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The Roaring Twenties. Warren G. Harding / Creditor Nation. Warren G. Harding – Conservative Republican President from 1921 to 1925; Harding promised Americans a return to “normalcy” by ending U.S. military involvement overseas and Progressive reforms at home.
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Warren G. Harding / Creditor Nation • Warren G. Harding – Conservative Republican President from 1921 to 1925; Harding promised Americans a return to “normalcy” by ending U.S. military involvement overseas and Progressive reforms at home. • Creditor Nation – A country to which more money is owed by other countries than that country owes to them; Following WW1 the US was the largest creditor, making it the economic center of the world with New York City as the economic capital of the world.
Henry Ford / Mass Production / Model T • Henry Ford – American carmaker who introduced a series of methods and ideas that revolutionized production, wages, working conditions, and daily life in the early 1900s. • Mass Production – The rapid manufacture of large numbers of identical products; Ford adapted the methods of mass production in offering the Model T, a reliable car that average workers could afford, to Americans.
Consumer Revolution / Installment Buying • Consumer Revolution – An economic change in which a flood of new, affordable goods becomes available to the public; such a revolution took place in the United States in the 1920s. • Installment Buying – Agreement in which a consumer makes a small down payment, and then pays off the rest of the debt in regular monthly payments.
Bull Market / Buying on Margin • Bull Market – A period of rising stock prices; Due to a bull market in the 1920s, by 1929 around 4 million Americans owned stock. • Buying on Margin – Form of buying stock on credit; Buyers paid as little as 10% of the stock price upfront to a broker, then paid for the rest over a period of months.
Andrew Mellon / Herbert Hoover • Andrew Mellon – Secretary of the Treasury during Harding’s presidency; under Mellon’s direction, government spending fell from $18 billion during WW1 to $3 billion by 1925, decreasing taxes on individuals & businesses. • Herbert Hoover – Secretary of Commerce during Harding’s presidency; Hoover worked with business and labor leaders to achieve voluntary advancements instead of making new laws to regulate business as the Progressives had done prior to WW1.
Teapot Dome Scandal • The worst scandal of the Harding presidency; in 1921 Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall arranged to transfer oil reserves from the Navy to the Interior Department, then took bribes from private oilmen in exchange for rights to the reserves.
Calvin Coolidge • Republican President from 1923 to 1929; Coolidge maintained Harding’s policies of supporting big business and lowering government spending. As a man of few words, he was given the nickname “Silent Cal.”
Kellogg-Briand Pact / Dawes Plan • Kellogg-Briand Pact – Treaty created in 1928 by the United States and France to “outlaw” war “as an instrument of national policy.” 62 nations ratified the pact, though all involved knew it was unenforceable. • Dawes Plan – Arranged in 1924, the U.S. loaned money to Germany, enabling Germany to make reparation payments to Britain and France. Britain and France used these reparation payments to repay their debts to the U.S. All transactions stopped following the onset of the Great Depression, and Germany never repaid its loans to the United States.
Modernism / Fundamentalism • Modernism –Trend to emphasize science and secular values over traditional ideas about religion. • Fundamentalism – Trend to emphasize Protestant Christian teachings and the belief that every word in the Bible is literal truth.
Scopes Trial / Clarence Darrow • Scopes Trial – Clash between Fundamentalists and Modernists over the theory of evolution in 1925; Biology teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching the theory of evolution in Tennessee. • Clarence Darrow, defended Scopes in the trial. William Jennings Brian served as an expert for the prosecution. Scopes was found guilty, and fined $100. The trial showcased a major division in the country, but did not heal the conflict which continues today.
Prohibition / 18th Amendment / Volstead Act • Prohibition – The banning of alcohol use; By 1917 75% of Americans lived in counties that banned liquor. In 1919 the country ratified the 18th Amendment, forbidding the manufacture, distribution and sale of alcohol anywhere in the United States. • Volstead Act – Passed in 1919 to officially enforce the 18th Amendment, providing funding to hire federal agents to stop the flow of illegal liquor.
