Unsettled Prosperity: From

War to Depression
CHAPTER
1919-1932

Resurgent Conservatism or the United States, World LEARNING FOSUS

Eu | was neither the ghastly Whatconflicts in culture and
The Red Scare
and devastating experience politics arose in the 1920s,
Racial Backlash thatit was for Europe northe pro- and how did economic devel-
The Business of America foundly disillusioning one it was opmentsin that decade help
in many other parts of the world. cause the Great Depression?
Politics of Normalcy
Yet the war years marked a crucial
historical divide for Americans, and
Making a Modern
the country entered a distinctly new era after 1919. Progressivism flagged and
Consumer Economy
gave wayto a business-centered philosophy of government. The manufacturing
Postwar Abundance economy surged and delivered a cornucopia of consumer goods to a growing
ConsumerCulture middle class. In the halls of government and in the streets, Americans clashed
The Automobile and over whata pluralist, modern society should look like — who gotto define whatit
Suburbanization meantto be “American”? In the complex and turbulent years between World War |
and the coming of a new eraof reform in 1933, these were the defining themes:
The Politics and Culture of limited government, consumerism, and cultural warfare.
a Diversifying Nation In this decade and a half, economic growth and cultural conflict revealed pat-
Women in a New Age terns in American life that would hold for the remainderofthe twentieth century.
The nation had become urban. Mass media and Hollywood shaped popular cul-
Culture Wars
ture. The automobile became an affordable mass commodity, even a necessity,
The Harlem Renaissance changing forever the way people lived. Many Americans celebrated the dawning
of whattheycalled a “new era,’ defined byfreer individual lifestyles, convenient
The Coming of the Great consumer technologies, and “modern” waysofthinking. Others saw this emerging
Depression modernity as a threat to their ownsocial and cultural influence. Groups of native-
From Boom to Bust born, Protestant Americans, for instance, battled with immigrants to define the
meaning ofrace,religion, and national belonging. Many white Americans lashed
Early Depression Years
out at black Americans—in often deadly ways—over economic opportunity.
And Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and secular Americans clashed overeverything
from the prohibition of alcohol to the teaching of evolution.
By the end ofthe 1920s, political and cultural divides had hardened, and eco-
nomic abundance proved short-lived, as the nation slid from consumer boom to
Great Depression bust in 1929. The United States had grown more affluent, but
it was an unsettled affluence. If the question in the decades of populist and pro-
gressive insurgent movements had been “whose government?”in the 1920s the
question took on a broader cast: “whose country?”

650
Celebrating the Fourth of July, 1926 This Life magazine covercelebrates two famous symbols of the 1920s:
jazz music andthe “flapper!in her droopy leggings and scandalouslyshort skirt, who loves to dancetoits rhythms. The
flags at the top record thelatest slang expressions, including “so's your old man”and “step onit” (“it” being the accelerator
of an automobile, in a decade when cars were America’s hottest commodity). Americans embraced new and exuberant
forms of consumption and material well being in the 1920s, but in an age ofalcoholprohibition and the rise of the Ku
Klux Klan, they also fought with one anotherover deeply held beliefs and values. Picture Research Consultants & Archives,

P
 CHAPTER CHRONOLOGY

As you read,ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates andidentify the links amongrelated events.

1915 >» New Ku Klux Klan founded 1923 > President Harding dies
> United States occupies Haiti > Calvin Coolidge assumespresidency
Race riot in Rosewood,Florida
1916 > United States occupies Dominican Republic > Teapot Dome scandal
1917. > Race riotin EastSt. Louis, Illinois > Equal Rights Amendment first introduced in Congress

1919 =» Race riot in Chicago 1924 > National Origins Act

> Boston police strike > Coolidge winspresidential election against Democrats and
> Palmerraids La Follette’s Progressive Party
- === » First suburban shopping center opensoutside Kansas City,
1920 Height of Red Scare Missouri
> Eighteenth Amendment(prohibition) takes effect + Sa F 7
> Warren Harding wins presidency 1925 à Scopes'monkey trial”
> Alain Locke's The New Negro
1921 » Raceriot in Tulsa, Oklahoma
» Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and 1927» Sacco and Vanzetti executed
Infancy Act 1928 » Herbert Hoover wins presidency

1929 =» Stock market crashes precipitate Great Depression

Resurgent Conservatism
World War I brought an end to the long periodof reform stretching from the 1880s to
the 1910s (Chapter 19), A resurgent political conservatism emerged in the war's after-
math. Progressivism survived, but limited government was the dominant motif of
national political life from 1919 to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. In
place of progressives’call for economic regulation, business priorities now cameto the
fore. President Calvin Coolidge declared, “The man who builds a factory builds a
temple. The man who works there worshipsthere.’ The same themeprevailed in con-
tinued U.S. foreign policy: American business needs werethe toppriority. The single
year of 1919 set the tone for this resurgent conservatism. An antiradical Red Scare, a
massivestrike wave, and white violence against African Americans together roiled the
country and slowed the paceof social change.

The Red Scare

The wareffort, overseen by a Democratic administration sympathetic to organized
labor, had increased the size and poweroflabor unions. Membership in the American
Federation of Labor (AFL) grew by a third during World WarI, reaching more than
3 million by war's end. Workers’ expectations also rose as the war economy brought
higher pay and better working conditions, To extend these gains,in thefirst year after
the armistice, 1919, more than 4 million wage laborers— onein every five—went on
strike, a proportion never since equaled. A walkout of shipyard workers in Seattle
sparked a general strike that shut down theentire city. Anotherstrike disrupted the
steel industry, as 350,000 workers demandedunionrecognition and an endto twelve-
hourshifts. Most strikes were about basic economic issues— pay and hours— rather
than revolution, but the bold exercise of worker power fueled dire warnings ofrising
radicalism from labor's opponents.
That sameyear, when the Soviet Union's new Bolshevik leaders founded the Third
International with the intentto foster revolutions abroad, some Americansraised fears
that the US. harbored dangerousradicals. Wartime hatred of Germanswasreplaced by
hostility toward Bolsheviks (labeled “Reds,” after the color of communist flags), In a
telling example, Ole Hanson,Seattle's mayor during the general strike, wrote a book
called Americanism Versus Bolshevism and toured the country lecturing about the

652

LE
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 653

threat of revolution. Under the banner of “one hundredpercent Ei

Americanism,groupssuch as the newly formed American Legion |
decried socialists, communists, and the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW)as [Link], American communists
remained few in numberandhad little political influence. Of the
63 million adults in the United States in 1920, no more than 13,000
belonged to either the fledgling U.S. Communist Party or the
Communist LaborParty.
The strike wave combined with anti-Bolshevism to create
fertile conditions for repression. When alert postal workers dis-
covered thirty-four mail bombs addressed to governmentoffi-
cials in April 1919, and in June a bomb detonated outside the
Washington town houseof Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer,
the repression came. Palmer escaped unharmed,buthe used the
incidentto fan publicfears, precipitating a convulsive Red Scare.
He set up an antiradicalism division in the Justice Department
and appointedhisassistantJ. Edgar Hoovertodirect it; in 1935, it
became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In November,
Palmer’s agents stormed the headquarters of radical organiza-
tions. The dragnet captured thousands of immigrants who had
committed no crimes but whoheld anarchist or revolutionary
beliefs. Lacking the protection of USS. citizenship, many were
deported without indictmentor trial. The Palmer raids peaked
ona notorious night in January 1920, when federal agents invaded
homes and meeting halls, arrested six thousand citizens and
aliens (immigrants without U.S. citizenship), and denied the pris- owt, bea
onersaccessto legal counsel.
Fear of ‘Bolshevism,’ 1919 This cartoon from the Cleveland
The Red Scare’s fusion of antiradicalism and anti-immigrant Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio,reflects nationwide panic over the
sentiment had dire consequences in the case of Sacco and general strike by 110 unions that paralyzed Seattle in February 1919.
Vanzetti. In May 1920, at the height of the Red Scare, police Opponentsofradical labor unrest had a deeperfear: the Bolshevik
arrested Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a Revolution in Russia, resulting in creation of the USSR, had brought
into existence the world’sfirst enduring communiststate. By
fish peddler, for the murder of two men during a robbery of a crushing unions in Seattle with a club of“Law and Order,’ this image
shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Sacco and suggests that Uncle Sam could beat back the global communist
Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and self-proclaimed anarchists threat. This aspectofthe 1919 RedScare prefigured, at an early date,
who had evaded the draft. Convicted of the murders, Sacco and the anxieties of the Cold War era. Ohio Historical Society Red Dawn RD8A.

Vanzetti sat in jail for six years while supporters appealed their
verdicts, In 1927, Judge Webster Thayer denied a motion for a new trial and sentenced AP'EXAMTIP
them to death. Scholars still debate their guilt or innocence. But the case was clearly
Explain the relationship between
biased by prosecutors’ emphasison their ties to radical groups and perhaps ontheir fear of radicalism and the Red
foreign birth. The execution of Sacco and Vanzetti was oneofthe ugly scars left by the
hostilities of the Red Scare.

Racial Backlash
Other formsof repression escalated during andafter World WarI. The Great Migration = Turn to the Glossary of
drew hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the South to northern and
py

Academic & Historical

midwestern industrialcities, where they secured wartime jobs and found they could Termsin the back of the book
vote and use their new economic clout to build community institutions and work for for definitions of bolded terms.
racial justice. Thearrival of these southern migrants during the war deepened existing
racial tensions, as African Americans competed with whites — including recent immi-
grants from Europe — for jobs and scarce housing.
Racism turned such conflicts into violent confrontations during the war. Oneofthe
deadliest riots in American history occurred in 1917 in EastSt. Louis, Illinois, where
rampaging whites burned more than 300 black homes and murdered between 50 and
150 black men, women,and children (the exact death toll remains unknown). “Thisis
654 PART7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

a crime against the laws of humanity,

said Marcus Garvey, the influential black
leaderof the Universal Negro Improvement
Association.
Tensions also increased after the war
because African Americans emerged from
the conflict determined to achieve citizen-
ship rights. Millions had loyally supported
the war effort, and 370,000 had served in
uniform. Returning veterans, empowered
by their military service, often refused to
accept second-class treatmentat the hands
of whites, whether North or South. The
black man, one observer wrote, “realized.
that he waspart and parcel ofthe great army
of democracy. ... With this realization came
the consciousness of pride in himself as a
man, and an Americancitizen”
These developments sparked white vio-
rer wach
lence. In what became known as Red
Chicago Race Riot Racial violence explodedin Chicago during the summer of 1919. The Summerbecause of bloody battles in more
riot was sparked whena black teenager, who had violated the unofficial segregation of the than twenty-four cities, Chicago endured
city’s beaches, was stoned to death bya group of white youths. A weekofviolent rioting led to five days ofrioting in July 1919 after white
15 white and 23 black deaths and the destruction of more than 1,000 black residences. In this youths stoned a black teenagerto death on
photograph taken duringthe rioting, white children cheeroutside an African American home a Lake Michigan beach. By September, the
that the mobhadsetonfire. Bettmann/Getty Images. 5 à &
national death toll from racial violence that
year reached 120. There werealso 78 lynchingsin 1919, up from 48 in 1917. That num-
ber included several murders of returning blacksoldiers in uniform.
AP"EXAMTIP Attacks on African Americans continued after 1919. The oil boomtown ofTulsa,
Oklahoma,wasthesite of a horrific incident in June 1921. Sensational,false reports of
Evaluate the impact of violent
an alleged rape helped incite white mobs whoresented growingblack prosperity. Anger
racial confrontations on African
American communities in the focused on the 8,000 residents of Tulsa's prosperous Greenwooddistrict, locally known
early twentieth century. as “the black Wall Street.” The mobs—helped by National Guardsmen, whoarrested
African Americans whoresisted — burned thirty-five blocks of Greenwood andkilled
several dozen people. The city’s leading paper acknowledged that “semi-organized
bandsof white men systematically applied the torch, while others shot on sight men of
color” It took a decade for black residents to rebuild Greenwood. Andin the January
1923 Rosewood Massacre, mobs of furious whites in a small Florida town torched
houses and hunted down African Americans, killing at least six. Police and state
authorities refused to intervene, and the town of Rosewood vanishedfrom the map.

