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Chapter 20 - From Business Culture to Great Depression: The Twenties, 1920–1932

  1. Decade of prosperity
    1. Prevalence of business values
    2. Industrial boom
      1. Surging productivity and output
      2. Emergence of new industries
      3. Central role of automobile
    3. Consumer society
      1. Consumer goods
        1. Proliferation
        2. Marketing
        3. Impact on daily life
          1. Telephone
          2. Household appliances
      2. Leisure activities
        1. Vacations
        2. Movies
          1. Popularity of
          2. Hollywood's rising dominance of global film industry
        3. Sporting events
        4. Radio and phonograph
        5. Celebrity culture
      3. New values
        1. Growing acceptance of consumer debt
        2. Shifting ideas of purpose and value of work
    4. Limits of prosperity
      1. Unequal distribution of wealth, income
      2. Ongoing concentration of industry
      3. Scale of poverty, unemployment
      4. Deindustrialization in the North
      5. Rural depression
        1. Passing of wartime "golden age" for agriculture
        2. Drop in farm incomes, rise in foreclosures
        3. Decline in number of farms and farmers
        4. Rural outmigration
    5. Celebration of business
      1. Themes
        1. "American way of life"
        2. Permanent prosperity
        3. Christ as business prototype
      2. Promoters
        1. Hollywood
        2. Photographers and painters
        3. Writers
        4. Corporate public relations departments
      3. Signs of impact
        1. Idolization of business figures
        2. Growing trust for business, stock market
    6. Decline of labor
      1. Postwar business campaign against unions
        1. Appropriation of "Americanism," "industrial freedom"
        2. "Welfare capitalism"
        3. American Plan
          1. Open shop
          2. Rejection of collective bargaining
          3. Depiction of unionism and socialism as sinister, alien
        4. Use of strikebreakers, spies, blacklists
      2. Ebbing of labor movement
        1. Decline in numbers organized
        2. Union concessions to employers
        3. Fading of union strongholds
        4. Diminishing prospects of labor strikes
    7. Fragmentation of feminism
      1. Aftermath of suffrage amendment
      2. Social and ideological fault lines
      3. Debate over Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
        1. Terms of ERA
        2. Feminist support
          1. Alice Paul, National Women's Party
          2. Commitment to individual autonomy, equal opportunity
        3. Feminist opposition
          1. Other leading women's organizations
          2. Commitment to motherhood, protective legislation for women
        4. Defeat of ERA
    8. "Women's freedom" in the Twenties
      1. Mixed legacy of prewar feminism
        1. Fading of links to political and economic radicalism, social reform
        2. Survival and recasting of call for personal freedom
      2. Themes and images
        1. Consumer lifestyle
        2. Sexual freedom as individual autonomy, rebellion
        3. Youthful "flapper"; Clara Bow
        4. "Modernizing Mothers"
      3. Continued stress on marriage, homemaking as ultimate goals
  2. Business and government
    1. Decline of Progressive-era faith in mass democracy
      1. Themes of disillusionment
        1. Popular ignorance, irrationality, disengagement
        2. Shift from public concerns to private (leisure, consumption)
      2. Voices of disillusionment
        1. Walter Lippmann (Public Opinion, The Phantom Public)
        2. Robert and Helen Lynd (Middletown)
    2. Republican era
      1. Pro-business agenda
        1. Content of
          1. Low income and business taxes
          2. High tariffs
          3. Support for employer antiunionism
          4. Business-friendly appointees to regulatory agencies
        2. Support for in Washington
          1. Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge
          2. Supreme Court
      2. Harding administration
        1. Harding's indifference, lack of dignity
        2. Rampant corruption; Teapot Dome
      3. Election of 1924
        1. Coolidge victory over divided Democrats
        2. Robert La Follette's third-party Progressive campaign
    3. Economic diplomacy
      1. Retreat from Wilson's foreign policy principles
        1. Internationalism
        2. Free trade
      2. Close interlinking of business interests and foreign policy
        1. Government initiatives
          1. Diplomatic pressure for access to foreign markets
          2. Increased tariffs; Fordney-McCumber Act
          3. Military interventions to protect U.S. business interests
        2. Private initiatives
          1. Loans to foreign governments
          2. Expansion of industrial production overseas
          3. Acquisition of raw materials overseas
  3. Birth of civil liberties
    1. Persistence of WWI-era repression, censorship into 1920s
      1. Targets of
        1. Political dissent
        2. Sexual themes in the arts
      2. Agents of
        1. Mob violence
        2. Government agencies
        3. Local crusades
        4. Self-censorship; Hollywood's Hays code
      3. Disaffection of Lost Generation
    2. Wartime formation of Civil Liberties Bureau
      1. Reaction to Espionage and Sedition Acts
