1. The Jazz Age
or….
The
ROARING
1920s

2. Life cover, July 1, 1926
Cover of Life
Magazine,
July 1, 1926

3. Intro to Jazz Age 5:18

4. CONSUMERISM
(electric) appliances
automobiles
advertising (image vs. utility)
buying on credit
chain stores
Consumer
Debt,
1920–1931
General Electric ad (Picture Research Consultants & Archives)

5. CONSUMERISM:
Impact of the
Automobile
Replaced the railroad as
the key promoter of
economic growth (steel,
glass, rubber, gasoline, highways)
Daily life: commuting,
shopping, traveling, “courting”
Increase in sales:
1913 - 1.2 million registered;
1929 - 26.5 million registered
(=almost one per family)
Passenger Car
Sales, 1920-1929
Filling Station, Maryland in 1921

6. Automobiles &
Industrial
Expansion
Henry Ford
‘fordism’
Ford Highland Park assembly line, 1928
(From the Collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village)
1913: car=2 yrs
wages
1929: 3 mos.
wages
1913: 14 hours to build a new car
1928: New Ford off assembly line every 10
seconds
“Trying out the new assembly line“ Detroit, 1913 Henry Ford (1835-1947)

7. Impact of the Automobile:
Trains and Automobiles, 1900-1980
Jones, Created
Equal

8. Automobiles &
Consumerism
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved
Dodge advertisement photo,
1933
< Ford ad: “Every family -- with even the most
modest income, can now afford a car of their own."
“Every family should have their own car. . .You live
but once and the years roll by quickly. Why wait for
tomorrow for things that you rightfully should enjoy
today?"
(Library of Congress)

9. July 4, Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts, early 1920s

11. MASS
CULTURE:
Radio
New mass medium
1920: First
commercial radio
station
By 1930: over 800
stations & 10
million radios
Networks: NBC
(1924), CBS (1927)
The Spread
of Radio by

12. •Radio sets, parts
and accessories
brought in $60
million in 1922…
• $136 million in
1923
•$852 million in
1929
•Radio reached into
every third home in
its first decade.
•Listening audience was 50,000,000 by 1925

13. MASS CULTURE:
Movies
Movie “palaces”
“talkies” (1927)
Will Hays
(Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public
Library)
80 million tickets sold per
week by 1930 (population: 100
million)

14. “Flappers” sought
individual freedom
Known for their
short “bobbed” hair
Ongoing crusade for
equal rights
Most women remain
in the “cult of
domesticity” sphere
Discovery of
adolescence

15. ROLE OF WOMEN:
Women and Politics
19th Amendment in
1920-suffrage
League of Women Voters
National Women’s Party
(NWP)
Alice Paul (founder)
Margaret Sanger- called
for limiting number of
children per family
Alice
Paul

17. CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART
Literature
“Lost Generation”- called this because
they were disillusioned with American
society in 1920s and they criticized
middle-class materialism/conformity
F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby
Sinclair Lewis-author who wrote about
absurdities of small town life
Ernest Hemingway-famous author
Eugene O’Neill-modern playwright
F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
on the Riviera, 1926 (Stock Montage)

18. America takes FLIGHT
Glenn Curtiss was an
American aviation
pioneer and a founder
of the U.S. aircraft
industry.
His company built aircraft for
the U.S. Army and Navy, and,
during the years leading up to
World War I, his experiments
with seaplanes led to advances
in naval aviation.