The Business of America

African Americans were not the only ones who faced challenges to their hard-won
gains. So did labor unions. Following the strike wave of 1919, business leaders and their
political allies fought back against organized labor, which entered a decade of decline.
Across the country, employers advocated what they called the American Plan of
employment—refusing to negotiate with unions. Facing a strike of Bostor's police
force, Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge illustrated this defiant approach by
declaring, “Thereis no rightto strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere,
anytime.” A majority of the public supported the governor, and Republicans rewarded
Coolidge by nominating him for the vice-presidency in 1920.
Decisions by the Supreme Court were an additional factor in organized labor’s
decline. In Coronado Coal Company v. United Mine Workers of America (1925), the
Court ruled thata striking union could be penalized forillegal restraint of trade. Such

es
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 655

decisions, along with the aggressive antiunion campaigns under the American Plan,
caused membership in labor unionstofall from 5.1 million in 1920 to 3.6 million in
1929—just 10 percent of the nonagricultural workforce. Labor's long-sought goal of
organizingthe nation’s workforce retreated further from realization.
In place of unions, the 1920s marked the heyday of welfare capitalism, a system of
labor relations that stressed a company’s responsibility for its employees’ well-being.
Employers hopedthis would builda loyal workforce and head offlabor unrest. Automaker AP’ PRACTICES & SKILLS
Henry Ford, amongothers,pioneeredthis system before World War I, famously paying $5
CONTEXTUALIZATION
a day. Ford also offered a profit-sharing plan to employees who met the standardsofits
Whatrole did World War | play in
Sociological Department, which investigated to ensure that workers’ private lives met the
the Red Scare, antiblack violence,
company’s moral standards. At a time when government unemployment compensation andlabordefeats, and what
andSocial Security did not exist, General Electric and USS. Steel provided health insurance connections might we draw
and old-age pensions. Other employers built athletic facilities and selectively offered paid among these events?
vacations, Such plans covered only about 5 percent of the industrial workforce, however,
and whenfaced with new financial pressures in
the late 1920s, even Henry Ford cut back his $5
day. In the tangible benefits it offered workers,
welfare capitalism had distinct limitations.

Dollar Diplomacy American business inter-

ests shaped foreign affairs as well. The thrust
of U.S. foreign policy after World War I contin-
ued to be in Latin America. There, undera pol-
icy initiated by Taft and continued under
Wilson,presidents workedto advance U.S. busi-
ness interests, especially by encouraging pri-
vate banks to makeforeign loans. Policymakers
hoped loans would stimulate growth and
increase demandfor U.S. products in develop-
ing markets, Bankers, for their part, wanted
government guarantees of repayment in coun-
tries they perceived as weakor unstable.
Officials provided such assurance, In 1922,
for example, when American banks offered an
immense loan to Bolivia (at a hefty profit),
State Departmentofficials pressured the South

Bananasserved in crystal beauty

American nation to accept it. A similar
arrangement was reached with El Salvador’s
governmentin 1923. In othercases, the United .. „Tempting to the eye... and so goodfor Bananas retain their delicue flavar even when froven in ives.
ed appetites,
States intervened militarily, often to force any time of day, at any fs = Sometimes,
ns entrées in many palne-appealiog
| hard to kaw fust what wserve, please try one of the many
ways, eightyahrue of which are described in a unique cook book,
repayment of debt. To implement such poli- ¡ simple dishes 10 which bananas add new zest, new appetite “Fromthe Tropics tYour Table.” ‘The conpon brings Jero you,
cies, the U.S. Marines occupied Nicaragua ps
his ull-scason Ernie Eros che tro UIT BANANAS
ha PoniBoots
almost continuously from 1912 to 1933, the Hesse send no a copul

Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924, and pee hareured,eete: e

avurishing. aud so readily
Haiti from 1915 to 1934. White Americans ¿ligested cha imelinche u!
viewed these nations through demeaning
racial stereotypes. They regarded Haitians as
primitive savages or childlike people who
needed U.S. guidance and supervision. One American Companies Abroad In the 1920s,U.S. foreign policy was increasing
ly
Fruit was
commandertestified that his troops saw them- devotedto protecting the overseas investments of American companies. United
t in South
selvesas “trustees of a hugeestate that belonged oneof the many American companies that found opportunities for investmen
States consumer
America in the 1920s and thatintroducedtropical foods to the United
to minors. ... The Haitians were our wards.” informative
market(“From the Tropics to Your Table”). The company usedelaborate and
At home, critics denounced loan guaran- market that
color advertisementsto sell its products. Bananas weresufficiently new to that
tees and military interventionsas dollar diplo- explained to consumer s howto store them and how to tell when bananas were
the ads
Archives.
macy. The term was coined in 1924 by Samuel ripe(“Just watch for flecks of brown on the golden skin”). Image Courtesy of The Advertising
656 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

Guy Inman,a Disciples of Christ missionary who toured U.S.-occupied Haiti and the
Dominican Republic. “The United States,” Inman declared, “cannot go on destroying
with impunity the sovereignty of other peoples, however weak” African American
leaders also denouncedthe Haitian occupation. On behalf of the International Council
of Women of the Darker Races and the Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom, a delegation conducted fact-finding tour of Haiti in 1926. Their
report exposed, among other things, the sexual exploitation of Haitian women
by US. soldiers.
NIN Inman andothercritics put dollar diplomacyon the defensive bythelate 1920s. The
poorresults spoke for themselves. Loans got repaid, securing bankers’ profits, but the
Discuss why the concept of “dollar
diplomacy" was so controversial.
proceedsoften endedupin the pockets oflocal elites; U.S. policies failed to build broad-
based prosperity overseas. Military intervention had even worse results. In Haiti, for
example, the marinescrushed peasantprotests and helped the Haitian elite consolidate
power. U.S. occupation thus contributed to the harsh dictatorships that Haitians
endured through therest of the twentieth century. President Franklin Roosevelt initi-
ated the “Good Neighbor”policy with respect to Latin America in 1933 in an effort to
reversetheseill effects.
Dollar diplomacy guided U.S. interests in Latin America, but behind the scenes
manydiplomats considered East Asia morecritical to long-term American foreign pol-
AP") PRACTICES & SKILLS icy. To ease growingtensionsthere, the United States signed a major treaty in 1922,
known as the Four Powers Act, with Japan, Great Britain, and France,limiting naval
CAUSATION
strength in the Pacific. A diplomatic triumph for President Harding,thetreaty failed to
Whatwere the economic goals address underlying East-West international rivalries because it reinforced European
of U.S, foreign policymakers
and American naval superiority over Japan. That island nation would gradually come
in the 1920s, and what were
to see the United States, not the traditional European powers,asits principal adversary
their outcomes?
for dominancein Asia.

Politics of Normalcy
The postwar conservative turn was particularly evident in national politics. With
President Woodrow Wilson ailing from a stroke, in 1920 Democrats nominated Ohio
governor James M. Coxforpresident, on a platform calling for US. participation in the
League of Nations and continuation of Wilson’s progressivism. Republicans,led by their
probusiness wing, tapped genial Ohio senator Warren G. Harding. In a dig at Wilson’s
idealism, Harding promised “not nostrumsbut normalcy.’ Onelection day, he won in a
landslide, beginningan era of Republican political dominancethatlasted until 1932,
AP’ EXAMTIP. Harding’s most energetic appointee was Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover,
Comparethe associated state to
well known asheadof the wartime Food Administration. Under Hoover's direction,the
the idea of governmentactivism Commerce Department helped create two thousand trade associations representing
supported by Progressives. companies in almost every major industry, Governmentofficials worked closely with
the associations, providingstatistical research, suggesting industry-wide standards, and
promoting stable prices and wages. Hoover hoped that through voluntary business
cooperation with government —an associated state—he could achieve what progres-
sives had soughtthrough governmental regulation.
Other changes were afoot in Washington, D.C. The practice of lobbying Congress
was a long-standingtradition among businesses, trade unions, and other organized
interests. That practice grew in scale and became moreformal and systematic in the
1920s, Noting the change, one observer joked that“the lobbyists were so thick they were
constantly falling over one another.” Hundredsof groupssetup offices to lobby members
of Congress — from religious and civic organizations to the Anti-Saloon League — but
business took the lead. The National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of
Commerce, and public utilities (water and electric companies), among many otherbusi-
ness organizations, assumed an ever-largerrole in thelegislative process.
Moremalign links between governmentand corporate interests were soon revealed.
WhenPresident Harding died suddenly ofa heartattack in August 1923, evidence was
 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 657
CHAPTER 21

just emergingthat partsof his administration were riddled with corruption. The worst
,
scandal concerned secret leasing ofgovernmentoilreserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming
and Elk Hills, California, to private [Link] ary of theInteri or Albert Fall was
eventually convicted of taking over $300,000 in bribes and became thefirst cabinet
officer in U.S. history to serve a prison sentence.
Vice President Calvin Coolidge becamepresident upon Hardingdeath. He main-
tained Republican dominance,calling forlimited government and tax cuts for business
s,
while campaigningforelection in his own rightin 1924. Rural and urban Democrat
ed
deeply divided over such issues as prohibition and immigration restriction, deadlock
To see a longer
g excerpt
at their national convention;after 102 ballots,delegates finally nominated John W. Davis,
p
of the Progressive
a Wall Street lawyer. Coolidge easily defeated Davis and staved off a challenge from Party platform, along with
Senator Robert [Link] of Wisconsin, whotried to resuscitate the Progressive otherprimary sources from
at
Party. The 1924 Progressive platform called for stronger government regulation this period, see Sourcesfor
home andinternational efforts to reduce weapons producti on and prevent war. “Free America’s History.
menof every generation? La Follette had once declaredin a speech,“must combat the
renewedefforts of organized force and [Link] the end, Coolidge received 15.7 million
votes to Daviss 8.4 million and La Follette’s 4.9 million. ERETí
Asthe progressive reform ethos faded and a conservative impulse grew stronger, CAUSATION
the formative period between 1919 and 1932revealed importanttendenciesin national In what ways did business and
political life. Antiradicalism became morepervasive. Business and government became government become moreclosely
more cooperative. Lobbying surgedas a feature ofthe legislative process. Eachdevelop- linked following World WarI?
ment would remain important throughout the remainder of the twentieth century.

IN YOUR OWN WORDS How and whydid the United States take a
conservative turn in the 1920s?

Making a Modern Consumer Economy

in
Spurred byrapid expansion during the war, and benefitting from earlier innovations AP’ EXAM TIP
in the 1920s.
mass production such as the assembly line, American business thrived The rise of mass-produced
at homea truly
Corporations expanded more and more into overseas markets, while consumer culture in the 1920sis
shape.
national consumer culture — emphasizing convenience, leisure, and fun — took a“must know”for the AP® exam.
e of a
The years between 1922 and 1929 mark a crucial turning point in the emergenc
mass consumer economyin the UnitedStates.

Postwar Abundance
Productivity proved to be the key. Manufacturing efficiencies accumulated since the
turn of the century—the assemblyline, mechanization,electrification — madepossible
enormous increases in productivity. If an American worker who made6 toasters a day
a day — an
in 1920fell asleep and wokeupin 1929, she or he could now make10 toasters
incredible 66 percent more. Also, national per capita income rose an impressive
24 percentin that period. Productivity gains andrising incomes, especially among the
middleclass, meant an explosion of consumer goods. Fromtoasters andradios totele-
phones, vacuum cleaners, and automobiles, a vast array of consumer products became
more affordable, Americans bought them in droves, spurring an economic boom that
lasted until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.
Large-scale corporations continuedto replace small business in many sectors of the
economy. By 1929, through successive waves of consolidation, the two hundredlargest
businesses had come to control almost half of the country’s nonbanking corporate
wealth. The greatest number of mergers occurredin rising industries such as chemicals
(with DuPontin the lead) andelectrical appliances (General Electric), as well as among

RE
 658 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

Wall Street banks. Aided by Washington’s dollar diplomats, U.S. companies exercised
growing global power. Seeking cheaperlivestock, giant American meatpackers opened
plants in Argentina; the United Fruit Company developed plantations in Costa Rica,
Honduras, and Guatemala; General Electric set up production facilities in Latin
America, Asia, and Australia.
Despite the boom,the U.S. economyhadareasofsignificant weakness throughout
the 1920s. Agriculture, whichstill employed one-fourth ofall American workers, never
fully recovered from the postwarrecession. Once Europe's economyrevived,its farmers
flooded world markets with grain andotherfarm products, causing agricultural prices
to fall. Other industries, including coal andtextiles, languished for similar reasons. As
a consequence, many rural Americanssharedlittle of the decade’s prosperity: The bot-
tom 40 percent of American families earned an average annual income of only $725
(about $10,000 today). Many, especially rural tenants and sharecroppers, languished in
poverty and malnutrition.

