to backlash by whites
c) lynchings in the South rose (48 in 1917, 78 in 1919);
several black men were lynched in uniform
d) lynching in Rosewood, Florida, in 1921 led to black
residents arming themselves, mobs of whites burned
their houses and attacked black citizens with no
intervention by police.
2. Competition
a) Large numbers of blacks, immigrants,
and whites seeking work and housing
increased tension in northern cities
b) deadly riots in East St. Louis (1917) and
Chicago (1919)
c) an alleged rape in Tulsa, Oklahoma, led
to a white mob (aided by the National
Guard) burning 35 blocks of
Greenwood, Oklahoma, and killing
several dozen blacks.
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
B. Erosion of Labor Rights
1. National War Labor Board
a) Increased workers’ expectations of what employers could do
for them; postwar conditions changed, workers frustrated
b) during 1919 one in five U.S. workers went on strike; U.S. Steel
hired Mexican and black workers to break strikes; new
industries sought to hire nonunion employees.
2. Public employees
a) In 1919, Boston police force went on strike over the right to
form a union
b) Governor Coolidge fired the entire force and was
supported by the public and by antilabor Supreme Court
rulings
c) union membership fell from 5.1 million (1920) to 3.6 million
(1929).
3. Welfare capitalism
a) Henry Ford and some other employers took on some
responsibility for employees’ well-being, providing
a)
b)
c)
d)
health insurance
old-age pensions
athletic facilities
paid vacations
b) The hope was that this would build a loyal workforce
and head off labor unrest
c) these plans covered only 5 percent of industrial
workforce.
Presidential Bio
•Calvin
Coolidge
•1923-1929
I. Conflicted Legacies of World War I
C. The Red Scare
1. Bolsheviks
a) Fear of Russian Bolsheviks grew in the United States,
coinciding with the rising cost of living (up 80 percent between
1917 and 1919)
b) some new immigrants were socialists
c) U.S. Communist Party was small (fewer than 70,000 people)
but the Bolsheviks’ founding of the Third International
(Comintern) in 1919 increased fears among Americans that
they would seek a revolution in the United States.
2. Palmer raids
a) In April 1919, 34 mail bombs were sent to
government officials
b) in June a bomb exploded outside the home of
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
c) Palmer established an antiradicalism division in the
Justice Department (FBI) and named J. Edgar
Hoover to direct it
d) in November, raids of radical organizations began;
raids peaked in January 1920 with the arrest of
6,000 radicals; situation abated by summer.
3. Sacco and Vanzetti
• In May 1920, Nicola Sacco (shoemaker) and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti (fish peddler) were arrested in
Massachusetts for the murder of two men during a
holdup
• these self-proclaimed anarchists were convicted
and sentenced to death despite lack of evidence
and clear bias of prosecutor.
II. Politics in the 1920s
A. Women in Politics
1. Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy
Act
a) Progressive women hoped voting rights would
lead to passage of important legislation in the
1920s
b) this act provided federal money for medical
clinics, prenatal education, and visiting nurses
c) first time Congress gave money directly to states
to administer social welfare
d) critics claimed it would create socialized
medicine, ended in late 1920s.
2. Equal Rights Amendment
a) In 1923, Alice Paul of the National Woman’s Party
persuaded congressional allies to consider an
Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution
which stated:
i.
“men and women shall have equal rights throughout
the United States;”
b) opponents objected on the basis that it would
threaten recently won protective legislation for
women.
3. Women’s International League
for Peace and Freedom
a) International peace organization
created in 1919
b)Jane Addams was a founding
member
c) protested imperialism and the
negative repercussions of militarism
d)criticized during Red Scare.
II. Politics in the 1920s
B. Republicans and Business
1. Warren Harding
a) Ohio senator who promised normalcy; won in a landslide
over James Cox
b) appointed Herbert Hoover as secretary of commerce;
died of a heart attack in August 1923
c) scandals revealed, included leasing of oil reserves to
private companies (Teapot Dome scandal).
2. Calvin Coolidge
a) Wanted limited government, isolationism, and tax cuts
for businesses
b) Republicans did not want to continue most
progressive measures from the 1910s, did not
enforce antitrust laws.
II. Politics in the 1920s
C. Dollar Diplomacy
1. Foreign affairs
a) All three Republican presidents wanted private banks to
make loans to foreigners, hoping to stimulate the U.S.
economy by increasing demand for products
b) banks wanted government to ensure that loans would
be paid back, even by unstable governments
c) banks gave loans with conditions such as oversight by
bank commissions and military force by the United
States;
d) U.S. Marine occupation of Nicaragua, Dominican
Republic, and Haiti began as part of forced repayment
e) Americans saw these lands as “possessions.”
2. On the defensive
a) Critics denounced loan guarantees and
military intervention as dollar diplomacy
b) African Americans criticized American
involvement in Haiti
c) WILPF visitors to Haiti in 1926 claimed that
U.S. soldiers were exploiting Haitian
women
d) calls for isolationism forced presidents to
defend these foreign relationships.
II. Politics in the 1920s
D. Culture Wars
1. Prohibition
a) Rural and native-born Protestants wanted prohibition,
aided by calls that drinking German beer was
“unpatriotic” during World War I
b) Eighteenth Amendment passed in 1917 and ratified by
1920
c) prohibited manufacture, sale, and transport of intoxicating
liquors.