19. First Solo-Flight across
Atlantic
Charles Lindbergh
-became a symbol
of American
ingenuity and
America’s desire
for success

20. CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART
African Americans
Harlem
Renaissance-African
American culture in
the form of
literature,theatre
and music that
originated from
Harlem New York
Langston Hughes-key
writer of HR
Langston
Hughes

21. •Beginning of the Jazz Age
in New York City
•Acceptance of African
American culture
•African American literature
and music

22. CHANGES IN LITERATURE & ART
Jazz
“The Jazz Age”
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
The Cotton Club
Louis Armstrong & the Fate Marabel
band, 1919
Louis
Armstrong

23. TIN PAN
ALLEY
• A number of
music publishers
set up shop in the
same district of
Manhattan.
• Tin Pan Alley was
oriented towards
producing songs
that amateur
singers or small
town bands could
perform from
printed music.
These buildings and
others on West 28th
Street between Sixth
Avenue and Broadway
in Manhattan housed the
sheet-music publishers
that were the center of
American popular
music in the early 20th
Century
1910

24. Marcus Garvey-
“Garveyism” Marcus Garvey was a
Jamaican political
leader, publisher,
journalist,
entrepreneur, and
orator who was a
staunch proponent of
the Black nationalism
and Pan-Africanism
movements
Back-to-Africa
movement, which
promoted the return of
the African diaspora to
their ancestral lands.
“UNIA”-
Universal Negro
Improvement Association
dedicated to racial pride,
economic self-sufficiency, and the
formation of an independent black
nation in Africa
Main influence was URBAN BLACK
population

25. RELIGIOUS
COMPLICATION
Scopes Trial
“modernists” VS.
“fundamentalism”
American Civil Liberties Union
Clarence Darrow
William Jennings Bryan

26. Moral_Question 4:07

27. Scopes Trial
A.K.A. Monkey Trial
Fundamentalism
Rejected ideas that implied human moral
behavior came from society and nature, not
God
Rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution—
humans developed from lower life forms
Believed in creationism—God created world

28. 1925
The first conflict between
religion vs. science being
taught in school was in 1925 in
Dayton, Tennessee.

29. John T. Scopes
Biology teacher in Dayton TN recruited to
teach evolution
Arrested for teaching evolution
Clarence Darrow—Scopes lawyer
William Jennings Bryan—prosecutor
Scopes found guilty after 8 days
Sentenced to $100 fine
Conviction later overturned on technicality

31. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Prohibition
Prohibition
The noble experiment
“Speakeasies”
Al Capone
Alphonse “Scarface”
Capone
Government agents breaking up an illegal bar during

32. •Goal: was to reduce crime and poverty
and improve the quality of life by making
it impossible for people to get their hands
on alcohol.
•This "Noble Experiment" was a failure.
•Midnight, January 16th, 1920, US went
dry.
•The 18th Amendment, known as the
Volstead Act, prohibited the manufacture,
sale and possession of alcohol in America.
Prohibition lasted for thirteen years.
•So was born the industry of bootlegging,
speakeasies and Bathtub Gin.

34. •People drank more than ever during
Prohibition, and there were more deaths
related to alcohol.
•No other law in America has been violated
so flagrantly by so many "decent law-abiding"
people.
•Overnight, many became criminals.
•Mobsters controlled liquor created a
booming black market economy.
•Gangsters owned speakeasies and by 1925
there were over 100,000 speakeasies in New
York City alone.

36. Detroit police
inspecting equipment
found in a hidden
underground brewery
during the prohibition
era.
Al Capone Elliot Ness, part of
Agent with the U.S.
Treasury Department's
Prohibition Bureau during
a time when bootlegging
was rampant throughout
the nation.
Chicago gangster
during Prohibition who
controlled the
“bootlegging” industry.
the Untouchables

37. Prohibition start around 2.50

39. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Immigration, 1921-1960

40. Postwar_Intolerance 4:56

41. Immigration
Emergency Quota Act - 1921
3% of total number people in ethnic group per
year
Based on 1910 census
National Origins Act - 1924
2% of each nationality living here in 1890
1929 limit total immigrants to 150,000/yr with
nationality allotment based on 1920 census

42. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
National Origin
Act of 1924
Number of
Immigrants
and Countries
of Origin,
1891-1920 and
1921-1940
Percentage of Population Foreign Born, 1850-1990