ConsumerCulture
In middle-class homes, Americans of the 1920s embraced a consumerethos. They sat
down to a breakfast of Kelloge’s corn flakes before getting into Ford Model T’s to drive
to work or shop at Safeway. On weekends, they might head to thelocal theater to see
the newest Charlie Chaplin film. By 1929,electric refrigerators and vacuum cleaners
cameinto use in affluent homes; 40 percent of American households owned radio.
The advertising industry reached new levels of ambition, entering what onehistorian
calls the era of the “aggressive hardsell” The 1920s gavebirth, for example, to fashion
modeling andstyle consulting. “Sell them their dreams,” one radio announcer urged
advertisers in 1923. “People don't buy thingsto havethings. ... They buy hope — hope
of what your merchandise will do for them”
Manypoorandaffluent families shared one thing in common:they stretched their
incomes, small orlarge, through new forms of borrowing such as auto loans andinstall-
ment plans. “Buy now, pay later”said the ads, and millions did. Anyone, no matter how
rich,could get into debt, but consumercredit wasparticularly perilousforthoseliving on
the economic margins. In Chicago, one Lithuanian man described his neighbor's situa-
tion: “She ain't got no money. Sure she buys on credit, clothes for the children and every-
thing” Such borrowing brought consumer merchandise within reach of more and more
Americans, but the accumulated debt also turned out to be a factor in the bust of 1929.

Hollywood Movies became a centerpiece of consumerculture. In the 1910s, the

moviemaking industry had begunrelocating to southern California to take advantage
of cheap land, sunshine, and varied scenery within easy reach. The large studios —
United Artists, Paramount, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — were run mainly by Eastern
European Jewish immigrants like Adolph Zukor, who arrived from Hungary in the
1880s. Starting with fur sales, Zukor and a partner then set up five-cent theaters in
Manhattan. “I spent a good deal of time watching the faces of the audience” Zukor
Hollywood The American actress
recalled, “Witha little experience I could see, hear, and‘feel’ the reaction to each melo-
Marion Davies, playing a part in which
she impersonates her male cousin to drama and comedy.” Founding ParamountPictures, Zukor signed emergingstars and
defeat a nefarious plot, in the 1926 silent producedsuccessful feature-length films.
film, Beverly of Grasustark., In the decade By 1920, Hollywoodreignedas the world’s moviecapital, producingnearly 90 percent
of the 1920s, Hollywood became the
ofall films. Large, ornate movie palaces attracted both middle-class and working-class
center of moviemakingin the world,
and stars like Davies, Charlie Chaplin, audiences. Idols such as Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks set
MaryPickford, Rudolph Valentino, and national trendsin style. Thousands of young womenfollowed thelead ofactress Clara
manyothers achieved both national and Bow, Hollywood's famous flapper, whoflaunted herboyish figure. Decked out in knee-
global popularity. Sound films werefirst
length skirts, flappers shocked the older generation by smoking and wearing makeup.
introducedin the late 1920s and once the
technology wasperfected, they quickly They represented only a tiny minority of women,but thanks to the movies and advertis-
became standard in the industry. ing, flappers becameinfluential symbols of women’s sexual andsocial emancipation. In
John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images. cities, young immigrant womeneagerly bought makeup andthelatest flapper fashions.
 AMERICA IN THE WORLD
European film studios struggled after World War | to reach audiences who hadfallen
, preferred
in love with American movies. Working-class Europeans, in particular
Hollywood's offeringsto the films produced in Europe. In this 1928article from a cin-
d new
ematography journal, German expressionist filmmaker Erich Pommer suggeste
Hollywood in Europe strategies for expanding an audience for European films. Expressionists, influence d by
and insan-
romanticism and modernism, explored dark themessuchas spiritual crisis
ity. (A famous example of expressionist painting is Edvard Munch's The Scream.)
rise
Pommer worked for American studios and later fled to the United Statesafter the
of Hitler.

The towering importance of the American motion picture Spectacular Appeal. The international appealof a picture
on the world’s markets cannotbesafely explained by the hasits foundationin a story. It is totally independentof the
unlimited financial resourcesat the disposal of the capital invested and ofthe splendor and luxury usedinits
American producers. . . . Its main reasonis the mentality of production. The fact that in most cases the supers and mon-
the American picture, which, notwithstandingall attacks umental pictures have provedto be such international suc-
andclaimsto the contrary, apparently comesnearestto the cesses, does not disprove this claim. Such productions
taste of international cinema audiences. always have a simplestory of universal appeal, becauseit is
... The specific and unique elementof the American simply impossible to use spiritual thoughts and impressions
film is thefact ofits being absolutely uncomplicated. Being ofthe soul in a picture deluxe. The splendourin such pro-
whatis called “naive” it knows no problems. .. . ductionis not merely created for decoration — it is its out-
Universal Appeal. It is really preferable to have a picture standing purpose. . .. But splendour means show, and a
too light rather than too heavy, becausein thelatter case show is always and everywhereeasy to understand. ...
there is a dangerthat the publicwill not understand the Source: Excerptfrom “The International Picture: A Lessonon Simplicity,’ by Erich
story. This is the worst thing that can happen with a Pommer, from “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural
Exchange 1920-1939, edited by Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby, 1999, ISBN:
picture.... 978-0-85989-546-0. Used by permissionof Exeter University Press.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

1. How does Pommer characterize the attraction of popular 2. How does Pommerpropose to produce German films that will
American films for European audiences? What does he mean compete with Hollywood? What constraints and challenges
whenhecalls those films “naive”? did he face?

Jazz stars helped popularize the style among working-class African Americans. Mexican
American teenagersjoinedthetrend in majorcities such as San Antonio and Los Angeles.
Politicians quickly graspedthe publicity value of American radio andfilm to foreign APEXAM TIP.
relations. In 1919, with government support, General Electric spearheaded the creation of Analyzetheinfluenceof
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to expand USS. presencein foreign radio markets. mass media on therise of a
RCA—which hada federal appointeeonits board of directors— emerged as a major pro- national culture in the 1920s.
vider ofradio transmission in Latin America and East Asia. Meanwhile, by 1925, American
films madeup 95 percentof the movies screenedin Britain, 80 percentin Latin America,
and 70 percentin France (AP? America in the World). The United States was experiment-
ing with what historians call soft power —the exercise of popular cultural influence —as
radio andfilm exported the American standard of consumption to the world.

The Automobile and Suburbanization

No possession proved more popular than the automobile, a showpiece of modern con-
sumer capitalismthat revolutionized Americanlife. The Ford Motor Company intro-
ducedthe first widely affordable automobile, the Model T, in 1908, but the industry
experienced its most dramatic growth in the 1920s. Car sales played a majorrole in
the decade’s economic boom: in one year, 1929, Americans spent $2.58 billion on
659
 660 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

automobiles. By the end of the decade, they

owned26 million cars—about80 percentof
the world’s automobiles—or an average of
onefor every five people (it was one for every
forty in France). The number of cars on
American roadstripled in ten years.
The auto industry’s exuberant expan-
sion rippled through the economy. It stimu-
lated steel, petroleum, chemical, rubber,
and glass production and, directly or indi-
rectly, created 3.7 million jobs. Highway
construction becamea billion-dollar-a-year
enterprise, financed by federal subsidies
and state gasoline taxes. Car ownership
spurred urban sprawl and,in 1924,thefirst
suburban shopping center: Country Club
Plaza outside Kansas City, Missouri. But
cars were expensive, and most Americans
A
bought them on credit. Alfred Sloan, the
Automobiles Michigan Boulevard in Chicago in 1930. In a single generation,
automobiles transformed American cities and the countrysidealike. As more and more president of General Motors and Henry
Americans madecarstheir primary form oftransportation, auto travel created a booming Ford’s primary competitor, founded the
businessin gasstations, roadside motels, campgrounds, and sightseeing destinations. But first national consumer credit agency to
cars also choked city streets that were once the province of horse-drawn carriages and help Americans buy more Chevrolets.
electric trains. Cities needed new roads,traffic signs, and rules governingtraffic, and the
Other car companies followed. Amid the
booming automobile industry stimulated highway construction across the country. The
automobile was a tech nology but also a consumer item that changed virtually every aspect boom of the 1920s, few worried whether
of American life, utistein bild/Getty Images. purchasing such expensive items on credit
was a good idea. When asked why her
family purchased a car before installing indoor plumbing, one womanreplied sim-
ply, “Why, youcan’t go to town in a bathtub”
INSI Cars changed the way Americansspenttheir leisure time, as proud drivers tooktheir
machines on the road. An infrastructureof gas stations, motels, and drive-in restaurants
Recognizing the impactof the
automobile on American cultural, soon catered to drivers. Railroad travel faltered. The American Automobile Association,
social, and economic lifeis critical founded in 1902, estimated that by 1929 almosta third of the population tookvacations
to success on the AP® exam. bycar. “I had a few daysafter I got my wheat cut? reported one Kansas farmer, “so I just
loaded my family . . . and lit out’. Anelite Californian complained that automobile travel
was no longer “aristocratic” “The clerks and their wives and sweethearts,’ observed a
reporter, “driving through the Wisconsin lake country, camping at Niagara, scattering
tin cans and pop bottles over the Rockies, madethose places taboo for bankers.”
Rising middle-class incomes, new forms of borrowing, and the automobile com-
bined powerfully in the 1920s to produce a major suburban housing boom. Cars were
key. The nineteenth-century “streetcar suburbs” allowed the nation’s affluent to live
outside centralcities, but in communities narrowly built along the tracks. After World
War I, automobile suburbsgrew like the crabgrass of suburban lawns fast and every-
where. “Cities are spreading out,’ National Geographic announced in a 1923 special
feature. Long Island’s Nassau County, a major suburb of New YorkCity, tripled in pop-
ulation,andthefifteen fastest-growing towns in Connecticut wereall suburbs.
LNPRACTICES 8: SKILLS Spreading out happened everywhere—from New York to Chicago, St. Louis to
Seattle—but the growth of Los Angeles epitomized the new role of automobiles in
CONTEXTUALIZATION
American cities. Housing subdivisions opened monthly across a vast expanse of southern
How did the radio, Hollywood
California, and the automobile gave birth to an explosive metropolis. Its population more
movies, and the automobile
than doubled in the 1920s alone, and Los Angeles went from the tenth largest American
exemplify the opportunities and
the risks of 1920s consumer culture? city to thefifth in just ten years. Southern California becameidentified with what histori-
ans call “automobility,” and Los Angeles led the way in defining American carculture.

IN YOUR OWN WORDS Whatwere the primary characteristics of the

American economyin the 1920s?

oo
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 661

ThePolitics and Culture of a Diversifying Nation

At the dawnof the 1920s, public life in the United States had grown immeasurably
morediverse. Womencould now vote. More than 24 million immigrants — hailingpri-
marily from Europe but also from Latin America and East Asia— called the country
home. Theyspoke different languages,practiced a variety ofreligions, and followed
unique cultural traditions (AP® Interpreting the Past). The Great Migration brought
more than one million African Americansfrom all parts of the South to northerncities
such as Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. Cities grew at the expense of rural areas.
Such dramatic changesled to social tensions and pronounced conflict over how the
nation would be defined.

