1. The Roaring Twenties
and the Great Depression
Dr. John Holmes
History 121, U.S After 1877
Diablo Valley College San Ramon
Summer 2013

2. WWI: the Watershed of Modernity
Before: a different world
1920s: many features of
contemporary society
modern literature and art
sexual mores
dress
Signature: the automobile
Basis: economic transformation
Backlash to modernity the other
story of the 1920s. Dualities.

3. The Age of the Automobile
From a luxury good to mass
ownership
1900 4,000 cars in America; 1914
half a million
1929, 23 million car owners,
including half of all factory workers
America, the first automotive
society

4. Economic transformations
Urbanization and the farming crisis
Automotive age created by:
Mass production, the assembly line
Mechanization of factories
US producing more electricity than
rest of world combined
“Fordism”: the affordable car
1920s prosperity includes workers
1922 to 1928: production +70%;
GNP 40%; average income +30%;
wages +22%, workweek -4%
But social inequality increases

5. Birth of the Consumer Society
US the first society geared to mass
production of consumer goods
From “producerism” to
“consumerism”
Workers can participate in the
consumer economy
Profileration of advertising
Pro-business policies of government
Coolidge document, 23-1
Critics: Niebuhr, doc. 23-2

6. Social transformation and women
Birth of suburbia
Changes in the family
Suffrage and women in the workforce
Revolution in housekeeping
Separate spheres and womens’
professions
Women enter public life
Changes in sex norms
The automobile back seat
Contraception: doc. 23-4
Sanger: from the IWW to “eugenics”
The “flapper”

7. Prequel to the “Roaring ‘20s”
1920-22 economic depression
From labor offensive to business
counteroffensive
1919: The Great Steel Strike
Immigrant strike broken by US
army
William Z. Foster and the U.S.
Communist Party
David Montgomery: The Fall of
the House of Labor
Company Unionism and the Red
Scare

8. The Great Backlash
WWI repression and “100%
Americanism”
Anti-immigrantism: from anti-
Germanism to anti-Communism
Anti-Semitism in the 1920s
Fear for traditional American values
Anti-Catholicism and Prohibition
Scopes trial: the symbol
Outdoor media circus
Town picks Scopes for ACLU
Social Darwinism vs. Protestant
fundamentalism

9. The Ku Klux Klan
Birth of American fascism
Lynching of Leo Frank
“Birth of a Nation”
“American values,” doc. 23-3
Based in Midwest and West
No longer tied to Democratic Party
Indiana and California Republicans
Demos: 1924 “Klanbake
Convention”
An urban Catholic party?
From Al Smith to FDR

10. Transformation of Black America
The “New Negro.” doc. 22-5
Immigration cutoff, Great Migration
Blacks and immigrants in 20th
Century American culture
The “Jazz Age”
Black culture and American music
Jews as “New York intellectuals”
Birth of Harlem
from Jewish to black neighborhood
“Harlem Renaissance.”
Claude McKay (p. 748), Langston
Hughes, Zora Neale Thurston

11. The Garvey Movement
First mass black movement
Values of Garveyism: doc. 23-5
Reaction to:
White violence vs. the Great
Migration
Garvey speech after St. Louis riot
Republican repudiation of blacks
“Back to Africa” as expression of
despair
Garvey and KKK: “call me a
Klansman if you will, but potentially
every white man is a Klansman”

12. The Great Depression and
the Mood of America
From optimism to despair
Not rebellion but paralysis
Suicides among the rich
Silence on the breadlines
Failure of all American institutions
banks -- 24 to 15,000!
company unions & benefits
Foreclosures and homelessness
Huge unemployment--average 20%
Lack of public services
Rotting food amid widespread hunger

13. Depression Causes: External
Results of WWI: US economic
domination, but not military
League of Nations and isolationism
Europe: the Dawes Plan and the
debt triangle
Success until US bankers stop
investing in Germany…
US entanglement in world economy
leads to crash
US influence in world only
economic/financial
Smoot-Hawley and Hitler

14. Domestic Roots of the Depression
Genuine internal growth, but also
era of wild speculation
Marx Brothers and “Coconuts”
4 million investors in stock market
Rich-poor gap: 3/4 of income gains
to top 1% of population
Consumerism and debt
Uneven prosperity: farm crisis,
higher wages plus unemployment
Coal and textile
Stock market crash sign of
developing overproduction crisis

15. Depression Economic Theories
Traditional explanation: it’s cyclical
Grover Cleveland and Hoover
Monetarism: Milton Friedman
Interest rates too high under Hoover
Was universally accepted …
Keynesianism:
Underconsumption
Solution: government spending
Dominant interpretation then … and
again now
Marxism: overproduction basic to
capitalism

16. The Hoover Administration
Elected as expert in disaster relief
… in Europe
Opposes relief for American poor
“Hoovervilles”
Relief for banks in 1931
“Bonus Army” of 1932
Hoover sends US army against it
Final crisis of American system?

17. Communists in the Great Depression
Attraction of the Soviet model
100,000 US workers apply to
emigrate to the Soviet Union
Only party of social rebellion
Unemployed leagues
Physical resistance to foreclosures
Farmworkers in California
Wins a following among blacks
Only anti-racist party in America
Wins a following among intellectuals
Capitalism bankrupt?

18. Next Class
The New Deal and the Great Labor
Upheaval of the 1930s
Readings: Foner Chapter 21, and
Johnson Chapter 24
Video of Flint Sitdown Strike