Chapter Twenty-Three

A New Era: The 1920’s

Republican Control
 Business Doctrine
• Roosevelt died in 1919
• New Republicans did not support laissez-faire
 The Presidency of Warren Harding
• A Few Good Choices
– Herbert Hoover was appointed as Secretary of Commerce (He
was a successful miner…these exams seem to have a thing for
miners xD)
– Pardoned Debs
• Domestic Policy
– Harding approved a drop in the income tax, higher tariffs
(Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act), and created the Bureau of the
Budget
• Scandals and Death
– His secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, took bribes for giving
out oil leases near Teapot Dome
– Harding died before the scandals, in 1923
 The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge
• Calvin Coolidge was Harding’s vice president
• The Election of 1924
– Democrats
• John Davis
• Played on the Teapot Dome scandal
– Republicans
• Coolidge
– Progressives
• Robert La Follette
– Coolidge won reelection
 Hoover, Smith, and the Election of
1928
• Republicans
– Herbert Hoover
• Democrats
– Alfred Smith
– Roman catholic
– Anti-prohibition
– Disliked by protestants
• Hoover won election
Mixed Economic Development
 Causes of Business Prosperity
• Increased productivity
• Better technology
• Taxes were cut by an enormous margin, and
the antitrust laws were ignored
 Farm Problems
• Crop prices were high because
– Demand in warring Europe
– Minimum required price on wheat and corn
• When the war was over, so was the limited
prosperity of the farmers
 Labor Problems
• Unions declined
• Open Shop
– Idea that jobs were reserved for non-union
workers
• United mine Workers
– John L. Lewis
– Violent and unsuccessful strikes in PA, WV, and KT
A New Culture
 The Jazz Age
• From African Americans
• Made use of phonographs and radios
 Consumerism
• Electricity and money made everyone’s life
easier
• Cars, refrigerators, etc were more readily
available
• 26.5 million cars were registered in 1929
• National Broadcasting Company and Columbia
Broadcasting System provided radio
 Gender Roles, Family, and Education
• Women at home
– Lives were changed by the vacuum cleaner
• Women in the labor force
– Same as before the war. Lower wages than men.
• Revolution in morals
– Rebelling against sexual taboo
• Divorce
– One in six marriages ended in divorce in 1930
• Education
– High School graduates had doubled
 Religion
• Modernism
– Historical and critical view of the Bible
– Took Darwin’s theory as fact without throwing away faith
• Fundamentalism
– Condemned the modernists. All of the Bible must be
accepted as literally true.
• Revivalists on the Radio
– Billy Sunday
• Protested drinking, gambling, dancing
– Aimee Semple McPherson
• Attacked communism and jazz
 Harlem Renaissance
• Poets
– Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, James Johnson,
Claude McKay
• Singers
– Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Paul
Robeson
• Marcus Garvey
– Created United Negro Improvement Association
– Wanted to go back to Africa
– Tried, convicted, jailed, and deported :P
Cultures in Conflict
 Fundamentalism and the Scopes Trial
• John Scopes taught evolution in high school
• Clarence Darrow defended
• William Jennings Bryan prosecuted
• Convicted, but later acquitted
 Prohibition
• People seldom went by the rules of
Prohibition
• In 1933, the 21st amendment repealed the
18th (Prohibition) and it was allowed to quietly
die.
 Nativism
• Quota Laws
– Quota Act of 1921
• Limited immigration to all but 3% of the nationality
– Second Quota Act of 1924
• Changed quota to 2%
• Sacco and Vanzetti
– Convicted of robbery and murder
– Protested their innocence, but there executed
anyway
 Ku Klux Klan
• (I AM AFROMAN, RUNNING THROUGH THE WOODS FROM THE KU KLUX KLAN)

• Tactics
– Attacked anyone deemed to be ‘un-American’
• Decline
– Leader of Indiana’s KKK convicted of murder
– Membership fell
Foreign Policy: The Fiction of Isolation
 Disarmament and Peace
• Washington Conference (1921)
– Charles Evans started the talk about naval
disarmament
• Five Power Treaty
– The United States (5), Great Britain (5), Japan (3), France
(1.67), and Italy (1.67) agreed to the aforementioned ratios of
battleships.
• Four Power Treaty
– The United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France agreed to
respect each others territories
• Nine Power Treaty
– All nine nations agreed to respect the Open Door Policy
 Kellog-Briand Pact
• Jane Addams awarded Nobel Peace Price
• Nations which signed the Kellog-Briand pact
gave up aggressiveness to achieve their ends
– Was ineffective because:
• Permitted defensive wars
• Failed to provide for an action to be taken against
violators
 Business and Diplomacy
• Latin America
– Interests negotiated by Dwight Morrow in 1927
• Middle East
– Oil reserves
– Secretary of State Hughes got oil drilling rights
• Tariffs
– Fordney-McCumber Tariff
• Increased taxes on foreign imports by 25%
 War Debts and reparations
• The US lent $10 billion to the allies
• The Treaty of Versailles demanded Germany
pay $30 billion to the Allies
• Dawes Plan
– Cycle of payments
– US loaned money to Germany, who paid it to the
Allies
– Britain and France paid the money from Germany
back to the Allies