Womenin a New Age

At thestart of the 1920s, many progressives hopedthe attainment of women’s voting
rights would offer new leverage to tackle poverty. They created organizations like the
Womens Joint Congressional Committee, a Washington-based
advocacy group. The committees greatest accomplishment was
the first federally funded health-care legislation, the Sheppard-
Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy Act (1921). Sheppard-
Towner provided federal funds for medical clinics, prenatal
education programs, and visiting nurses, improving health care for
the poor andsignificantly lowering infant mortality rates. It also
marked the first time that Congress designated federal funds for
the states to encourage them to administer a social-welfare pro-
gram. But other reforms stalled, and the decade proved not to bea
watershed of welfare legislation.
Otheractivist women focused on securing legal equality with
men. In 1923, Alice Paul, founder of the National Woman's Party,
persuaded congressional allies to consider an Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA)to the U.S. Constitution. It stated simply that
“men and womenshall have equal rights throughout the United
States” Advocates were hopeful; Wisconsin had passed a similar
law twoyearsearlier, andit helped womenfight gender discrimi-
nation. But opponents pointed out that the ERA would threaten
recent labor laws that protected women from workplace abuses.
Such laws recognized women’s vulnerable place in a heavily sex-
segregated labor market. Would a theoretical statementof “equal-
ity” help poor and working women more than existing protections
did? This question divided women'srights advocates. Introduced
repeatedly in Congress over the next five decades, the ERA was
debated again and again until thebitterratification struggle of the
1970s (Chapter 28).

African American Women African American womenhad dis-

tinct priorities. Groups such as the National Association of
Colored Women (NACW)foughtfor suffrage in the 1910s,just as
white women had. But the constitutional right of black womento
The League of Women Voters The League of WomenVoters
vote was meaningless in the South, where disfranchisement was was the brainchild of Carrie Chapman Catt, president ofthe
law. Black women soughtracial, not just gender, equality. When * National American Woman Suffrage Association. Formed in 1920,
Addie Hunton,field secretary of the National Association for the as the Nineteenth Amendment was about to give women the
Advancementof Colored People, andsixty black women from the vote, the league undertook to educate Americansin responsible
citizenship and to win enactmentof legislationfavorable to
NAGWurged the National Woman's Party to take up their cause, women. The league helped secure passage of the Sheppard-Towner
Paul refused, declaring disfranchisementto be a racial not a gen-* Act of 1921, which providedfederal aid for maternal and child-care
derinjustice. Hunton countered that “five million women in the programs. In the 1930s, members campaigned for the enactmentof
United States cannot be denied their rights withoutall women of Social Security and othersocial-welfare legislation. Library ofVirginia,

AAA
[AP] INTERPRETING THE PAST
From the half century between the Civil War and World War |, more than 24 million
people migrated to the United States. Many of these people came from Europe,but
othersleft Asia, Latin America, and Africa in search of better opportunities or refugein

How Did Immigrants the United States. This turn-of-the-century migration included people from regions of
southern and central Europe who had notpreviously come to the United Statesin
Experience America such large numbers. Their presence in America’s urban centers changed thoseplaces,
but those immigrants were also changed. The extent to which migration from the Old
at the Tu mn of the to the New World affected these millions of people has, however, been a topic of
debate among historians.
Century? Oscar Handlin's classic history of the immigrant experience, The Uprooted (1951),
defined the way historians thought about the topic for a generation. John Bodnar,
writing three decadeslater, offered a different interpretation in The Transplanted. To
whatextent do the titles of their books hint at the argument each makes?

OSCAR HANDLIN JOHN BODNAR

Source: Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: TheEpic Story ofthe Great Migrations That Source: John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History ofImmigrants in Urban America
Madethe American People (NewYorks: Grosset & Dunlap, 1951), 144. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 83-84.

Settlement in America had snipped the continuity of the Kin and friends were free to assist each other in entering
immigrants’ work andideas,oftheir religiouslife ... new- America by providing access to jobs and homes and supply-
comers pushedtheir roots into manydifferentsoils. Along ing important information of labor market conditions. New
the city’s unyielding asphaltstreets, beside the rutted roads arrivals were adept at determining where they might entera
of mill or mining towns, amidst the exciting prairie acres, very large economy. The immigrant family economy sur-
they established the homes of the New World. But... vived and flourished among most newcomersin industrial
nowherecould they transplantthe Europeanvillage. ... The America because new economicstructures actually rein-
pressure of that strangeness exerted a deep influence upon forced traditional ways of ordering life. .... [Individual incli-
the character of resettlement, upon the usual forms of behav- nations were muted and the household . .. superseded all
ior, and upon the modes of communalaction that emerged other goals and objectives... Members of nearly all groups
as the immigrants became Americans. . . . The old condi- received indoctrination in the need to remainloyal to the
tions ofliving could not survive in the new conditions of familial and household unit... . [I]n the movementto a cap-
space. italist world andin theinitial decades of settlement, familial
and communal networks abounded.

FI] short answer PRACTICE

1. How does Handlin's argument about immigrants as 3. Which point of view —Handlin’s or Bodnar’s—is better sup-
“uprooted”peoplediffer from Bodnar's description of them as ported by the chapter narrative? Give specific examples to
“transplanted”? support your argument.
2. According to each author, whatrole did family and commu-
nity play in the immigrant experience?

the UnitedStates feeling the effect of that denial. No womenarefree untilall women
are free”
Otherchallenges remained. Womenprovedto beeffective lobbyists for a variety of
causes, but the Republican and Democratic parties endured as largely male domains.
Finding that women did notvote asa bloc,politicians in both parties began to accord
their votes less weight. New reformsfailed to gain support, and others wererolled back.
Many congressmen,for example, had supported the Sheppard-TownerAct because they
feared the voting power of women, but Congress ended the program in thelate 1920s.

New Woman Magazines, advertisements, and Hollywood movies crafted an ideal-

ized image of the American “new woman”in the 1920s. She had thrownoff Victorian

662

PRE
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 663

modesty and claimed a place for herself alongside men in a new culture of consump- AP’ EXAMTIP
tion and fun. Such images,used primarily to sell products to the middle class, exagger- Identify the causes of and
ated reality. But that did not mean womenslives remained unchanged. The reactionsto the rise of
nineteenth-century notion of separate spheres for men and women had eroded con- womenasa political and
siderably by 1930. More women attendedcollege than ever before. Female athletes cultural force in the 1920s.
such as the golfer Glenna Collett, adventurers such as the celebrated pilot Amelia
Earhart, and performers such as thebrilliant jazz singer Josephine Baker carved out
new, moreliberated roles for women inpubliclife.
Social changetakes time, however, and for the majority of American womenin the
1920s ordinary life was far less glamorous. In some professions, such as medicine,
women actually declined as a percentage of the workforce: only 3 percent of lawyers
and 4 percent of physicians were womenin the decade, Women’s wages lagged far
behindthose of men, and women remainedconfinedto strictly gendered occupations:
sales clerks in the new departmentstores, secretaries in the growing corporate world, AP” PRACTICES & SKILLS
and low-paid assembly-line workers in industry, alongside their traditional roles as CAUSATION
domestic servants. African American and Latino women could noteven get jobs as
Explain why American women
clerks and secretaries. Thus although American womenin this era, especially the might have been morepolitically
young,left behind the Victorian prescriptions of feminine modesty and confinement to united prior to achieving the vote
a female-only separate sphere, they had yetto fully transform women's second-class than afterward.
standing.

Culture Wars
By 1929, ninety-three U.S. cities had populationsof more than 100,000. New YorkCity’s
population exceeded 7 million; Los Angeles’ had explodedto 1.2 million. The 1920
census marked thefirst time there were more urban than rural Americans. Thelives
and beliefs of urban Americans, however, often differed dramatically from those in
small towns and farmingareas. Onesharpcritic, the writer Sinclair Lewis, wrote three
satirical novels — Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), and Elmer Gantry (1927) —that
mocked small-townlife for its religiosity and, as Lewis sawit, hypocrisy and lack of
sophistication (AP° Analyzing Voices).
In a decade of conflict between traditional and modern worldviews, the urban- AP'"EXAMTIP
rural split embodied by Lewis represented oneline of conflict among many. Othersthat As youread through this section,
cameto the fore included Protestant versus Catholic and Jewish; religious versus secu- compare the cultural controversies
lar; native born versus immigrant; and white versusblack. A series of cultural battles in prevalent in the 1920s over alcohol,
the 1920s revealed a stark conflict over the kinds of values, beliefs, and even people education, and immigration.
deemed “American.”

Prohibition Rural and native-born Protestants started the decade with the achieve-
mentof a longtimegoal: national prohibition ofliquor (Chapter 17). The two princi-
pal antialcohol organizations, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the
Anti-Saloon League, had long hailed temperance as good for health and Christian
virtue, In the 1910s, some progressives joined the campaign, convinced that alcohol
kept immigrant workers in poverty and the saloonwas a source of political corrup-
tion. World WarI, too, spurred the cause. Mobilizing the economy for war, Congress
limited brewers’ anddistillers’ use ofbarley and otherscarce grains, causing consump-
tion to decline. Moreover, anti-Germanhysteria identified the many German brewer-
ies in Americancities, like Pabst and Anheuser-Busch, with the wartime enemy. The
decades-long prohibition campaign culminated with Congress's passage of the
Eighteenth Amendment in 1917. Ratified over the next two years by nearly every
state and takingeffect in January 1920, the amendmentprohibited “manufacture,sale,
or transportation of intoxicating liquors” anywhere in the United States. It was
enforced by the federal government under the 1920 Volstead Act.
Defenders of prohibition, especially native-born Protestants in small towns, cele-
brated prohibition as a victory over sin andvice. In urban areas, though, thousands

NAAA
AP’| ANALYZING VOICES
In the early twentieth century, the United States was becomingan urban society. By
Urban Writers 1920,life outside the metropolis seemedsufficiently remarkable to warrant sociolog-
ical investigation — or atleast, city people thoughtso. Presented here are three views
Describe Small-Town of rural and small-town America, all published during the 1920s. Though cities had
become the wellspring of American intellectual life, urban writers juxtaposed their
America own experiences with those of people they thoughtofas living in“Middletown,U.S.A"

SINCLAIR LEWIS Dyer’s DrugStore, a corner building of regular and

Main Street unreal blocksofartificial stone. Inside the store, a greasy
marble soda-fountain with an electric lamp of red and green
In his novel Main Street (1920), Sinclair Lewis portrayed the fic- and curdled-yellow mosaic shade. Pawed-over heaps of
tional midwestern town of GopherPrairie. In the excerpts below,
toothbrushes and combs and packagesof shaving-soap.
Lewis's narrator describes the reactions of young, urban Carol
Shelves of soap-cartons,teething-rings, garden-seeds, and
Kennicott, wife of the town’s new doctor, and Bea Sorenson, a
patent medicinesin yellow packages — nostrumsfor con-
Swedish American farm girl.
sumption,for ‘women’s diseases’ — notorious mixtures of
Source:Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1920),
opium andalcohol,in the very shop to which her husband
33-40.
sent patients for thefilling of prescriptions.
66 When Carol had walked for thirty-two minutes she had Thetrain which brought Carol to GopherPrairie also
completely covered the town,east and west, north and brought Miss Bea Sorenson.
south; and she stood at the corner of Main Street and Miss Bea was a stalwart, corn-colored, laughing young
Washington Avenue and despaired. woman, and she was bored by farm-work. She desired the
MainStreet with its two-story brick shops,its story- excitementsofcity-life, and the way to enjoy city-life was, she
and-a-half woodenresidences, its muddy expanse from haddecided, to ‘go get a yob as a hiredgirl in GopherPrairie’ .. .
concrete walk to walk,its huddle of Fords and lumber- Bea had neverbefore been in a town larger than Scandia
wagons, was too small to absorb her. Thebroad,straight, Crossing, which has sixty-seven inhabitants.
unenticing gashesofthestreets let in the grasping prairie on As she marchedupthestreet she was meditatingthatit
every side. She realized the vastness and the emptiness of didn't hardly seem like it was possible there could be so many
the land. Theskeleton iron windmill on the farm a few folksall in one place at the same time. My!It would take years
blocks away, at the north end of MainStreet, was like the to get acquainted with them all. And swell people,too! A fine
ribs of a dead cow. She thought of the coming of the big gentleman in a new pinkshirt with a diamond, and not
Northern winter, when the unprotected houses would no washed-outblue denim working-shirt. A lovely lady in a
crouch togetherin terror of stormsgalloping out of that longery dress (but it must be an awful hard dress to wash).
wild waste. They were so small and weak,thelittle brown And thestores! ... A drug store with a soda fountain that was
houses. They were shelters for sparrows. ... just huge, awful long, andall lovely marble... and the soda
She wantedto run, fleeing from the encroachingprairie, spouts, they weresilver, and they cameright out of the bot-
demandingthesecurity of a great city. Her dreamsofcreat- tom ofthe lamp-stand! Behindthe fountain there were glass
ing a beautiful town were ludicrous. Oozing out from every shelves, and bottles of new kindsofsoft drinks, that nobody
drab wall, shefelt a forbidding spirit which she could never ever heard of. Supposea fella took you there! 99
conquer.
Shetrailed downthe street on one side, back on the
ANZIA YEZIERSKA
other, glancinginto the crossstreets. It was a private Seeing
MainStreet tour. She was within ten minutes beholding not Bread Givers
only the heart of a place called GopherPrairie, but ten A child of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Anzia
thousand towns from Albany to San Diego. Yezierska grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City,In her

flagrantly ignored the law, many mocking prohibition as old-fashioned Puritanism.

