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Intellectuals Attack the "Booboisie"
Sinclair Lewis profiled the conformity and mindless boosterism of the salesman in Babbitt, while H.L. Mencken skewered the middle-class mediocrities of what he called the "booboisie." From exile in Europe, members of the self-described "Lost Generation" such as Ernest Hemingway probed the meaninglessness of World War I sacrifice in works like The Sun Also Rises. And most famously, F. Scott Fitzgerald explored the supposed moral vacancy of the Roaring '20s nouveau riche in The Great Gatsby. -
1920s Economics: Consumerism
Consumerism is the theory that it is economically attractive to encourage the attainment of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. American Consumerism increased during the Roaring Twenties due to technical advances and innovative ideas and inventions in the areas of communication, transportation and manufacturing. Americans moved from the traditional avoidance of debt to the concept by buying goods on credit installments. -
Immigration: Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance
The patterns of migration and settlement common to the New Immigrants were mirrored by blacks in some ways. Employment opportunities created by World War I spurred the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into the urban North. In the cities of the North, they built their own ethnic communities. Harlem became the center of African-American cultural life in the U.S. with a literary, artistic, musical, and political scenes so vibrant. -
1920s Politics: Normalcy
Campaign theme of Warren Harding during the election of 1920. It reflected the conservative mood of the country after the constant appeals to idealism that characterized both the Progressive Era and Wilson's fight over the League of Nations. -
1920s Religion
War and the economic depression caused many to turn to God and others to turn away from him. Major efforts were made to spread Christianity in the heathen nations and communism emerged as a force opposing Christianity. Evolution challenged Creationism. -
1920s Religion
During the 1920s, religion changed quite a bit. It started when new scientific discoveries were being made, causing more people to believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. These modernists pushed for better education, including evolution being taught in schools. Many fundamentalists found a revival of their faith in trying to fight to remove evolution from schools. The fundamentalists used sermons in the form of radio broadcasting to help their cause. -
Prohibition
National prohibition of alcohol—the “noble experiment”—was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. Prohibition also united progressives and revivalists. The temperance movement had popularized the belief that alcohol was the major cause of most personal and social problems and prohibition was seen as the solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills. -
Prohibition
The motive for the Eighteenth Amendment can be traced to the Anti-Saloon League, which was established in 1893. It worked to enact state prohibition laws and had great success between 1906 and 1913. By the time national prohibition took effect in January 1920, 33 states had prohibited intoxicating liquors.The league and other prohibition groups were opposed to the consumption of alcohol. Some associated alcohol with the rising number of aliens entering the country, and many were Roman Catholic. -
1920s Economy: Mass Consumption and Mass Culture
Culture grew out of the material abundance of the new mass-production and consumption economy, which created higher wages for the urban middle class & profits for wealthier investors. New machines transformed the conditions of everyday life. 1920s had broadcast radio and Hollywood cinema. Consumers across the U.S tuned in to the same radio programs and got tickets to the same films. Advertising became a vital industry in its own right, raising mass demand for the products of mass consumption -
1920s Politics: The Harding Administration
Although he was affable and popular, Harding's naivete made him a disaster as president. Mindful of his own weaknesses, he tried to select the best men possible for his cabinet. These men were responsible for the accomplishments of Harding's brief administration, which included stimulating business growth, cutting taxes, and negotiating disarmament treaties. -
1920s Politics: Teapot Dome Scandal
Albert Fall secretly leased naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California to private companies headed by Edward Doheny and Harry F. Sinclair in return for no‐interest, non-collateral “loans.” -
1920s Economics: Growth and Output
The economy grew and the U.S. produced nearly half the world's output. That's because WWI destroyed most of Europe. Unemployment never rose above the natural rate of around 4 percent, but this prosperity wasn't distributed evenly. The top 1% of the population received 13.4% of total income. U.S. transformed from a traditional to free market economy. Farming declined, taxes per acre rose, and farm income fell. At the same time, new inventions made the manufacturing of consumer goods soar. -
1920s Politics
Harding's vice president, Calvin Coolidge, came to national attention in 1919 when, as governor of Massachusetts, he ended the Boston police strike. Coolidge did not believe the president should take an activist role in government, and he was as opposed to the regulation of business as Harding had been. His famous quip “The business of America is business” summed up the Republican creed of the 1920s. -
Immigration Act of 1924
Limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. -
1920s Politics: The Election of Hoover
When Coolidge decided not to run for a second term in 1928, the Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover. Even though he had never held elective office, Hoover had a distinguished career in public service and was well regarded for his work with the Food Administration and in relief efforts after the war. With the country still riding the high tide of prosperity that the Republicans took full credit for, Hoover was nearly impossible to beat, especially with Smith's serious drawbacks as a candidate. -
Stock Market Crash
Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression, the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. -
Stock Market Crash
Stock market underwent expansion after a period of speculation. Production had declined & unemployment rose, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value.Other causes of the market collapse were low wages, debt, struggling agricultural sector, & excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated. Stock prices began to decline & panic set in. Investment companies & bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock. However, stock prices collapsed completely. -
1920s Economy: Banking
Only one-third of the nation's 24,000 banks belonged to the Federal Reserve System. Non-members relied on each other to hold reserves. That was a significant weakness. It meant they were vulnerable to the bank runs that occurred in the 1930s. Another weakness was that banks held fictitious reserves. Checks were counted as reserves before they cleared. As a result, these checks were double-counted by the sending bank and the receiving bank.