43. •Red Scare, 1919 to 1921, was a
time of great upheaval…U.S.
“scared out of their wits".
•"Reds” as they were called,
"Anarchists” or "Outside
Foreign-Born Radical
Agitators” (Communists).
Attorney General
Mitchell Palmer
•Anti-red hysteria came about after WWI and the
Russian Revolution.
•6,000 immigrants the government suspected of
being Communists were arrested (Palmer
Raids) and 600 were deported or expelled from
the U.S.
•No due process was followed

44. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
Communist International
3rd International Goal (1919):
promote worldwide communism
Red Scare
Palmer Raids (1920)
A. Mitchell Palmer’s Home bombed, 1920
Police arrest
“suspected
Reds” in
Chicago,
1920

45. Sacco and Vanzetti Case
2 shoe-factory workers were murdered and
robbed of company payroll
Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, a fish peddler
Italian immigrants arrested on flimsy evidence
• Anarchists and immigrants
Found guilty, sentenced to death, executed
anti-immigrant sentiments led Congress to
change immigration laws

46. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
Sacco &
Vanzetti
HAVE A CHAIR! from The Daily
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, 1921

47. SOCIAL & CULTURAL CONFLICTS:
Xenophobia and Racial Unrest
Birth of a Nation - D.W. Griffith
“new” Ku Klux Klan
“American-ism”
(Picture Research Consultants & Archives)
Ku Klux Klan initiation, 1923. The Klan opposed all who were not
“true Americans”. (c) 2000 IRC

48. Ku Klux
Klan
Ku Klux Klan parade in
Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 1926

49. Rural Americans identify urban culture with Communism,
crime, immorality
Sex becomes an all-consuming topic of interest in popular
entertainment
Communities of home, church, and school are absent in the
cities

50. The 1920 Election
Wilson’s idealism
and Treaty of
Versailles led many
Americans to vote
for the Republican,
Warren Harding…
US turned inward
and feared anything
that was European…
Warren Harding- Republican

51. The 1920 Election

52. BUSINESS – FRIENDLY
GOVERNMENT
Warren G. Harding
“Return to normalcy”
• Getting back to a
PEACETIME or NON-War
Economy
Herbert Hoover-Secretary of
Commerce
Andrew Mellon- Sec of
Treasury
The “Ohio Gang”- political
cronies of Warren Harding
Harding with Laddie, June 13, 1922
Albert B. Fall of the Teapot Dome Scandal
(left)

53. The 1920 Election
The Ohio Gang: President Warren Harding (front row, third from right),
Vice-President Calvin Coolidge (front row, second from right), and
members of the cabinet.

54. Republican Policies
Harding’s Return to "normalcy"
tariffs raised
corporate, income taxes cut
spending cuts
Government-business
cooperation
“The business of government, is
business”
Return to “isolation”

55. • Secretary of the Interior, Albert
B. Fall leased naval reserve oil land
in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk
Hills, California, to oilmen Harry F.
Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny
•Fall had received a bribe of
$100,000 from Doheny and about
three times that amount from
Sinclair.
•Fall found guilty of taking a bribe.
•Sinclair and Doheny were
acquitted of charges.

56. Harding and Coolidge
Republican presidents appeal to
traditional American values
Harding dies in office after 2
years.
Scandals break after his death
Teapot Dome Scandal
Calvin Coolidge becomes
President after Harding’s death in
1923.

57. The 1924 Election
Calvin Coolidge served as
President from 1923 to
1929.
“Silent Cal”.
“THE BUSINESS OF
AMERICA, IS BUSINESS”
Republican president

58. REPUBLICAN ECONOMY SUPPORTED
LAISSEZ FAIRE AND BIG BUSINESS……….
+ + =$
Lower Taxes Less Federal Higher
Strong
Spending Tariffs
National
Fordney-McCumber Tariff---1923Economy
Hawley-Smoot Tariff ---1930
raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%!!!