Patrons flocked to urban speakeasies, or illegal drinking sites, which flourished in
almost every major city; one raid on a Chicago speakeasy yielded 200,000 gallons of
alcohol. Profits from the secret clubs enriched notorious gangsters such as Chicago's Al
Caponeand New York’s Jack [Link] saw prohibition as an attack on the
working-class saloon andalsoresisted the ban, butas the price of alcohol soared on the
illegal marketit often proved out of reach for the laboring classes. Prohibition’s most

664
autobiographical novel Bread Givers (1925), Yezierska described a telephone, so ownership of an automobile has now reached
her arrival in the Ohio town where she attended college. the pointof being an acceptedessential of normalliving....
Source: From Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska. Copyright © 1970 by Louise Levitas Accordingto an officer of a Middletown automobile
Henriksen, Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc,, New York. All rights financing company, 75 to 90 percentofthe cars purchased
reserved, locally are bought on time payment, and a working man
earning $35.00 a weekfrequently plans to use one weeks pay
66 Before this, New York wasall of America to me. But now I
each monthas paymentforhis car. The automobile has
came to a town ofquietstreets, shaded with green trees. No
apparently unsettled the habit of careful saving for some
crowds, no tenements, No hurrying noise to beat the race of
families. .. . Tll go without food beforeI'll see us give up the
the hours. Only leisured quietness whispered in the air:
car’ said one woman emphatically... .
Peace... .
Manyfamilies feel that an automobileis justified as an
Each house had its own greengrass in front, its ownfree
agency holdingthe family group together. . . . [But] the fact
spaceall around,andit faced the street with the calm secu-
that 348 boys and 382 girls in the three upperyearsof the
rity of being ownedfor generations, and notrented by the
high schoolplaced ‘use of the automobile’ fifth and fourth
month from a [Link] the early twilight, it was like a
picture out offairyland to see peoplesitting on their porches, respectivelyin a list of twelve possible sourcesof disagree-
mentbetween them andtheir parents suggests that this may
lazily swinging in their hammocks,or watering their own
be an increasing decentralizing agent. . . .
growingflowers.
If the automobile touches the rest of Middletown'sliv-
So these are the real Americans,I thought,thrilled by the
ing at many points, it has revolutionized its leisure...
lean,straight bearing of the passers-by. They had noneof
thatterrible fight for bread andrentthat I always saw in the makingleisure-time enjoymenta regularly expected part of
New York peoples eyes. . All the young people I had ever every day and weekrather than an occasionalevent... .
seen were shutup in factories. But here were younggirls and
The frequency of movie attendanceof high school boys and
girls is about equal, businessclass families tend to go more
young menenjoyinglife, free from the worry for a living...
often than do workingclass families, and children of both
The spick-and-spancleanlinessof these people! It smelled
groups attend more often withouttheir parents than doall
from them,the soap andthe bathing, Their fingernails so
the individuals or combinationsof family membersput
white and pink. ... Whata feast of happenings each day of
together. . . . It is probable that time formerly spentin
college was to those other students. Societies, dances, letters
lodges, saloons, and unionsis now being spentin partat
from home, packages of food, midnight spreads and even
the movies, at least occasionally with other membersof the
birthday parties. I never knew that there were people glad
family. Like the automobile andradio, the movies [break]
enoughoflife to celebrate the day they were born. 99
up leisure time into an individual, family, or small group
affair. 99
ROBERTS. LYND AND HELEN MERRELL LYND
Middletown
In 1929, sociologists Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd pub-
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
lished Middletown, a study of life in a small midwestern city.
Middletown was not single community but a composite of sev- 1. Whatattitudes toward the small town and big city does
Main Street represent? Why do youthink Lewis includes
eral communities studied by the Lynds.
views as different as Carol's and Bea's?
Source:Excerptfrom Middletown: A Study in American Culture, by Robert 8. Lynd 2. How doesthe urban experience of Yezierska's narrator
and Helen [Link], Copyright © 1929 by Harcourt, Inc, and renewed 1957 by shapeherreactiontolife in an Ohio town? How might
Robert $. and Helen [Link]. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt small-townresidents have reacted to her description of
Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
them as “the real Americans”? How might Lewis have
respondedto Yezierska's description?
66 Thefirst real automobile appeared in Middletown in
3. How dothe two novelists (Lewis and Yezierska) differ from
1900. ... At the close of 1923 there were 6,221 passenger cars
the sociologists (the Lynds) in the issues they emphasize,
in thecity, one for every 6.1 persons, or roughly two for andin their tone and point of view? Whatfeaturesof small-
every three families. ... As, at the turn of the century, busi- townlife does each text emphasize?
nessclass people beganto feel apologeticif they did not have

ardent supporters were native-born,small-town Protestants,andits greatest opponents

were middle-class urbanites and immigrants.
The national ban on alcohol was a prolonged social experiment that fizzled.
Alcohol consumption declined in 1921 and 1922 but then began climbing
again — thoughit did not reach pre-1920 levels until after repeal in 1933. Among the
middle class, which could afford higher prices, alcohol consumption declined hardly
at all in these years. Thefact that only the sale and notthe possession of alcohol was

665

RENE
666 PART7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

illegal made prohibition exceedingly diffi-

cult to enforce. And yet the Eighteenth
Amendment's most important legacy might
well have been the growing influence of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
the federal agency tasked with enforcing the
Volstead Act. Under the shrewd direction
of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI used the Red
Scare and prohibition to increase its
resources, enlarge its investigative domain,
and become a fixture of federal police
power. Difficult to enforce, associated with
organized crime, and increasingly politi-
cally unpopular, prohibition was repealed
in 1933.

Evolution in the Schools In anotherepi-

sodeofthe clash between modern andtradi-
tionalist worldviews, controversy erupted as
fundamentalist Protestants sought to man-
date school curricula based on the biblical
overprohibition. When the law wentinto effect, federal agents seized and destroyed supplies
of alcohol, often dumpingit in the streets. Here, working-class children in Brooklyn race to accountof creation. In 1925, Tennessee’s leg-
scoopit up in buckets beforeit drains away. In tenement neighborhoods,children eager to islature outlawed the teachingof “any theory
earn a nickel often toted buckets of beer, wine, and homemade liquor for their parents or that denies the story of the Divine creation
neighbors. How mighta rural temperance advocate have respondedto this photograph? of man as taughtin the Bible, [and teaches]
How abouta working-class manin Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, or New York? NYDaily News Archive
via Getty Images, instead that man has descended from a
lower order of animals.” The American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), formed during the Red Scare to protect free speech
rights, challenged the law’s constitutionality. The ACLU intervened in the trial of
John [Link], a high schoolbiology teacher who taughtthe theory ofevolution to his
class andfaceda jail sentence for doing so. Thecase attracted national attention because
Clarence Darrow, a famouscriminal lawyer, defended Scopes, while William Jennings
Bryan,the three-time Democratic presidential candidate, spoke for the prosecution.
Journalists dubbed the Scopestrial “the monkeytrial.” This label referred both to
Darwin’s argument that humanbeings and other primates share a commonancestor
and to the circus atmosphereatthetrial, which was broadcastlive over a Chicago radio
Salz
station. (Proving that urbanites had their ownprejudices, acerbic critic H. L. Mencken
Evaluate the Scopestrial as an dismissed antievolutionists as “gaping primates of the upland valleys,” implying that
expression ofthe battle between they had not evolved.) The jury took only eight minutes to deliver its verdict: guilty.
modernism and fundamentalism
Though the Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned Scopes’s conviction, the law
in American society.
remained onthe books for more than thirty years.

Nativism Somenative-born Protestants pointed to immigration as the primary cause

ofwhat they saw as America’s moral decline. A nation of 105 million people had added
more than 24 million immigrants over the previous four decades; the newcomers
included many Catholics and Jews from Southern and Eastern Europe, whom one
Maryland congressmanreferred to as “indigestible lumps”in the “national stomach.”
Such attitudes recalled hostility toward Irish and Germansin the 1840s and 1850s. In
this case, they fueled a momentousshift in immigration policy.
“America must be kept American,’ President Coolidge declared in 1924. Congress
had banned Chinese immigration in 1882, and Theodore Roosevelt had negotiated a
so-called gentleman's agreement that limited Japanese immigration in 1907. Now
nativists charged that there were also too many European arrivals, some of whom,
they claimed, undermined Protestantism and imported anarchism, socialism, and
other radical doctrines. Responding to this pressure, Congress passed emergency
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 667

immigration restrictions in 1921 and a permanent measure three years later, The
National Origins Act (1924) used backdated census data to establish a baseline: in
the future, annual immigration from each country could not exceed 2 percent of that
AP EXAMTIP
nationality’s percentage of the U.S. population as it had stood in 1890. Since only
small numbers ofItalians, Greeks, Poles, Russians, and other Southern and Eastern Being able to explain the
European immigrants hadarrived before 1890, the law drastically limited immigra- discriminatory nature of
tion from those places. In 1929, Congress imposed even morerestrictive quotas, set- nes an nn
ting a cap of 150,000 immigrants per year from Europe and continuing to ban most ontheApe a mee
immigrants from Asia, -
The new law, however, permitted unrestricted immigration from the Western
Hemisphere. As a result, Latin Americans arrived in increasing numbers, finding jobs
that had gone to other immigrants before exclusion. More than 1 million Mexicans
entered the United States between 1900 and1930,including manyfleeingtheinstability
caused by the Mexican Revolution. Nativists lobbied Congressto cutthis flow; so did
labor leaders, who argued that impoverished migrants lowered wages for other
American workers. But Congress heeded the pleas of employers, especially farmers in
Texas andCalifornia, who wanted cheap labor.
Other anti-immigrant measures emerged at the state level. In 1913, by an over-
whelming majority, California’s legislature had passed a law declaring that “aliens inel-
igible to citizenship” could not own “real property.’ The aim was to prevent Asians,
especially Japanese immigrants, from owningland, though some hadlivedin the state
for decades and built up prosperous farms. In the wake of World War I, California
tightened these laws, makingit increasingly difficult for Asian families to establish
themselves. California, Washington, and Hawaiialso severely restricted any school that
taught Japanese language, history, or culture. Denied bothcitizenship and landrights,
Japanese Americans would be in a vulnerable position at the outbreak of World WarII,
whenanti-Japanese hysteria swept the UnitedStates.

ae A 55 Be Be BS: =
TheU.S. Border Patrol, Laredo, Texas, 1926 In 1926, San Antonio photographer EugeneO. Goldbeck tookthis
photograph ofU.S. Border Patrol officers in Laredo. Since 1917, Mexicans,like other immigrants, had been subject toa
headtax andliteracy test. The U.S. government had not enforced these provisions, however, becauseofpressure from
southwestern employers eagerfor cheap Mexican labor. Following passageof the National Origins Act in 1924, the United
Statesestablished the BorderPatrol, Its increasing efforts to police the border slowed the casual movementof Mexican
workers in and out of the United States. Whyclo youthink the BorderPatrol posedin this way for Goldbeck’s picture?
Notice that some ofthe officers depicted here were dressed as civilians. What might this signify? Photography Collection, Harry
Ransom Center, The University ofTexas at Austin,
668 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