2. Evolution in the Schools
• State and local school boards in some areas wanted to
mandate school curricula based on Biblical teachings
• Tennessee took the lead on this by outlawing the teaching
of any theory that did not hold Biblical teachings central to
the existence of humans
• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) intervened in the
case of John Scopes (high school biology teacher) who
faced a jail sentence for teaching evolution
• press called case “the monkey trial;” jury took eight
minutes to find Scopes guilty, Tennessee Supreme Court
later overturned.
II. Politics in the 1920s
D. Culture Wars (cont.)
3. Nativism
a) Fears about unrestricted immigration by native-born Protestants
who believed them to be the cause of problems in United States;
Catholics and Jews were targets of hostility
b) Coolidge: “America must be kept American;” arguments that
immigrants undermined Christianity and imported anarchism and
socialism
c) the National Origins Act (1924) used the 1890 census to determine
how many people could enter from individual nations; further
restricted immigration from Europe in 1929
d) immigrants from Western Hemisphere were unrestricted leading to
increasing numbers of Latin American immigrants, including 1
million Mexicans
e) Great Depression led to cuts in immigration from Mexico; hostility
towards Asians grew in California which passed a law making it
illegal for noncitizens to own property.
4. The National Klan
• Following Birth of a Nation (1915 film) the KKK
grew, targeting Jews and Catholics
• ran for political offices and won; more than 3
million members at height.
5. The Election of 1928
a) Catholic Governor Al Smith (D-NY) ran against
Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce
b) opponents: “No Governor can kiss the papal ring
and get within gunshot of the White House
c) Hoover won 58 percent of popular vote and 444
electoral votes.
III. Intellectual Modernism
A. Harlem in Vogue (Black population of New York
tripled between 1910 and 1920; black artists and
writers migrated to Harlem.)
1. Black Writers and Artists
a) Writers like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Jean
Toomer published works that championed black pride
b) Zora Neale Hurston documented black folklore, songs,
and religious beliefs that she incorporated into short
stories and novels.
2. Jazz
• Most visible piece of Harlem culture for most
Americans; started in New Orleans before World
War I
• combination of blues, ragtime, and other musical
forms; improvised solo made trumpeter Louis
Armstrong a star
• radio helped grow the nationwide popularity of jazz
• 1920s saw advent of companies producing race
records for black audiences, records for immigrant
communities in native languages.
3. Marcus Garvey and the UNIA
a) Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
formed in 1920s in Harlem
b) Garvey: born in Jamaica, advocated black
separatism, claimed to have 4 million followers
c) published Negro World and sought to create a
steamship company to bring blacks back to Africa,
Black Star Line
d) Garvey imprisoned for mail fraud and deported in
1925
e) symbol of emerging pan-Africanism: idea that people
of African descent had a common destiny and should
cooperate in political action.
III. Intellectual Modernism
B. Critiquing American Life
1. The Lost Generation
a) Post-World War I voices proclaimed growing dissent: Gertrude
Stein called those who survived the war the Lost Generation
b) John Dos Passos criticized the war in The Three Soldiers
(1921), as did Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms
(1929).
2. The dark side
a) Examinations of the dark side of human beings: Eugene
O’Neill in Desire Under the Elms (1924) and The Emperor
Jones (1920)
b) Sinclair Lewis criticized conformity in Babbitt (1922); Lewis
was first American to win Nobel Prize for literature in 1930
c) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) criticized the
pursuit of pleasure and wealth.
IV. From Boom to Bust
A. The Postwar Economy
1. Corporate monopolies
a) By the 1920s, corporations were the major form of
business in the United States
b) a few major producers were at the top of most
markets (oligopoly)
c) mergers between banks made Wall Street the
financial center of the United States
d) post-World War I inflation was followed by two years
of recession with 10 percent unemployment
e) between 1922 and 1929, national per capita income
rose.
2. Languishing industries
a) Despite boom, U.S. economy had weak
agricultural sector due to falling prices
b) coal and textile industries languished for
similar reasons
c) rural Americans did not benefit from
prosperity.
IV. From Boom to Bust
B. Consumer Culture
1. The Automobile
a) Mass production led to Americans spending $2.58 billion on
automobiles in 1929
b) other industries were stimulated: steel, petroleum, chemical,
rubber, and glass; suburbs grew and new shopping centers
were developed
c) hurt the railroad industry; changed the way people spent leisure
time.
2. Hollywood
a) By 1910, moviemaking industry was growing in California on
cheap land
b) young people followed the fashions of movie actors and
actresses, including flapper Clara Bow
c) flappers represented social and sexual emancipation for
women.
IV. From Boom to Bust
C. The Coming of the Great Depression
1. Causes
a) Too much lending ($7 billion per year by 1927)
b) drop in consumer spending as credit became more
difficult to get
c) global economic problems
d) adherence to the gold standard, which the British and
Germans had abandoned with some positive results
in 1931.
2. Effects
a) During the first four years, industrial production fell 37
percent, construction fell 78 percent, and, by 1932,
unemployment had reached 24 percent
b) Americans cut back dramatically and falling demand
deepened the crisis; bank failures
c) desperate people turned to private charity for aid
d) couples delayed marriage
e) birthrate fell to a historic low
f) African Americans were affected more deeply than
whites.