Bootleggers / Al Capone • Bootleggers – Vendors of illegal alcohol during the Prohibition Era; Bootleggers often operated secret drinking establishments, known as speakeasies, in America’s cities. • Al Capone – Chicago gang leader and the most famous criminal of the Prohibition Era; Capone organized crime ring’s main business was in alcohol sales, but his “side businesses” included prostitution, drugs, robbery, and murder. Through bribery of policemen and politicians Capone evaded arrest.
Charlie Chaplin / The Jazz Singer • Charlie Chaplin – Most popular silent film star; Chaplin originated slapstick humor, playing a character that was equal parts hobo, dreamer, and poet but an eternal optimist in his ability to charm his audience and reinvent himself. • The Jazz Singer – Released in 1927, the first movie with sound synchronized to the action (“Talkie”) revolutionized the film industry.
Babe Ruth / Charles Lindbergh • Babe Ruth – The leading sports hero of the 1920s; Ruth was the most famous athlete in America’s favorite sport, leading the New York Yankees to championships while making the homerun an integral part of baseball. • Charles Lindbergh – The first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean; Lindbergh made the flight in 33 hours in a single-engine plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, becoming the greatest American hero of the 1920s.
Flapper / Sigmund Freud • Flappers – Young women with short skirts and hair cropped close in a style known as a bob; Flappers challenged the traditional social norms for women in America and assumed the same political and social rights as men. • Sigmund Freud – Austrian psychologist who theorized that much human behavior is driven not by rational thought but by unconscious desires, but to live in society people learn to suppress their desires. The tension between outward behavior and the subconscious leads to mental and physical illness.
“Lost Generation” / F. Scott Fitzgerald / Ernest Hemingway • “Lost Generation” – Term for American Writers of the 1920s who no longer had faith in the cultural guideposts of the Victorian Era (Pre WW1). • F. Scott Fizgerald – American novelist & author of The Great Gatsby; Fitzgerald showed the American Dream ending in a nightmare, writing rags-to-riches stories which ended with heroes destroyed by their achievements. • Ernest Hemingway – American novelist who, like Fitzgerald, felt betrayed by the American Dream. Hemingway developed a writing style that reflected his insights in direct language, free from vague adjectives and adverbs.
Excerpt from The Great Gatsby • “In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o’clock the orchestra had arrived, no thing five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones… People were not invited – they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door.” Closure Question #3: Read the selection from The Great Gatsby. How does it reflect other information you have learned about the society of the 1920s? (At least 1 sentence)
Marcus Garvey / Jazz • Marcus Garvey – New African American leader in the 1920s; Garvey organized the ‘Back to Africa’ movement, encouraging blacks to abandon the culture of America and embrace their African roots. • Jazz – Music native to the United States which is based on improvisation and combines different forms of music, including African American blues, ragtime, and European-based popular music.
Louis Armstrong / Bessie Smith • Louis Armstrong – Trumpet player and the unofficial ambassador of jazz; As a soloist, Armstrong’s improvisational abilities made him a legend and influenced the development of jazz, leading all jazz bands to feature soloists. • Bessie Smith – “The Empress of the Blues”; Leading vocal soloist of the 1920s.
Harlem Renaissance / Claude McKay • Harlem Renaissance – The flowering of African American culture in the 1920; Jazz and Blues Musicians combined with African American poets, novelists, and artists to celebrate their culture and explore questions of race. • Claude McKay – Militant author during the Harlem Renaissance; McKay showed African Americans struggling for dignity and advancement in the face of discrimination and economic hardships.
Langston Hughes / Zora Neale Hurston • Langston Hughes – The most powerful African American author of the Harlem Renaissance; For Hughes the force of the Renaissance was not politics, but a celebration of African American culture and life. • Zora Neale Hurston – Female author of the Harlem Renaissance; Hurston collected African American folk tales in books such as Mules and Men.