AP’ EXAMTIP The National Klan The 1920s brought a nationwide resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
Compare the KKK that developed
(KKK), the white supremacist group formedin the post-Civil War South, Soon after
in the 1920sto the KKK that the premiere of Birth of a Nation (1915), a popularfilm glorifying the Reconstruction-
originatedin the Reconstructionera. era Klan, a group of southerners gathered on Georgia’s Stone Mountain to revive the
organization. With its blunt motto, “Native, white, Protestant supremacy,’ the Klan
recruited supporters across the country (AP® Thinking Like a Historian). KKK mem-
bers did notlimit their harassment to African Americans but targeted immigrants,
Catholics, and Jewsas well, with physical intimidation, arson, and economicboycotts.
Atthe heightofits influencein the early 1920s, the Klan counted more than 3 million
membersand wielded considerable political clout,particularly at thelocal level. A typical
example was the small town of Monticello, Arkansas, wherein thefirst half of the decade
the mayor, city marshall, half the city council, the sheriff, the county clerk, tax assessor,
andtreasurer, and elevenoffifteen male teachers were all Klan members. From small-
town mayors to President Woodrow Wilson, who effusively praised Birth ofa Nation, the
Klan enjoyed broad support amongnative-born white Protestant Americansfor a decade,
Kian activism lent a menacingcastto political issues, as its members defined “one hun-
dred percent Americanism”to include white racial purity, Protestantism, prohibition of
alcohol, conservative sexual mores, and immigration restriction—the Klan avidly
supported both the Eighteenth Amendmentandthe Immigration Actof 1924.
POINT OF VIEW The Klan declined rapidly after 1925; but its rise was part of an ugly trend that
How would you describe the view began before World War I and extended into subsequent decades. The rise of the
of those Americans who supported national Klan helped prepare the way for white supremacist movements ofthe 1930s,
prohibition, the teaching of such as the Los Angeles-basedSilver Legion,a fringe paramilitary group aligned with
evolution in public schools, and Hitler’s Nazis. Far more influential were major figures such as industrialist Henry Ford,
immigration restriction? How whose Dearborn Independentrailed against immigrants and warned that members of
would you describe their opponents’
“the proud Gentile race” must arm themselves against a Jewish conspiracy aimed at
views? Can you understand the
erspectives of each?
world domination. Challenged bycritics, Ford issued an apology in 1927 and admitted
Kees that his allegations had been based on “gross forgeries” But with his paper's editorials
widely circulated by the Klan andother groups, considerable long-
term damage had been done.

The Election of 1928 Conflicts over race, religion, and ethnicity

created the climate for a stormy presidential election in 1928.
Democrats hadtraditionally drawn strength from white voters in the
South and immigrants in the North: groups that divided over prohi-
bition, immigration restriction, and the Klan. By 1928, the northern
urban winggained firm control. Democrats nominated Governor Al
Smith of New York,thefirst presidential candidateto reflect the aspi-
rations of the urban workingclass. A grandson of Irish peasants,
Smith had risen through New York City’s Democratic machine to
Candidate ae oi Poke become a dynamic reformer. But he offended many small-town and
(patie peter 444 21,891,993 58.2 rural Americans with his heavy New York accent and brown derby
. toe .
hat, which highlighted his ethnic working-class origins. Middle-class
, : : . : .
een ,
Alfred E. Smit
aan 87 15.016.168 40.9
reformers questioned his ties to Tammany Hall; temperance advo-
cates opposed him as a “wet” But the governor's greatest handicap
MAP 21.1 The Presidential Election of 1928 was his religion. Although Smith insisted that his Catholic beliefs
Historiansstill debate the extent to which 1928 was a would not affect his duties as president, many Protestants opposed
critical election —an election that produceda significant
him. “No Governor can kiss the papal ring and get within gunshot of
realignmentin voting behavior. Although Republican Herbert
Hooverswept the popular and theelectoral votes, Democrat the White House” vowed one Methodist bishop. |
Alfred E. Smith won majorities not only in the South,his party’s Smith proved no'matchfor the Republican nominee, Secretary of
traditional stronghold, but also in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Commerce Herbert Hoover, who embodied the technological prom-
and (although it is not evident on this map)all ofthe large
ise of the modernage. An organizational genius and a dedicated pub-
cities of the North and Midwest. In subsequentelections, the
Democrats won even more votes amongAfrican Americans lic servant, Hoover won fame during World War I for successfully
and European ethnic groups and, until 1980, were the nation’s managinghugefoodrelief and refugee projects before energizing and
dominantpolitical party. reorganizing the Treasury Department as secretary of commerce

AA
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 669

MAP 21.2 Harlem, 1913-1930 Area predominantly black

African Americans hadlived in New YorkCity sinceits founding in 1624 |
as part of the Dutchsettlement of New Amsterdam.A small number lived 1913 [85 1925 [J] 1930
5 % % mile
in Harlem,in the northern part of Manhattan Island until the early 1900s,
Then in 1904, a subwayline connecting 145th Street in Harlem to lower 7
0 % kilometer
Manhattan and Brooklyn opened,and black tenants and homeowners began
to comein larger numbers. During and after World WarI, large numbers of
southern migrants joined established black families there, bringing with
we
Le
them the food, music, and folkwaysof the South, and Harlem increasingly
13
becamea centerof black life in New York City. By 1930, 165,000 African PE
a
Americans, almost 75 percent of Manhattan's black population, were
concentratedin Harlem.

under President Harding. Riding on eight years of Republican

River
prosperity, Hoover credited business with the country’s rising
affluence and embraced, updated for a more technocratic age,

Hudson
the American tradition of individualism. He won overwhelm-
ingly, with 444 electoral votes to Smith's 87 (Map 21.1). Because
manysouthern [Link] vote for a Catholic, Hoover
carried five ex-Confederate states, breaking the Democratic
“Solid South” for the first time since Reconstruction. Smith,
though,carried industrialized Massachusetts and Rhode Island
as well as the nation’s twelvelargestcities, suggesting that urban
voters were moving into the Democrats’ camp.

The Harlem Renaissance

Amidst these clashes overreligion, morality, and Americanism,
black artists and intellectuals claimed a voice for themselves.
They questioned long-standing assumptions aboutcivilization,
progress, and the alleged superiority of Western cultures over so-called primitive
people. Based in New York City, where the Great Migration hadtripled the black pop-
ulation in the decade after 1910 (Map21.2), a vibrant new black cultural movement
took shape. Harlem stood as “the symbolofliberty and the
Promised Land to Negroes everywhere,’ as one minister putit.
Talented African Americansflocked to the district, where they
created bold newart forms andassertedties to Africa.

Black Writers and Artists Poet Langston Hughes captured

the upbeatspirit of the Harlem Renaissance whenheasserted,
“I am a Negro— and beautiful” Other writers and artists also
championed race pride. Claude McKay and Jean Toomerrepre-
sented in fiction what philosopher Alain Locke called, in an
influential 1925 book, the “New Negro”Painter Jacob Lawrence,
who had grownup in crowded tenementdistricts of the urban
North, used bold shapes andvivid colors to portray the daily
life, aspirations, and suppressed anger of African Americans.

Augusta Fells Savage, African American Sculptor Born in Florida

in 1892, Augusta Fells Savage arrived in New York in 1921 to study and
remainedto take part in the Harlem Renaissance. Widowed at a young age
and struggling to support her parents and young daughter, Savage faced
both racism and poverty. Much of her work has been lost because she
sculpted in clay and could not afford to cast in bronze. Savage began to
speak outforracial justice after she was denied, on the basis of herrace, a
fellowship to study in Paris. In 1923, she married a close associate of UNIA
leader Marcus Garvey. Augusta Savage withher sculpture Realization,c. 1938/Andrew Herman,
photographer. Federal Art Project, Photographic Division collection, c. 1920-1965, bulk 1935-1942.
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
 THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
Who Joined the Ku Asked why a person would join the Klan, you mightcite racism andreligious bigotry.
But the story is complicated: many whites with strong prejudicesdid notjoin the Klan
Klux Klan? in the 1920s, while others did, Why?

1. Klan wedding in Washington,D.C., 1925. 4. Report ona Klan gatheringin Birmingham, Alabama,
1923.
EdgewoodPark was crowded by noon. Klansmen and
their wives and families enjoyed a great barbecue, went
swimming, dancing, and picknicking. There wereair-
plane stunts during the day with band concerts thrown
in for good measure. At night there was a wonderfuldis-
play offireworks following theinitiation and the address
of the Imperial Wizard.

5. Klansmen in Buffalo, New York, 1924. Data based on

historical research into a Klan membershiplist ofalmost
2,000 menin the Buffalo area.

Klansmen in Buffalo, New York, 1924

2. Poem read at a meeting of KKK Grand Dragons, North
Carolina, 1923.
Percentage
4 | Be . ofTotal
God Give Us Men! The Invisible Empire demands strong | E
a ; Percentage Native White
Minds,great hearts, true faith and ready hands...
ed de of KKK Male Workers
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor: men whowill not lie Occupational Group Members in Buffalo

Men whocan standbefore a demagogue and damn his Professional (predominantly

treacherousflattering without winking! .. clergy, doctors, engineers,
Menof dependablecharacter; men ofsterling worth; pharmacists) 6.1 4.7
Then wrongs will be redressed, and right will rule the earth. Business (small

3. "95% of Bootleggers Jews,editorial, Dearborn businessmen, managers,

Independent, Michigan, 1922. inspectors, accountants) 18.5 10.4

Violation and evasion of the Prohibition laws has had a Low nonmanual (salesmen,
deep Jewish complexion from the very beginning.... clerks, foremen) 27.7 22.6
This does not mean,of course, that every bootlegger is Skilled (machinists,
a Jew. Unless you live in Chicago, New Yorkor other electricians, railroad
largecities, an actual meeting with the Jew in this
engineers, construction
minorcapacity will not be frequent. The Jew is the pos- 30.6 253
sessor of the wholesale stocks; ... But notwithstanding trades)
all this carefulness, the bulk of the arrests madein the Semiskilled and service
United States have been amongJews... . The mainte- (factory and rail workers,
nanceofthe idea of drink in the mindsof the people is deliverymen,policemen,
due to Jewish propaganda. .. . The idea of drink will be repairmen) 16.4 30.2
maintained by means of the Jewishstage, Jewish jazz, Unskilled (laborers,
and the Jewish comics, until somebody comes down 14.5
. gardeners) 0.5
hard uponit. -