      2. Predecessor to American Civil Liberties Union
    3. Evolving position of Supreme Court
      1. Initial blows to civil liberties
        1. Upholding of Espionage Act (Schenck case); Oliver Wendell Holmes's "clear and present danger" doctrine
        2. Upholding of Eugene V. Debs conviction
        3. Further cases
      2. Signs of a shift
        1. Defenses of free speech by individual justices
          1. Holmes: marketplace of ideas doctrine
          2. Louis Brandeis: democratic citizenship doctrine
        2. Pro–civil liberties rulings
  4. Culture wars
    1. Fundamentalist reaction against modern urban culture
      1. Sources of alarm
        1. Religious and ethnic pluralism
        2. Urban vice
          1. Mass entertainment
          2. Alcohol
          3. New sexual mores
        3. Entry of "modernist" outlook into Protestant mainstream
      2. Manifestations
        1. Billy Sunday
        2. Nationwide presence
        3. Prohibition
    2. Scopes trial
      1. Clash of traditional and modern perspectives
        1. Fundamentalism vs. secularism
        2. Darwinian science vs. scripture
        3. "Moral" liberty vs. freedom of thought
      2. Face-off of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan
      3. Outcome and aftermath
    3. Resurgence of Ku Klux Klan
      1. Roots in wartime "Americanism" obsession
      2. Profile and influence
        1. Rapid growth
        2. Wide following among white, native-born Protestants
        3. Nationwide presence
      3. Diverse range of targets
    4. Immigration restriction
      1. Earlier legislative precedents
      2. 1921 temporary restriction measure
      3. 1924 permanent restriction measure
        1. National quotas for Europeans
        2. Exclusion of Asians (exception for Filipinos)
        3. Admittance and curtailing of Mexicans
        4. Emergence of "illegal alien" classification
      4. Ideological underpinnings
        1. Conservative nativism
        2. Progressive assumptions about "race"
    5. Pluralism
      1. Scholarly challenges to prevailing racial thought
        1. Pioneering voices
          1. Horace Kallen; "cultural pluralism"
          2. Anthropologists Franz Boas, Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict
        2. Minimal immediate impact
      2. New immigrants and the pluralist impulse
        1. Urban ethnic enclaves, community institutions
        2. Self-reinvention as "ethnic" Americans
        3. Resentment of cultural hostility and coercion
        4. Claims to equal rights, mainstream acceptance, cultural autonomy
        5. Antidiscriminatory campaigns
      3. Antidiscriminatory rulings by Supreme Court, federal courts
    6. Black urban life and Harlem Renaissance
      1. Ongoing migration from South, West Indies
      2. Emergence of Harlem; "capital" of black America
      3. "Exotic" Harlem vs. real Harlem
      4. Harlem Renaissance
        1. Poets, novelists
        2. Actors, dancers, musicians
        3. "New Negro"
          1. In politics
          2. In art
      5. New black assertiveness; Henry O. Sweet case
    7. Election of 1928
      1. Republican candidate Herbert Hoover
        1. Background and career
        2. Embodiment of "new era" of American capitalism
      2. Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith
        1. Background and career
        2. Embodiment of urban, Catholic, Progressive outlook
      3. Outcome and significance
        1. Hoover victory
        2. Reflection of "culture wars"
        3. Preview of new Democratic coalition
  5. The Great Depression
    1. Stock market crash of 1929
      1. Black Thursday
      2. Onset of Great Depression
    2. Precursors of Depression
      1. Frenzied speculation
      2. Unequal distribution of income, wealth
      3. Rural depression
      4. Stagnating demand for consumer goods
    3. Repercussions of crash
      1. Magnitude
      2. Scope of devastation
        1. Business and consumer confidence
        2. Solvency of investment companies, businesses, banks
        3. Gross national product
        4. Life savings
        5. Employment
        6. Wages
      3. Persistence of downward slide
    4. Americans and the Depression
      1. Material hardship
        1. Hunger; breadlines
        2. Homelessness; Hoovervilles
        3. Meagerness of public relief
        4. Reversal of movement from farm to city
      2. Patterns of popular response
        1. Collapse of faith in big business
        2. Personal resignation, self-blame
        3. Stirrings of protest
          1. Spontaneous incidents
          2. Bonus March
          3. Rallies for jobs and relief, against evictions
          4. Farmers' Holiday campaign
          5. Communist party
    5. Hoover and the Depression
      1. Hoover's approach
        1. Acceptance of business cycle
        2. Aversion to government relief
        3. Preference for voluntary, "associational" initiatives
        4. Regular forecasts of recovery
      2. Perception of Hoover as indifferent, out of touch
      3. Ill-fated remedies
        1. Hawley-Smoot tariff
        2. Tax increase
      4. Eventual turn to recovery measures
        1. Reconstruction Finance Corporation
        2. Federal Home Loan Bank System

 

Subject: 
US History
Subject X2: 
US History

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