Class Notes*; **

Use the following information to help organize your notes as you read through Chapters 20-22.

1920s

New Urban Social Patterns

The 1920 census revealed for the first time that a majority (+/- 54 million) of Americans lived in “urban” areas.

This finding is somewhat inaccurate because the census classified any community with a population greater than 2500 residents as “urban.”

Of the 54 million, 16 million lived in villages and small towns with a population less than 25,000.

What is this important to know? For many “urban” Americans (those “urban” Americans living in a town less than 25000), their beliefs, views, and convictions were not too much different than that of “rural” folk.

The truly urban Americans, (1 in 4 who lived in a city whose population was greater than 100,000) totaled +/- 16 million.

More than 19 million people moved from rural areas to the cities throughout the 1920s.

Being a city-dweller meant more than just changing the physical surroundings. City life affected:

• Family structure
• Educational opportunities
• Employment opportunities
• Cultural experiences

In 1920, +/- one-fourth of American working-women were married, but less than 10% of all married women were working.

Upper-middle class married women who worked in somewhat professional occupations paid nannies to care for their children.

There were varying degrees of work experiences for immigrant women. Immigrant women who knew little English oftentimes found herself working around the home for low wages. By contrast, Irish-American women would often be employed as a domestic worker.

African-American women would oftentimes be employed outside of the household as domestic workers.

Most male skilled workers earned enough money to support a family in relative modest comfort. However, unskilled laborers couldn't. Examples of unskilled laborers can be clearly seen in the factories and processing facilities within the urban areas. A significant number of the unskilled labor force was comprised of uneducated and immigrant workers.

  Compulsory (required) education and state child labor laws kept a growing number of children out of the workforce. This was good for adult workers because menial unskilled labor opportunities were in abundance for those who were willing to do the work for low wages. Some factory owners despised this because they were often required to pay (slightly) higher wages for unskilled adult labor.

The Lost Generation

Psychologists of the time advocated for more freedom for young people. Some argued that sex was being prudishly repressed by the old-fashioned 19 th Century Victorian principles. Tension between the old and young became more visible in several aspects the youth experience. The youth of the 1920s grew up slightly before and during World War One. The narrowness and prudeness of many of their elders and conservatives were considered old-fashioned. Labeled the “Lost Generation,” American urban youth of the 1920s enjoyed rapid changes in several areas of their experience:

• Technology
• Education
• Mobility
• Music
• Popular culture
• Clothing styles
• Social mores (morals)

The youth were attempting to break the bonds of authority. The youth also enjoyed life in a postwar society where leisure was emphasized. The youth of the 1920s had to adjust to a rapidly changing world --- more so than heir parents' or grandparents' generations.

Education

“Dating”

Late 19 th century - a young men didn't “date.” They “courted” or “called” on a young lady. Here's how it worked:

The young man would go to the young lady's house – he would “call” her. This was a prearranged meeting where the parents would be present to meet him. They would have coffee and cookies with the parents for a short time during conversation. The young lady was at home, and her parents were close by.

This changed by the 1920s. “Calling” was replaced by “dating.” This was all all together different type of social activity. The Young man would call only to “pck up” his “date.” Both would leave the house. They either walked or the man drove. Dating meant going somewhere and spending money. Dating was a social arrangement where the man was expected to pay. The old-fashioned way of “calling” was a situation where the female made all of the arrangements and entertained the “beau.”

Young women break free!

Young women began to do things in public that had been reserved for prostitutes. Women smoked and drank in public – this increasingly became fashionable and acceptable to the younger generation. The elders and conservatives viewed this as a HUGE negative!

Women began to wear exotic perfumes shortened their hair and skirts! Conservatives complained at the moral decay of the youth – the so-called “Lost Generation.”