670
6. Interviews conductedin the 1980s with Indiana Catholics givefirst allegianceto analien political
Klanswomen aboutKlan life in the [Link] truthful potentate, the pope... their claim to citizenship, to the
accounts, the interviewer allowed the womento remain ballot, and to public office in this Protestant countryis
anonymous. illegitimate, and mustbe forbidden by law. .....
Anonymous + À law to destroythealien influenceofthe foreign lan-
For [the Klan] to say, we wantto getrid of the nig- guagepress [by] requiring that the English language be
gers, we wantto getrid of the Catholics,it didn’t mean a used exclusively.
thing to us... I can rememberquite well the stories that + ... Recognition of the tendency toward moral disinte-
youhearsitting on the porch. ... They'd talk aboutreli- gration, resulting from theactivities . . . of the anti-
gion, and theyd talk about Catholics. ... The Catholics Christian Jews, in our theaters, our motion pictures,
were considered horrible people... and in American businesscircles; the discontinuance
Anonymous of these anti-Christian activities, and the exclusion of
Kelly had a grocery store. Well, it hurt their business Jewsofthis character from America.
terribly because people wouldn't go in there, because The return of the Negroes to their homelandofAfrica,
the Klan wouldtell you notto... . If you had a empty under the protection and with the help of the United
house... , why you weretold notto rentit to a Catholic. States Government.
SomeKlanleadersaid that the Pope was coming to Strict adherenceto the Constitution of the United
take over the country, and he said he might be on the States, including the Prohibition Amendment, by
next train that went through North Manchester. You every citizen.
know, just trying to makeit specific. So, about a thou-
Sources: (2) Kelly J. Baker, Gospel According to the Klan (Lawrence: University Press
sand people wentoutto thetrain station and stoppedthe of Kansas, 2011), 119; (3) Dearborn Independent editorial reprinted in Aspects ofJewish
train. It only had ... one passenger on it. They took him Power in the United States (Dearborn, MI: Dearborn Publishing, 1922), 34-40; (4) Rory
McVeigh, The Rise ofthe Ku Klux Klan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
off, and hefinally convinced them that he wasnt the 2009), 150; (5) Shawn Lay, Hooded Knights onthe Niagara (New York: New York
Pope. He was a carpet salesman. Andso they put him on University Press, 1995), chapter 4 (esp. 87); (6) Kathleen [Link], Women in the Klan
the next train and he wenton to Chicago. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 78-79, 149-151; (7)
McVeigh, 64-65; (8) American Standard, April 15, 1925, 172.
Editorial by National Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans
in the KKK periodical Dawn: A Journalfor True American
Patriots, November10, 1923.
Humanity has become a commodity. For mercenary ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
motives, our importers of it want the most inferior grade. 1. Based on the documents above,identify factors that made
Industry desires cheap labor. Therefore, we have hadthis the KKK appealing to some Americans in the 1920s.
recentflood of 5 and 10-centcitizenship. Take any map 2. Which groups in source 5 were over- and underrepresented
which shows the concentration of the South and Eastern in the Klan? The samehistorian found thatat least 34 per-
European type of immigrant and you will see [that] cent of local Klan members were German American. Review
the Thinking Like a Historian feature in Chapter 20, pages
wherever manufacturing and mining and lumberingpre- 640-641. Why might Germans have been especially likely
dominate, there the hordes of unskilled labor have over- to join the Klan in this period?
whelmingly been assembled.. . . 3. Whatare the advantagesandlimitations of source 6?
Thepresent and recentfloodofinferior foreigners 4, Imagine that Republican president Calvin Coolidge had set
hasvastly increasedourilliteracy, vitally lowered the up a federal agencyto discourage KKKactivity (an action
health level and visibly menaced America by inheritable he did NOT take), He put you in charge ofthe effort and
mental and moraldeficiencies. ... [Farms are] the only gave you a generous budget. How would you havespent
the funds? Explain why you believe your strategy might
legitimate andjustifiable excuse for cheap labor, yet that have beeneffective.
class is movingirresistibly cityward to swell the slums and
multiply immorality. For example, throughout the south [3 bso Practice
the colored race . .. is migrating to the North —nottoits Using your knowledge of Chapter 21, and drawing on evi-
ruraldistricts, but to its industrial centers. dence from the documents above,write a brief essay explain-
ing how the rise of the KKK in the 1920sreflected larger
“Program for America,’ in the KKK newspaper American patterns in American society and politics.
Standard, April 15, 1925.
+ Laws to require the reading of the Holy Bible in every
American public school.
+ Recognition of the fact ... that Romanism is working
here to undermine Americanism.. . . Since Roman

671
672 PART7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

IN IN asd No one embodied the energy and optimism of the Harlem Renaissance more than
Evaluate the Harlem
Zora Neale Hurston. Born in the prosperous black community of Eatonville, Florida,
Renaissance as an expression Hurston had been surrounded as a child by examples of achievement, though she
of African American identity, struggled later with poverty andisolation. In contrast to some other blackthinkers,
Hurston believed African American culture could be understood without heavy
emphasis on the impact of white oppression. After enrolling at Barnard College and
studying with anthropologist Franz Boas, Hurston traveled through the South andthe
Caribbean for a decade, documentingfolklore, songs, and religious beliefs. She incor-
porated this material into her short stories and novels, celebrating the humorandspir-
itual strength of ordinary black men and women. Like other work of the Harlem
Renaissance, Hurston’s stories and novels soughtto articulate what it meant, as black
intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, “to be both a Negro and an American”

Jazz To millions of Americans, the most famous product of the Harlem Renaissance
was jazz. Thoughtheorigins of the word are unclear, many historiansbelieve it was a
slang term for sex—an etymology that makes sense, given the music’s early associa-
tion with urbanvice districts. As a musical form,jazz coalesced in New Orleans and
other partsof the South before World WarI. Borrowingfrom blues, ragtime, and other
popular forms, jazz musicians developed an ensemble style in which performers,

Archibald Motley, Blues, 1929 Painter Archibald Motley (1891-1981) was born in New Orleans but arrived
in Chicago as a smallchild, when his family — like thousands of other African Americans — moved northin search
of opportunity. Motley wasable to studyat the ArtInstitute of Chicago and by the 1920s also showedhis work in
New YorkCity. Manyofhis paintings depictedlife in the predominantly African American neighborhood on Chicago's
South Side that was widely known as the BlackBelt. This piece, Blues, was painted whenMotley was livingin Paris.
It shows the powerful impact jazz had on European listeners. Private Collection/@ Valerie Gerrard Browne/ChicagoHistory Museum/
BridgemanImages.
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 673

keeping a rapid ragtimebeat, improvised around a basic melodicline. The majority of

early jazz musicians were black, but white performers, some of whom had more for-
mal training, injected elements of European concert music.
In the 1920s,as jazz spread nationwide, musicians developedits signature mode, the
improvisedsolo. The keyfigure in this development was trumpeter Louis Armstrong. A
native of New Orleans, Armstronglearnedhiscraft playing in the saloons and brothels
ofthecity’s vice district. Like tens of thousandsof other African Americans, he moved
north, settling in Chicago in 1922. Armstrong showed an inexhaustible capacity for
melodic invention, and his dazzling solos inspired other musicians. By the late 1920s,
soloists becamethecelebrities ofjazz, thrilling audienceswith their improvisational skill.
As jazz spread,it followed the routes of the Great Migration from the South to
northern and midwestern cities, where it met consumers primed to receive it. Most
cities had plentiful dance halls where jazz could be featured. Radio also helped popular-
ize jazz, with the emerging record industry marketingthelatest tunes. As white listen-
ers flocked to ballrooms and clubs to hear Duke Ellington and otherstars, Harlem
becamethe hub of this commerciallylucrative jazz. Those whohailed “primitive” black
music, however, rarely suspendedtheir racial condescension:visiting a mixed-race club
became known as “slumming”
The recording industry soon developed so-called race recordsspecifically aimed at
urban working-class African Americans. The breakthrough came in 1920, when
Otto K. E. Heinemann, a producer whosold immigrant records in Yiddish, Swedish,
and other languages, recorded singer Mamie Smith performing “Crazy Blues” This
smash hit prompted big recording labels like Columbia and Paramount to copy
Heinemann’s [Link], while its marketing reflected the segregation of American
society, jazz brought black musicto the center stage of American [Link] became the
eras signature music, so much so that novelist E. Scott Fitzgerald
dubbed the 1920s the “Jazz Age”

Marcus Garvey and the UNIA Harlem's creative energy gener-

ated broadpolitical aspirations. The Harlem-based Universal
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), led by charismatic
Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, arose in the 1920s to mobilize
African American workers and champion black nationalism.
Garveyurged followers to moveto Africa, arguing that people of
African descent would never be treated justly in white-run
countries.
The UNIA soon claimed 4 million followers, including
manyrecent migrants to northerncities. It published a newspa-
per, Negro World, and solicited funds for the Black Star steam-
ship company, which Garvey created as an enterprise that would
foster trade with the West Indies and carry black Americansto
Africa. But the UNIA declined as quickly as it had risen. In
1925, Garvey was imprisoned for mail fraud because of his
solicitations for the Black Star Line. President Coolidge com-
muted his sentence but ordered his deportation to Jamaica.
Without Garvey’s leadership, the movementcollapsed.
However, the UNIAleft a legacy ofactivism, especially among
the working class. Garvey and his followers represented an
emerging pan-Africanism. They argued that people of African
descent, in all parts of the world, had a commondestiny and
should cooperate in political action. Several developments con- UNIA Parade in Harlem, Early 1920s This photo, taken at
tributed to this ideal: black men’s military service in Europe 138th ae Do ne the reehat
during World WarI, the Pan-African Congress that had sought typesF copiesdoyousee nie and? How are theydressed?
representation at the Versailles treaty table, and protests - Note the slogan carried bya riderin the automobile:"The New
against U.S. occupation of Haiti. One African American historian Negro Has No Fear” From The New York Public Library.

EEE]
674 ~—~PART7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

AP’ PRACTICES & SKILLS wrotein 1927,“The grandiose schemes of Marcus Garveygaveto the race a conscious-
ness such as it had never possessed before. The dream ofa united Africa,not less than
CAUSATION
a trip to France, challenged the imagination”
Howdid the Great Migration lead
to flourishing African American
IN YOUR OWN WORDS Whatwere the main causesofcultural conflict in
culture, politics, and intellectual
the 1920s?
life, and what form did these
activities take?

The Coming of the Great Depression

By 1927, strains on the economy showed that the mass consumer society that had
emerged after World War I wasin trouble. Americansofall sorts were overleveraged —
thatis, sinkingin debt. Consumerlending had becomethetenthlargest business in the
country, topping $7billion that year. Millions of farmers were,like their nineteenth-
century forebears, trapped in an annualcycle of debt. Increasing numbers ofAmericans
boughtinto the stock market, often with borrowed money (“on margin’) and usually
with unrealistic expectations. An investor might, for example, spend $20 of his own
moneyand borrow $80 to buy a $100 share of stock, expecting to pay backthe loan as
the stock rose quickly in value. This worked as long as the economy grew and the stock
market climbed.
But those conditionsdid notlast. Americans who worried overthe rapid economic
growth andeasycredit that fueled the Roaring Twenties provedright: the “Roar” ended
in the Great Depression. Taking into account the recession of 1921, the economic boom
lasted only a brief seven years, from 1922 to 1929.

From Boom to Bust

AP’ EXAM TIP Whenthe stock marketfell, in a series ofplunges between October 25 and November13,
1929, few onlookers understood the magnitudeofthecrisis. Cyclical downturns had
Connectthe causes that led to
been a familiar part of the industrializing economysince the panic of the 1830s; they
the Great Depression to the
economic and political
tendedto follow periods of rapid growth and speculation. The marketrose again in late
developmentsof the 1920s. 1929 and early 1930, and while a great deal of money had beenlost, most Americans
hopedthe aftermath of the crash would be brief. In fact, the nation had entered the
Great Depression, the most severe economic downturn to that point in the nations
history. Over the next four years, industrial production fell 37 percent. Construction
plunged 78 percent. Prices for crops and other raw materials, already low, fell by half.
By 1932, unemployment had reached a staggering 24 percent (Figure 21.1).
A precipitous drop in consumer spending deepenedthecrisis. Facing hard times
and unemployment, Americanscut back dramatically, creatinga vicious cycle offalling
demandandforfeited loans. If buying homes,cars, and applianceson credit seemedlike
a good dealin 1925, by 1930 the deal turned sour. Thatyear, several major banks went
under, victimsof overextendedcredit and reckless management. Thefollowing year, as
industrial production slowed, a muchlarger wave of bank failures occurred, causing an
even greater shock. Since the government did not insure bank deposits, accounts in
failed banks simply vanished. Some people who had had steady jobs and comfortable
savings found themselves broke and out of work.

Early Depression Years

Notall Americans were devastated by the depression; the middle class did not disap-
pear andtherich lived in accustomed luxury. But incomes plummeted even among
workers whokept their jobs. Salt Lake City went bankrupt in 1931. Barter systems
developed,as barbers traded haircuts for onions and potatoes andlaborers worked for
paymentin eggsor pork. “Wedo notdareto use even little soap,’ reported one jobless
Oregonian, “whenit will pay for an extra egg, a few more carrots for our children”

AAA
 CHAPTER 21 Unsettled Prosperity: From War to Depression, 1919-1932 675

23.6
21.7
Pr 20.1
19.0

16.9 17.2
3
Es 45 14.6
a
5
3
3g 10 oo
2

47

1.9 19

I.1920 lllili
° 1915 1925 1930 1935 1940
Lisi
1945
FIGURE 21.1 Unemployment, 1915-1945
During the 1920s, business prosperity and low rates of immigration resulted in historically low unemploymentlevels.
The Great Depression threw millions of people out of work; by 1933, one in four American workers was unemployed,
and the rate remained high until 1941, when the nation mobilized for World WarIl.

