The New Era

1920s
A23
7.3.6
Life cover, July 1, 1926
Life cover, July 1, 1926

Life cover,
July 1, 1926

"One Hundred and

Forty-three Years of
LIBERTY and Seven
Years of PROHIBITION."
(Private Collection)

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

GUIDING
GUIDING QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS
What aspects of life created the
reputation of the “Roaring 20s”?
In what ways and to what degree
were the 1920s a period of tension
between new and changing
attitudes on the one hand and
traditional values on the other.
(Consider Race relations, immigration/ nativism, role of women, consumerism)
BUSINESS
BOOM
BUSINESS
BUSINESS PROSPERITY
PROSPERITY
ECONOMIC PROSPERITY:
productivity: up 50% Gross National
unemployment: 4-9-12%? Product, 1920-1930

real income: up 25%

standard of living: (where?) Unemployment, 1920-1930

indoor plumbing
central heating
electricity (2/3 by 1930)

CAUSES OF BUSINESS PROSPERITY:

 Increased productivity (scientific management, machinery)
 Increased use of oil and electricity
 Favorable government policy (tax breaks, antitrust)
Automobiles
Automobiles &&
Industrial
Industrial Expansion
Expansion
Henry Ford
1913: car=2 yrs wages
‘fordism’ 1929: 3 mos. wages

1913: 14 hours to build a new car

1928: New Ford off assembly line every 10 seconds Ford Highland Park assembly line, 1928
(From the Collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village)

“Trying out the new assembly line“ Detroit, 1913

Henry Ford (1835-1947)
Auto
Auto Manufacturing
Manufacturing
PROBLEMS
PROBLEMS FOR
FOR WORKERS
WORKERS
unions lose WWI gains:
open shops
company unions
injunctions
“welfare capitalism”
employment insecurity
PROBLEMS
PROBLEMS FOR FOR WORKERS
WORKERS
Income
Income Distribution,
Distribution, 1929
1929
1%
 40% of all U.S. families
5% lived on >$1,500 per year
– in poverty range

29%
65%

Source: Historical Statistics of the United

States, Colonial Times to 1970
PROBLEMS
PROBLEMS FOR
FOR FARMERS
FARMERS
Mechanization “parity”
Farm income down 66% McNary-Haugen Bill
Agricultural Marketing
Act (1929)

TILLING ONE ACRE OF LAND PRODUCING 100 BUSHELS OF WHEAT

1900: 90 mins. using 5 horses ON 5 ACRES
1929: 30 mins. using a 27-hp tractor 1890s: 40-50 labor hours
2000: 5 mins. using a 154-hp tractor 1930: 15-20 labor hours
SOCIETY,
CULTURE
& VALUES
Farm
Farm vs.
vs. Nonfarm
Nonfarm Population,
Population, 1880-
1880-
1980
1980
1920 CENSUS:
First time majority of
U.S. population in
urban areas (towns
2500 or greater)

1920: More workers

in factories than on
farms

1930: Still 44% live in

rural areas
 CONSUMERISM
CONSUMERISM
(electric) appliances
automobiles
advertising (image vs. utility)
buying on credit
chain stores

Consumer
Debt,
1920–1931

General Electric ad (Picture Research Consultants & Archives)

CONSUMERISM:
CONSUMERISM:
Impact
Impact of
of the
the Automobile
Automobile
Increase in sales:
1913 - 1.2 million registered; Passenger Car
1929 - 26.5 million registered Sales, 1920-1929
(=almost one per family)

Replaced the railroad as

the key promoter of
economic growth (steel,
glass, rubber, gasoline, highways)
Daily life: commuting,
shopping, traveling, “courting”
Filling Station, Maryland in 1921
Impact
Impact of
of the
the Automobile:
Automobile:
Trains
Trains and
and Automobiles,
Automobiles, 1900-1980
1900-1980

Jones, Created Equal

 Automobiles
Automobiles&&Consumerism
Consumerism

Dodge advertisement photo, 1933

< Ford ad: “Every family -- with even the most

modest income, can now afford a car of their own."
“Every family should have their own car. . .You live
but once and the years roll by quickly. Why wait for
tomorrow for things that you rightfully should enjoy
today?"
(Library of Congress)

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved

 Ford Motor Company
showroom 1925

Chevrolet
Advertisement
1925

CONSUMERISM
CONSUMERISM
& Automobiles
& Automobiles
July
July 4,
4, Nantasket
Nantasket Beach,
Beach, Massachusetts,
Massachusetts, early
early 1920s
1920s
MASS
MASS
CULTURE:
CULTURE: Radio
Radio
New mass medium
1920: First
commercial radio
station
By 1930: over 800
stations & 10
million radios
Networks: NBC
(1924), CBS (1927)

The Spread of
Radio, to 1939
MASS
MASS CULTURE:
CULTURE:
Movies
Movies
Movie “palaces”
“talkies” (1927)
Will Hays

(Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library)

80 million tickets sold per week by 1930

(population: 100 million)
MASS
MASS CULTURE:
CULTURE: Popular
Popular
Heroes
Heroes
“success ethic”
“self-made man”
Bruce Barton- The Man Nobody Knows
Thomas Edison
Charles Lindburgh

