The New Era

● Technology and growth

○ Recession to boom
■ After recession of 1921 to 22, US begin. Of prosperity;
manufacturing rows by 60%
○ Causes of prosperity
■ Decline of European manufacturing; US leaves war the only healthy
industrial power
○ Innovations in tech
■ Automobiles and assembly lines
■ radio
■ telephones
■ commercial aviation electronics
■ Home appliances
■ plastic
■ genetic research
○ Consumerism
■ Middle-class families able to afford goods and services appliances
revolutionize housework
■ Automobiles = expanded horizons for travel, escape from farm life,
growth of suburbia and an independent youth culture
● Consumerism
○ Advertising
■ Add executives try to identify products with a particular lifestyle--to
associate them with clamor and prestige
■ New vehicles for ads in newspapers, time, readers digest, Saturday
evening post
■ The man nobody knows by Bruce Parton portrayed Jesus as a
super salesman--Jesus lived a full life and you should too!
■ Freud and Jung pioneer of psychoanalysis of unconscious mind,
which will influence modern ads
○ Mass media
■ Movies developed during this era with the first feature of length
“talkie”--the jazz singer
■ Studio owners like mayor in Warner control the motion picture
association heavily censored content
■ Radio was the most important communication vehicle of the 20s
■ KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first commercial station
 ■ NBC was formed in 1927. Radio broadcast “stories“ and major
events like sports
● Labor in the new era
○ Wealth gap
■ Increasing or even distribution of wealth in purchasing power. Many
workers live below the poverty line
○ Welfare capitalism
■ Employers shortened work week, gave paid vacations, pensions,
and higher wages to avoid labor discontent
○ Not enough
■ The wage increases do not match increase in production and
profits
■ Employment is down, but so is labor union efficacy
● AFL still resisted unskilled workers
○ Minorities
■ African, Asian, and Hispanic American soul discrimination and
we’re given less opportunities--took jobs janitors, garbage
collectors, laundry attendance, and domestic service. 1 million
Mexicans entered the US to work
● American plan
○ Corporate leaders painted unions is subversive
○ Declared the open shop is crucial to democratic capitalism
○ In 1921 Supreme Court upheld more than made picking illegal and gave
the courts rights to issue in junctions again strikers. Justice department
intervene to stop streaks and didn’t protect workers when companies use
violence
● New technology
○ Tractors with internal combustion engines, hybrid corn, chemical fertilizers,
pesticides all increased production. They need it to your workers to
produce more crops
● Issues
○ The man was not meeting supplying prices plummeted. Farmers income
dropped in the response was to grow more = mistake
● Reform?
○ They pushed for parity which would ensure that they at least got their
production cost back
○ McNary hog and Bill; a bill that would set crop prices by having the
government buy surplus at a loss never passed (attempted four times)
● Women
○ Changing motherhood
 ■ Begin to challenge idea that women hide and seek to capacity for
motherhood. Shifted away from that idea that sex was only for
procreation. Margaret Sanger begin to push her birth control
through diaphragm and begin to persuade middle class and to a
lesser degree working class
○ Pink collar
■ Women in increasing numbers worked in pink-collar jobs the
secretaries, sales clerk, telephone operators, etc.
○ Flapper image
■ Modern, liberated woman with new dress, hairstyle, speech and
behavior. They smoke, drink, dance, wore make up as a release
from repression in inhibition. Started with lower middle class and
working class single women
○ Women’s rights
■ National women’s party under the leader ship of Alice Paul
campaign for equal rights amendment in 1923
■ This film little support in Congress, but female political activities
grew in the 1920s
■ The past the shepherd counteract provide federal funds to states in
order to establish prenatal in child health care
■ It was criticized by some for over associating women’s issues with
motherhood/children. They terminated it in 1929
● Religious clash
○ Modernist religion
■ Modernist taught their followers to be in some of traditional
teachings of evangelical Christianity
■ Instead The basis of Christianity was about the leading of the filling
life in the present world
■ Young people were increasingly paying less attention to religion
■ Sunday shift today of activities, not church
○ Revival of fundamentalists
■ Increasing secular society began to alarm fundamentalists. They
insisted the Bible be interpreted literally and oppose the teaching of
Darwin
■ Tennessee passed a law in 1925 to be illegal to teach in the story
other than creationism
■ ACLU back teacher John scopes and challenging them on the
scopes monkey trail
■ William Jennings Bryan help the prosecution and was forced by
defense lawyer Clarence Darrow to testify on literal Bible teachings
● Prohibition
○ The 18th amendment been the sale and consumption of alcohol
○ It was horribly and forced from the onset
○ Alcohol was just as easy to get in speakeasies. Organize crime be in the
takeover leading to the rise of bootleggers (NASCAR) in criminal empires
like El Capone
○ This led to widespread game violence
○ Was replaced by the 21st amendment in 1933
● Nativism and the Ku Klux Klan
■ Americans increasingly associated immigrants with radicals and
low wages
○ Legislation
■ 1921 immigration act which said a quarter system parentheses no
country could exceed 3%)
■ National origins act (lowered quota 22%, blocked east Asia, and
decreased eastern/southern European by setting quota rates at
1890)
○ Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
■ Glorified by the DW Griffiths birth of a nation (1915)
■ Became concerned with Catholics, Jews, and foreigners
■ Claim to stand for traditional values
■ Broke apart the DNC in 1924 by blocking the entire clan measure
● Literature
○ The disenchanted
■ World war one generation became disillusioned with conflict in
America--becoming known as the last generation
■ Began to critique growing emphasis on materialism and
consumerism alongside the war
■ Hemingway in a farewell to arms betrayed of disorder or as a hero
■ If Scott the Gerald Gerald in the great Gatsby portrayed the folly of
wealth and societal prestige
● Artistic endeavors
○ Harlem Renaissance
■ Following World War I, African-American culture thrive in Harlem,
New York City
■ Jazz music by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll
Morton at the cotton club paired with the new literature, art, and
poetry that drew heavily from American African roots while
celebrating the richness of racial heritage
 ■ Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Countee Cullen gave a
literary voice while Aaron Douglas painted powerful images of the
era
○ Democrats in trouble
■ Tension develop between urban and rule factions of the party
■ Prohibitionists(“drys”), Klansmen and fundamentalist were on one
side
■ Catholics, urban workers, “wets” and immigrants were on the other
■ The convention in 1924 was a mess--lasting until 103 ballots. They
chose compromise candidate Alfred E Smith, but he never had the
south
■ They will lose the election in 1924 and 1928
● Republican presidents
○ Warren G Harding
■ Support of a relationship between American businesses and the
government
■ Played with scandals like Teapot Dome scandal (bribes and
kickbacks surrounding oil reserves in Wyoming)
■ He had a weakness for women, alcohol and gambling… Especially
women
■ He died of a heart attack in 1923
○ Calvin Coolidge
■ Silent Cal took over as president
■ He believe the government should interfere as little as possible in
the life of the nation
■ Ex. Delta flood of 1927
■ What is my 1924 decided not to run for a second term in 1820 by
delivery notes to press for the single line: “I do not choose to run.“
● Government and business
○ Throughout the 1920s, businesses and government are growing closer
○ Big business called for reductions and taxes on corporate profits, personal
incomes, and inheritances
○ Under the Republicans they dramatically trim the federal budget
○ Herbert Hoover became secretary of commerce and through his
associationalism forged even closer relationship through voluntary
partnerships