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1920S (POLITICAL (Disarmament" Conference (1921-1922): was an effort…
1920S
POLITICAL
A policy of isolationism; Americans denounced
“radical” foreign ideas and “un-American” lifestyles
Emergency Quota Act of 1921: immigrants from Europe were restricted at any year to a quota; set at 3% of the people of their nationality who lived in the U.S. in 1910
Immigration Act of 1924: cut the quota down to 2% and the origins base was shifted to that of 1890, when few southeastern Europeans lived in America
Scopes “Monkey Trial,”
where John T. Scopes, a high school teacher of Dayton, Tennessee, was charged with teaching evolution; illustrated the rift between the new and old (
Fundamentalists VS Modernists
)
Harding's Cabinet
Secretary of State: Charles Hughes
Secretary of Treasury: Andrew Mellon
Secretary of Commerce: Herbert Hoover
Secretary of Interior: Albert B. Fall
Attorney General: Harry Daugherty
*involved in major scandals
Scandals (During Harding's Term)
Charles R. Forbes caught stealing $200 million and resigned from the head of the Veterans Bureau
Fall (secretary of interior) involved in Teapot Dome Scandal 1921, in which he was caught transferring naval oil reserves to his department
Daugherty (attorney general) sold illegal pardons and liquor permits
Adkins v. Children's Hospital
(1923): ruled that women no longer deserved special protective legislation bc of the 19th Amendment; federal minimum wage legislation for women was an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract
Adjusted Compensation Act
gave every former soldier a paid-up insurance policy due in twenty years
Disarmament" Conference
(1921-1922): was an effort by nations to actualize the ideology of disarmament
Five-Power Naval Treaty
of 1922: Created to prevent the naval arms race that had already began during WWI.
Four-Power Treaty
: established that Britain, Japan, France, and U.S. would preserve the status quo in the Pacific; no countries could seek further territorial gain
(1928)
Kellog-Briand Pact
or Pact of Paris: said that all nations that signed would no longer use war as offensive means
Election of 1924: Coolidge (R) vs. Davis (D) vs. Follette (P); liberal vote was split between the Democrat and the Progressive; Coolidge to win.
Election of 1928: Hoover (R) vs. Smith (D); Hoover Wins; election was marked by bigotry and anti-Catholic sentiment towards Smith
(1924)
Charles Dawes
engineered the Dawes Plan
Hoover's Policies
Agricultural Marketing Act (June 1929): designed to help the farmers help themselves, and it set up a Federal Farm Board to help the farmers
Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%
ECONOMICAL
A new medium arose as well:
advertising
, which used persuasion, ploy, seduction, and sex appeal to sell merchandise
(1925)
Bruce Barton
’s bestseller The Man Nobody Knows; Jesus Christ was the perfect salesman
Henry Ford
perfected the assembly-line production to where his famous Rouge River Plant was producing a finished automobile every ten seconds
Prosperity took off & helped by the tax policies of Treasury Secretary
Andrew Mellon
; favored the rapid expansion of capital investment
Mellon reduced amount of taxes the wealthy had to pay, thus conceivably thrusting the burden onto the middle class; reduced the national debt; accused of indirectly encouraging the Bull Market.
(12/17/1903)
Wright brothers
flew the first airplane for 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
(1890s)
Guglielmo Marconi
had already invented wireless telegraphy and his invention was used for long distance communication in the Great War
(Nov 1920) the first voice-carrying radio station
began broadcasting when KDKA (in Pittsburgh) told of presidential candidate Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory
Thomas Edison
was one of those who invented the movie
the real birth of the movie came with The Great Train Robbery
Esch-Cummins Transportation Act: US federal law that returned railroads to private operation after WW1
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) pledge their mission to make them profitable
Merchant Marine Act
(1920): allowed the Shipping Board to sell 1,500 WW1 warships to private shippers @ a cheap market price
(1921)
Veterans’ Bureau
was created to operate hospitals and provide vocational rehabilitation for the disabled
Fordney-McCumber Tariff Law
: raised the tariff from 27% to 35%; supposed to equalize the cost of American and foreign production
Europe needed to sell goods to
the U.S. in order to get the money to pay back its debts, and when it could not sell, it could not repay
SOCIAL
“Red Scare” of 1919-20
Attorney General
A. Mitchell Palmer
(“Fighting Quaker”) using a series of raids to round up and arrest about 6,000 suspected Communists
“
Nativism
” or anti-foreignism was high
(1921) Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of murdering a Massachusetts paymaster and his guard. The two accused were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers, and the courts may have been prejudiced against them
Prohibition
, 18th Amendment or Volstead Act: law forbidding the sale of alcoholic beverages; one of the Progressive Amendments
Rise in gangsterism & crime;
gangs moved into other activities as well:
prostitution, gambling, and narcotics
Gang wars of Chicago in the 1920s,
about 500 people were murdered
Most infamous of these gangsters was “Scarface” Al Capone, and his St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Capone was finally caught for tax evasion
Ku Klux Klan was anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-black,
anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, anti-revolutionist, anti-bootlegger, anti-gambling, anti-adultery, and anti-birth control
Margaret Sanger
: American leader of the movement to legalize birth control, founded the first birth control clinic in the US: American Birth Control League
Black pride spawned such leaders as Langston Hughes of the
Harlem Renaissance
and famous for The Weary Blues, which appeared in 1926
Marcus Garvey
: founder of the United Negro Improvement Association
Literature of the 1920s
: marked a shift from the Protestant background to the probing new moral codes
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot: The ultimate indictment of the modern world's loss of personal, moral, and spiritual values
The New Negro by Alain Locke: A hopeful look at the negro in America
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The American dream that anyone can achieve anything
Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill: A look at 30 years in the life of a modern woman
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway: The lost generation of expatriates
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: A satirical look at small town life
American Legion
: founded by TR Roosevelt Jr in 1919; organization consisted of WWI veterans who met up to tell old war stories and let off steam