The Roaring Twenties. LIFE CHANGED AFTER WW1 Disillusionment of Youth 9,000,000 soldiers had died Young people lost faith in leaders Suffrage Women finally.

The Roaring Twenties

LIFE CHANGED AFTER WW1

Disillusionment of Youth• 9,000,000 soldiers had died• Young people lost faith in leaders

Suffrage• Women finally got the vote in 1920• This was only the beginning – equality takes a long time

Social /Racial Conflict• As a result of all the changes there was a backlash

Disillusionment of Youth

• Fighting in the war had seen awful things

• Corrupt powers divided spoils

• No faith in League of Nations

• Turned away from idealism and politics

• Age of hedonism captured by Scott F Fitzgerald

Suffrage

• Women finally got vote in 1920’s (19th amendment – 1920)

• Frequently did men’s jobs in war

• Now more options open than teaching and nursing.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

• Tin Lizzies -• Flying Machines –• Radio • New Freedom for

women• Shorter work week –

down from 60 hrs to 40 – more money to spend

• Mass production in factories

Tin Lizzies

• Henry Ford’s Model-T• Put America on wheels• First affordable auto• $260• Results: Increased crime Growth of cities

Mobility

Social and Racial Conflict

African Americans wanted more say

Had fought in war Went North70 lynchings in 1920 Prejudice against emigrants

created backlash – Sacco and Vanzetti trial

Flying Machines

• Charles Lindberg Spirit of St. Louis 1927 NY to Paris

• Amelia Earhart First woman to fly across the Atlantic

• Passenger planes 150 mph hour

Radio

• First Radio Station 1921 • By 1926 – 700 stations • Covered sports,

elections• People lined up to buy

them• By 1930 60% in US had

one• Spawned new industry

New Freedom For Women

• New “mod cons” (appliances) freed women from drudgery

• Freed women of traditional roles

• Helped them emancipate

Prohibition

• 18th amendment in 1920 outlawed alcohol

• Bootlegging – illegal sale of alcohol

• Speakeasy – illegal place to drink

• Defiance of the law• Police raided them

Prohibition Causes CrimeOrganized crime results • Huge money from

bootlegging• 215 unsolved murders

between 1929 to 1933• Notorious gangsters Al

Capone Lucky Luciano Bugsy Siegel Meyer Lansky

Corruption Police and officials bribed

21st amendment - 1933 Repealed Prohibition – States controlled alcohol.

Politics in the 1920’s - Republican

• Warren Harding and “Ohio gang” in White House 1920 -Republican

• Laissez faire policy - letting business alone

• Slashed taxes, limited immigration

• Scandals, corruptions Harding died ashamed by friends’ betrayals in 1923

• “Less government in business, more business in government”

Calvin Coolidge - Republican

Calvin Coolidge, Republican V.P. succeeded in 1923

• Inactive – silent – also laissez faire – letting business alone

• Boom years – factories – people earning good wages – industrial growth sensational change in lifestyle

• Not interested in changing status quo

• Period known as “Coolidge Prosperity”

Herbert Hoover - Republican

• Herbert Hoover -1928

• He had campaigned in 1928 saying, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land."

• Unfortunately, he was wrong.

• After the crash believed the responsibility for caring for people should be local and voluntary – not government

The Rich Get Richer

• All presidents helped business –disliked regulation and government “interference”

• “The business of the United States is business” – Coolidge

• Tax breaks for rich, (Mellon) high tariffs for imported goods (protection), subsidies

• Rising salaries – people spending a lot.• Big Business – companies merged and smaller

ones disappeared – The rich got richer

Farmers Began Having Problems

• Farmers struggled Expanded after WW1 – bought equipment on credit

• Falling prices after war and all decade

• Couldn’t repay loans – lost farms to banks

• Coolidge refused to help – vetoed all bills

Unions Did Badly in Twenties

• Organized labor did poorly – state governments almost always took company’s side

• Injunctions to force workers to end strikes

• Police at picket lines• Reversed 2 child labor

laws

Rebellion

• Writers and artists rebelled – T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound Ernest Hemingway Scott Fitzgerald William Faulkner

• Respected overseas – yet seen as traitors of “true values” – Power came from conservatives and rural areas

Reaction

• Quota system for emigrants – to keep out people from Eastern Europe–

• Rise or the Ku Klux Klan – Klan at peak in 1925 with 50,000 members

Fads of the Twenties

• Mah-jong

• Crossword puzzles

• Dance Marathons

• Sitting on flagpoles 

The Jazz Age

• The Jazz Age – Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, George Gershwin

• An American phenomenon

• Chicago Jazz• Cotton Club, Harlem• New Orleans

The Arts

• Poets - Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg,

• Writers – Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald

• Entertainers – Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson

• Art deco movement – geometric designs – clean lines.

The Arts

Art Deco