Essential Question:

What led to the economic, social,

& urban changes of the Roaring
20s?

The Second
Industrial Revolution

America in the 1920s

America was changed by the
industrialism of the Gilded Age & the
economic boom of WW I
During the 1920s:
The USA was the richest & most
developed country in the world
Wages rose, hours declined, &
Americans had access to new,
innovative consumer goods

The Second Industrial Revolution

From 1922 to 1929, the U.S. had
a 2nd industrial boom:
Mostly in consumer durable
goods like appliances, cars,
radios, furniture, & clothing
Electricity replaced steam power
Corporations used salaried
executives, plant managers, &
engineers to increase efficiency

The Second Industrial Revolution

To stop the growth of labor unions
companies used welfare capitalism
Offered employees stock, housepurchase, & insurance options
Used an open shop
shop & offered nonunion workers the same rights that
unions gained
After WW I, the federal government &
Supreme Court reverted back to a probusiness stance

Henry Ford
revolutionized
the
assembly
line,
The consumer
goods
revolution
The
work
moves
and
the $5-day,
&industry
advertising
was best new
seenmarketing
inthe
themen
autostand
still
techniques, & annual model changes

The
Henry
auto
Fords
industry
River
stimulated
Rouge plant
the steel,
emphasized
sheet
uniformity,
speed,
precision,
& coordination
metal, rubber,
glass,
petroleum
industries

The auto industry led to the construction of

roads & new filling stations

and new suburban shopping centers:

Kansas Citys Country Club Plaza was the 1st
U.S. shopping mall (built in 1924)

1920s consumerism led to luxury living:

New appliances like refrigerators, washing
machines, & vacuums

Glenwood
Stove Ad

1920s advertising

1920s consumerism led to luxury living:

Radios & movies boomed

100 million Americans

went
to
the
The
first
talkie
st
NBC was movies
the 1 successful
radio
network
in 1929 per
week

Economic Weaknesses
The Roaring 20s was not as
prosperous as it appeared:
RR, cotton textile, coal industries
suffered due to new competition
Farming boomed during WW I
but a decline in demand after the
war deflated farm prices

Economic Weaknesses
Union membership dropped due
to improved conditions & links to
Debs radical socialism
Northern migration of blacks
grew but workers gained menial
jobs & faced racism
Growth in income was unequal
with middle-class managers,
bankers, engineers benefiting the
most from the new affluence

Social Changes
in the Jazz Age

Women and the Family

Change (& continuity) for women:
Female workers after WW I were
limited to teachers, nurses, & other
low-paying jobs
The 19th
Amendment gave
women the right
to vote but few
women voted

Alice Pauls National Womens Party (NWP)

failed to pass an Equal Rights Amendment

Women and the Family

Flappers rebelled against
Victorian customs
Divorce rates doubled
Butmost women looked forward
to lives
a mother
and
a wife of a
Theascreation
and
fulfillment
successful homecompares favorably
with building a beautiful cathedral.
Ladies Home Journal

Women and the Family

Families became smaller due to
greater access to birth control
Children were no longer need to
work to support their families
Teens began to discover their
adolescence & revolt against their
parents by drinking & searching
for new forms of excitement

The Flowering of the Arts

The Harlem Renaissance reflected
the explosion of black culture & the
New Negro:
Jazz & Blues expressed the social
realities of blacks; Louis Armstrong
became very popular
Langston Hughes poetry, novels, &
plays promoted equality,
condemned racism, & celebrated
black culture

Josephine Baker,
internationally
renowned singer/dancer

You could be black & proud, politically

assertive & economically independent,
creative & disciplinedor so it seemed

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey was the

preeminent civil rights
activist of the 1920s
Oppression in the U.S.
necessitated strict
segregation & black
nationalism
He formed the United
Negro Improvement
Assoc & advocated a
return to Africa

The Lost Generation

The 1920s gave rise to a new
class of intellectuals who
condemned the new American
industrial society & materialism:
Pessimistic Literature:
Literature TS Eliot,
Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis,
F Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway
Playwrights:
Playwrights Eugene ONeill
Music:
Music Gershwin & Copeland

 Essential Questions:
To what extent did the new
economic, social, & urban
changes of the Roaring 20s
conflict with the traditional values
of rural America?
How did the 1920s change
Americans lives?

The Rural
Counter-Attack

The shift in focus from the countryside revealed

Life
in thetraditional
Jazz Ageties of
that urban City
life was
different;
home,1920
church,
schoolsrevealed
were absent
The
census
for the

1st time that more Americans lived

in cities than the countryside

The New York City skyline in 1930: Skyscrapers

gave cities a unique architectural style

The Rural Counter-Attack

Rural Americans identified cities
with saloons, brothels, communist
cells, & immorality
The 1920s saw an attempt to
restore a Protestant culture in
America & an attack on any unAmerican behavior like drinking,
illiteracy, & immigration

Prohibition
In Jan 1920, Congress passed
the Volstead Act to enforce the
18th Amendment (1917)
26 states had already banned
alcohol, but the real conflict came
when prohibition was applied to
urban ethnic groups
Rural America became dry &
urban consumption dropped but
was severely resisted

Per capita consumption of alcohol (1910-1929)

The Ku Klux Klan

The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in
1915 (Stone Mt, GA) was aimed at
blacks, immigrants, Jews, Catholics,
& prostitutes
The Invisible Empire sought to
ease rural anxieties in the face of
changing cultural attitudes
Used violence, kidnapping, murder,
& politics to affect change

The KKK provided a sense of identity to its

members: Womens Order, Junior Order for
boys, Tri-K Klub for girls, Krusaders for
assimilated immigrants

Klan violence met resistance &

membership declined by 1925

The Fear of Radicalism

The most dramatic rural reaction

was the Red Scare (1919-1920):
A general workers strike in
Seattle, police strike in Boston,
& series of mail bombs led to
fears of anarchy & socialism
Deportation without due
process, searches without
warrants, & imprisonment of
innocent people was initially
backed by the American people

Palmers
Soviet Ark
The solution is simple:
S.O.S.ship or shoot
Place the Bolsheviks on ships
of stone with sails of lead
Stand them up before the firing
squad and save space on our ships

Italian
immigrants
Nicola Sacco &
Bartolomeo
Vanzetti were
The
judge
in
the
case
even
executed for referred to Sacco & Vanzetti
armed robbery as those anarchist bastards
& murder
without
evidence

Immigration Restriction
Many feared mass immigration to
the U.S. among Europeans
escaping post-war rebuilding:
The Immigration Act (1921)
placed a cap on European
immigration to 3% of each ethnic
groups U.S. population
The National Origins Quota Act
(1924) limited U.S. immigration
to 150,000 total; Allocated most
spots to British, Irish, Germans

The Fundamentalist Challenge

The most long-lasting reaction of
rural America was a retreat to
Christian beliefs
Aggressive fundamentalist
churches provided a haven for
rural American values
The Scopes Monkey Trial
revealed the rural attack on
evolution in schools

Conclusions

Urban America came to define all

of the United States in the 1920s:
Radio, movies, advertising
reflected urban culture
Consumer goods were made in
American cities
Small-town whites, blacks, &
immigrants moved to cities
But, conservative rural Americans
(religious fundamentalists & KKK)
attacked these new, urban ideas