“I would be only too glad to dig ditches to keep my family from going hungry,’ wrote a
North Carolina man.
Where did desperate people turn for aid? Their first hope lay in private charity,
especially churches and synagogues. But by the winter of 1931, these institutions were
overwhelmed, unable to keep pace with the extraordinary need. Only eightstates pro-
vided even minimal unemployment insurance. There was no public support for the
elderly, statistically amongthe poorestcitizens. Few Americans had anyretirement sav-
ings, and many whohad saved watchedtheir accounts erased byfailing banks.
Even those who were not wiped out had to adapt to depression conditions. Couples
delayed marriage and reduced. the numberof children they conceived. As a result, the
marriageratefell to a historical low, and by 1933 the birthrate dropped from 97births per
1,000 womento 75. Often the responsibility for birth controlfell to [Link] was “one of
the worst problems of women whose husbands were out of work,’ a Californian told a
reporter. Campaigns against hiring married women were common, on the theory that
available jobs should go to male breadwinners. Three-quarters of the nation’s schooldis-
tricts banned married women from working as teachers—ignoring the fact that many
husbandswereless able to earn than everbefore. Despite restrictions, female employment
increased, as women expandedtheir financial contributionsto their families in hard times.
The depression crossed regional boundaries, thoughits severity varied from place
to place. Bank failures clustered heavily in the Midwest andplains, while areas depen-
dent on timber, mining, and other extractive industries suffered catastrophic declines.
Although southern states endured less unemployment becauseof their smaller manu-
facturing base, farm wages plunged. In manyparts of the country, unemploymentrates
among black men stood at double that of white men; joblessness among African
American womenwastriple that of white women.
By 1932, comprehending the magnitudeofthecrisis, Americans wentto the ballot
boxanddecisively rejected the probusiness, antiregulatory policies of the 1920s. A few
years earlier, with business booming,politics had beenso placid that people chuckled
676 PART 7 DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES, 1890-1945

Minnesota Potato Farmers Theprosperity and consumerpleasures ofthe 1920s hardly extended
to all Americans. This Minnesota family had horses, not a tractor; many of the women’s clothes were
probably made by hand. Rural and working-class Americans, who often struggled in the 1920s, found
conditions even harsher after 1929. On the other hand,farmers had resourcestofall back on thatcity
folks did not: they could grow their own food, and they had long experience in “making do” Minnesota
Historical Society.

when President Coolidge disappeared on extended fishing trips. Now, Americans

wanted bold action in Washington. Faced with the cataclysm of the Great Depression,
Americans would transform their governmentand create a modern welfarestate.

IN YOUR OWN WORDS Whatdomestic economicfactors helped cause the

Great Depression?

SUMMARY
Involvementin World War I strengthened the United States economically and diplo-
matically, butit left the nation profoundly unsettled. Racial tensions explodedafter the
war as African Americans pursued new opportunities and asserted their rights.
Meanwhile, labor unrest grew as employers cut wages and sought to break unions,
while anxieties over radicalism and immigration prompted a nationwide Red Scare.
Thepolitics of the 1920s brought a backlash against prewar progressivism and a
series ofclashes overreligion, morality, and national belonging. The agenda of women
reformers metvery limited success. Republican administrations pursued probusiness
“normalcy” at home and “dollar diplomacy” abroad. Prohibition and the Scopestrial
demonstrated the influence religion could exert on public policy, while rising nativism
fueled a resurgent Ku Klux Klan andled to sweeping newrestrictions on immigration.
Meanwhile, black artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance, including many
inspired by pan-African ideas, explored the complexities of African Americanlife.
Business thrived and a booming consumerculture, exemplified by the radio, the
automobile, and Hollywood films, created new formsofleisure, influencing dailylife
andchallenging older sexual norms. However,therisky speculation andeasy credit of
the 1920s undermined the foundations of the economy. After the 1929 crash, these
factors, along with a range of interconnected global conditions to be discussed in
Chapter22,plunged the United States into the Great Depression.

CREA
CHAPTER 21 REVIEW
[AP* CONTENT REVIEW Answerthese questions to demonstrate your understanding ofthe chapter's main ideas.

1. How and why did the United States take a conservative 5. Between 1917 and 1945,the “Roaring Twenties” were the
turn in the 1920s? only years whenthe United States did not face a major eco-
2. What were the primary characteristics of the American nomic or internationalcrisis. Review the categories of
economyin the 1920s? “Americain the World”“Politics and Power” and
« à d Nati dentity” t Bi
3. What caused thecultural conflict of the 1920s? a aeeekei
| on pages 618-619. In what ways do they suggestthat the
4. What domestic and global factors helped cause the Great prosperous 1920s werea politically distinctive era? What
Depression? continuities do you seein politics and foreign policy?

AS TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance ofeach term below.

Key Concepts and Events

RedScare(p. 653) consumercredit (p. 658) Volstead Act (p. 663) Harlem Renaissance
Palmer raids (p. 653) Hollywood(p. 658) American Civil (p. 669)
Red Summer(p. 654) flapper (p. 658) Liberties Union jazz (p. 672)
soft power(p. 659) (p. 666) Universal Negro
American Plan (p. 654)
welfare capitalism (p. 655) Sheppard-Towner Federal Senpestiñal (9.560) Improvement Association
National Origins Act (p. Sa) |
dollar diplomacy(p. 655) Maternity and Infancy
Act (p. 661) (p. 667) pan-Africanism (p. 673)
associatedstate (p. 656) Ku Klux Klan (p. 668)
Eighteenth Amendment
Teapot Dome(p. 657) (p. 663)

Key People
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Henry Ford (p. 655) Zora Neale Hurston (p.672) Marcus Garvey (p. 673)
Vanzetti (p. 653) Adolph Zukor(p. 658) Louis Armstrong (p. 673)

Key Academic Terms

impunity (p. 656) nostrum (p. 656) etymology (p. 672) cataclysm (p. 676)
adversary (p. 656) acerbic (p. 666) overleverage(p. 674)

MAKING CONNECTIONS _ Recognizethelarger developments and continuities within and across chapters by answering these questions.

1. The Ku Klux Klan ofthe Reconstruction era (Chapter 14) might you explain,to the public, the Klan’s membership
emerged in a specific political and social context; while andactivities? How would you compare the two Klans?
the Klanofthe 1920s built onits predecessor,its goals 2. Along whatlines did Americansfind themselves divided
andscopeweredifferent. Using materialfrom in the 1920s? How werethose conflicts expressed in poli-
Chapters 14 and 21, imagine that you are investigating a tics? In culture andintellectuallife?

3. Whatfactors contributed to the economic boom ofthe

investigation?
series of Klan meetingsin each era (1870s and 1920s).
Where would you conductyourinvestigation? How 1920sand the crash thatfollowed? |
|

KEY TURNING POINTS_ Referto the chapter chronology on page 652 for helping in answering the questions below.

American politics underwenttwoshifts in the period covered factors in American society, economics, and culture help
in this chapter: onein the aftermath of World WarI, and explain each momentofpolitical change?
another in 1932. What caused each turning point? What

CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER REVIEW 677

A
677-a CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER REVIEW

PRACTICE QUESTIONS
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS Choosethe correct answerfor each question.

Questions 1-4 refer to the excerpt below. Questions 5-6 refer to the c. 1920 New YorkCity photo-
graph below.
“Weshould stop immigration entirely until such a time as we
can amend our immigration laws. ...
It is time that we act now, because within a few short years the
damagewill have been done. The endlesstide of immigration
will havefilled our country with a foreign and unsympathetic
element. Those whoare out of sympathy with our Constitution
andthespirit of our Governmentwill be here in large numbers,
and thetruespirit of Americanism left us by our fatherswill
gradually become poisonedbythis uncertain element”
Representative Lucien Parrish, Congressional Debate,
April 1921

1. All of the following factors contributed directly to the

views expressedin the excerpt EXCEPT
a. large-scale immigrationbefore and after World War I.
b. fears that radical ideas such as socialism or commu- iey

nism might spread. Library of Congress.

c. cultural controversies arising in rapidly growing
urbanareas. 5. Which ofthe following developments mostdirectly
d. widespread supportfor the continuing of an imperial- resulted from the context captured in the image?
ist foreign policy. a. Increased migration of African Americans to
2. Whichofthe following mostlikely supported similar northerncities
ideas as those expressed by Parrish in the excerpt? b. Passageof federal anti-lynchinglegislation
a. Democrats in the 1840s and 1850s c. Growth of militantcivil rights movements for
b. Nativists in the 1840s and 1850s black power
c. Business leaders in the 1890s and 1900s d. Emergenceof new groups promotingpolitical
d. Preservationists in the 1890s and 1900s violence
3. The mostdirect result from the sentiments expressed in 6. The African American community resisted segregation
the excerpt was and discrimination in thefirst half of the twentieth
a. ashortage of laborers leadingto a sustained economic centuryin all ofthefollowing ways EXCEPT by
downturn. a. launchinga seriesoflegal challenges.
b. adeclaration by the Census Bureauthatthe frontier b. developing new formsofart andliterature.
was “closed” c. demandingfinancial reparations.
c. quotas limiting European immigration. d. appealingfor greater equality in the military.
d. aban on immigration from Mexico and South
America.
4. Supporters of the views expressed in the excerpt would
have been LEASTlikely to also support political move-
ments seeking to
a. promotetraditional moralvalues.
b. limit the free speech ofradicals.
c. arrest and deportsuspected radicals.
d. repeal Prohibition.
 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER REVIEW 677-b

SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS Read each question carefully and write a short response. Use complete sentences.

“Settlement in America had snipped the continuity of the

immigrants’ work andideas,of their religiouslife... newcom-
ers pushedtheir roots into manydifferentsoils. Alongthecity’s
unyielding asphaltstreets, beside the rutted roadsof mill or
mining towns, amidst the exciting prairie acres, they estab- {
Phlladelphia
e Baltimore
lished the homes of the New World. But .... nowhere could LA Washington,
DO.
they transplantthe Europeanvillage. ... The pressure ofthat =
+
strangeness exerted a deep influence upon the character of Los!
[Angeles we
LT?
resettlement, uponthe usual forms of behavior, and upon the
modes of communal action that emerged as the immigrants
became Americans, ... The old conditionsofliving could not y à
tre à
Population Change, 1920-1930 wr
survive in the new conditions of space” Ri
EI Very strong roth & Brownsville
Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great [2] Moderate growth
Migrations That Made the American People, 1951 Dis
e Urbanarea of strong growth
<= Migrationof black population
“Kin and friends werefree to assist each other in entering
America by providing access to jobs and homes and supplying Population Change, 1920-1930
important information of labor market conditions. New
arrivals were adept at determining where they might enter a 2. Using the map above, answer(a), (b), and (c).
very large economy. The immigrant family economy survived a. Briefly explain ONEspecific historical event or
and flourished among most newcomers in industrial America development that caused a population trend illus-
because new economic structures actually reinforced tradi-
trated in the map.
tional ways of orderinglife. . . . [I]ndividualinclinations were
b. Briefly explain ONE specific historical event or
muted and the household. . . supersededall other goals and
objectives. ... Membersofnearlyall groups received indoctri- developmentthat caused a population trenddifferent
nation in the needto remain loyal to the familial and house- from what you explained in (a).
hold unit... . [IJn the movementto a capitalist world and in c. Briefly explain ONEsignificant historical result of the
theinitial decadesof settlement, familial and communal change youexplainedin (a) OR (b).
networks abounded” 3. Answer(a), (b), and (c).
John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History ofImmigrants in a. Briefly explain ONE specific historical similarity
Urban America, 1985 betweenthe causes ofthe Great Depression
(1929-1939) and the causes of an earlier economic
1. Using the two excerpts above, answer(a), (b), and (c). recession or depression in the United States.
a. Briefly explain ONE majordifference between b. Briefly explain ONE specific historical difference in
Handlin’s and Bodnar’s historical interpretations of the causes ofthe Great Depression (1929-1939) from
immigration to the United States. the causesof an earlier economic recession or
b. Briefly explain how ONEspecific historical event or depression in the United States.
developmentfrom the period 1900 to 1930 thatis not c. Briefly explain how ONEspecific historical event or
explicitly mentionedin the excerpts could be used to development demonstrates a changein the United
support Handlin’s interpretation. States caused by the Great Depression (1929-1939).
c. Briefly explain how ONEspecific historical event or
developmentfrom the period 1900 to 1930 thatis not
explicitly mentionedin the excerpts could be used to
support Bodnar’s interpretation.