Charles Lindbergh (National Archives)

(Private Collection)
ROLE
ROLE OFOF WOMEN:
WOMEN:
the
the “New
“New Woman”
Woman”
the “New Woman”
“pink collar” jobs

Women’s fashions, 1920

Women in the Workforce,
1900-1940
ROLE
ROLE OF
OF WOMEN
WOMEN –– the
the “flapper”
“flapper”
the “flapper” – fact and myth
ROLE
ROLE OF
OF WOMEN:
WOMEN:
Women
Women and
and Politics
Politics
Impact of suffrage
League of Women Voters
National Women’s Party
Alice Paul
Margaret Sanger

Alice Paul

Sheppard-Towner Act
CHANGES IN LITERATURE
CHANGES IN LITERATURE &
& ART
ART
Literature
Literature
“lost generation”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sinclair Lewis
Ernest Hemingway
H.L. Mencken -
“booboisie”
Eugene O’Neill
F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
on the Riviera, 1926 (Stock Montage)

Eugene O’Neill
CHANGES IN LITERATURE
CHANGES IN LITERATURE &
& ART
ART
African
African Americans
Americans
Harlem Renaissance
Langston Hughes

I’ll Take My Stand

Langston Hughes
CHANGES IN LITERATURE
CHANGES IN LITERATURE &
& ART
ART
Jazz
Jazz
Jazz
“The Jazz Age”
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington

Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong & the Fate Marabel band, 1919
SOCIAL &
CULTURAL
CONFLICTS
Religion
Religion

“modernists”
“fundamentalism”
Scopes Trial
American Civil Liberties Union
Clarence Darrow
William Jennings Bryan
SOCIAL
SOCIAL &
& CULTURAL
CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
CONFLICTS:
Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition “wets and dries”
The noble experiment Al Capone

Government agents breaking up an illegal bar during Prohibition Alphonse “Scarface” Capone
SOCIAL
SOCIAL &
& CULTURAL
CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia
Xenophobia and
and Racial
Racial Unrest
Unrest
National Origin Number of
Immigrants and
Act of 1924 Countries of Origin,
1891-1920 and
1921-1940

Percentage of Population Foreign Born, 1850-1990

Immigration,
Immigration, 1921-1960
1921-1960
 SOCIAL
SOCIAL &
& CULTURAL
CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia
Xenophobia and
and Racial
Racial Unrest
Unrest
Communist International
3rd International Goal (1919):
promote worldwide communism
Red Scare
Palmer Raids (1920)

Police arrest
“suspected
Reds” in
Chicago,
1920

A. Mitchell Palmer’s Home bombed, 1920

 SOCIAL
SOCIAL &
& CULTURAL
CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia
Xenophobia and
and Racial
Racial Unrest
Unrest
Sacco &
Vanzetti

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1921 IS THIS THE EMBLEM?

HAVE A CHAIR! from The Daily Worker from The Daily Worker
 SOCIAL
SOCIAL &
& CULTURAL
CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia
Xenophobia and
and Racial
Racial Unrest
Unrest
Birth of a Nation - D.W. Griffith
“new” Ku Klux Klan
Leo Frank

Ku Klux Klan initiation, 1923. The Klan opposed all who were not “true Americans”. (c) 2000
IRC

(Picture Research Consultants & Archives)

Black
Black Population,
Population, 1920
1920
 Ku
Ku
Klux
Klux
Klan
Klan

Copyright
(mid-1920s)
1997 State
Historical
(Private
Society of
Collection)
Wisconsin
 Ku
Ku Klux
Klux
Klan
Klan

Ku Klux Klan parade in

Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 1926
BUSINESS
BUSINESS ––
FRIENDLY
FRIENDLY
GOVERNMENT
GOVERNMENT
BUSINESS
BUSINESS –– FRIENDLY
FRIENDLY
GOVERNMENT
GOVERNMENT
Warren G. Harding
“Return to normalcy”
Herbert Hoover
Andrew Mellon
The “Ohio Gang” Harding with Laddie, June 13, 1922
Teapot Dome Scandal

Albert B. Fall (left)

BUSINESS
BUSINESS –– FRIENDLY
FRIENDLY
GOVERNMENT
GOVERNMENT
Calvin Coolidge
“The business of
America is business”

President Calvin Coolidge Coolidge throwing out first pitch 1924

 BUSINESS
BUSINESS –– FRIENDLY
FRIENDLY
GOVERNMENT
GOVERNMENT
Herbert Hoover
Al Smith

Election Herbert Hoover

of 1928
Hoover,
Hoover,
Ford,
Ford, Edison,
Edison,
and
and Firestone
Firestone
Feb
Feb 11,
11, 1929
1929
The
The Great
Great Crash
Crash

New York
Times,
Friday,
October 25,
1929

Stock Market Prices, 1921–1932

Stock Market crash: October 24, 1929
(Corbis-Bettmann)
SOURCES
SOURCES
http://www.wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/image_b
ank_US/1920_1930.html
Brinkley, American History: A Survey
Kennedy, American Pageant 13e (History Companion)
Faragher, Out of Many, 3rd Ed.;
http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_faragher_outofmany_ap/
Jones, et al., Created Equal
Nash
America: Pathways to the Present