The “Flapper” www3.uakron.edu/dtaa/ensemble/ 2003/flapper.html

During the 1920's women started wearing shorter dresses that were decorated with beads and fringe. They rolled down their pantyhose past their knees and cut their hair short. Women also wore makeup, which had only been used by actresses before. The ideal body type was narrow hips and a waistline that was straight like a man's.
Some women who followed the new trends in fashion and behavior were called flappers. Many people were shocked by the way they dressed and behaved. A flapper was characterized as a young girl who had not yet entered into womanhood. The term originated from the idea that the young girls were “spreading their wings” to become independent women—much like birds flapping their wings, trying to fly for the first time. During the 1920's , a flapper was described by author F. Scott Fitzgerald as being “giddy, lovely, expensive and about nineteen”.

Music and Dance
The 1920's are often called the “Jazz Age” because jazz music was very popular then. Jazz uses the saxophone and often has syncopated rhythms. Some of the favorite musical artists of the time were Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman. Flappers loved to do the Charleston, which was a new dance craze in the 1920's. The Charleston was characterized by outward heel kicks combined with up and down movements and bending and straightening of the knees to the sounds of ragtime jazz.

A significant part of this rebelliousness was related to clothing fads. Faddish clothing styles were a symbol of youth separatism – meaning, the youth wanted to have a distinct look unlike the elder generations.

Success for Suffrage

The woman suffrage movement , begun before the Civil War , finally won its victory with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Many individual states had already given women the right to vote, either in all state and local elections or in selected elections, such as school board elections.

Carrie Chapman Catt , who succeeded Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association , saw the triumph of suffrage on a national level and went on to found the League of Women Voters . She exemplified the political feminists, who believed that voting and political action were the keys to social change. Political feminists also backed the Equal Rights Amendment , first introduced in 1923 but never ratified, to guarantee women equal rights under the U.S. Constitution .

Social Reform

Many suffragists were also deeply involved in other social issues. In the mid-19th century, women were among the leaders of the abolition movement . Women led the movement for Prohibition and the temperance movement , working through the Woman's Christian Temperance Union to target the "demon rum."

Women also played prominent roles in founding settlement houses, in social work, in immigrant aid societies, and in other movements for social reform.

Individual Freedom

After the war, with the battles for suffrage and prohibition won, many women seized opportunities for greater personal freedom.

Margaret Sanger , for example, worked hard to make birth control advice available to women. Knowledge is power, and women who learned facts about reproduction and sexuality could take more control of their lives.

Many young women joyfully welcomed the new music and new fashions of the Jazz Age . They cut their hair, shortened their skirts, and danced, drank, and smoked along with their brothers and boyfriends. They also held jobs and had their own political opinions. While many men (and women) were shocked by this "new woman," she was here to stay.

http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com

20-2

What caused business to boom in the 1920s?

President Harding caught the mood of the time – people wanted “normalcy.” What did normalcy mean?

• Return to pro-business government.
• Less government regulation imposed on businesses.
• Government protection from foreign competition.
• Lower taxes.

This is a significant change from the Progressive Era's changes to businesses.

President Harding died of a stroke in June 1923. Calvin Coolidge takes the presidency and strengthens the business – government relationship

  Harding                     Coolidge

1923 – 1929 industrial production increased 30%.

The Gross National Product (GNP – that is the TOTAL dollar value of ALL final goods and services produced in a country a year) increased from $74 billion to $104 billion.

http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com

Prohibition – 18 th Amendment

January 1920 – Prohibition went into effect. Prohibition made the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol illegal.

Some Progressives argued that alcohol was a prime cause to the problems of the city and the culture at large. Prohibitionists believed that drinking caused:

• Crime
• Child abuse workplace accidents
• Domestic violence
• Contribute to poverty by keeping people in an altered state.

Reaction to Prohibition

Drinking went “underground.”

Hidden saloons called “speakeasies” sprang up. They were called speakeasies because once inside, patrons (at first) spoke quietly to avoid detection. Over time, they grew into nightclubs that offered live entertainment.

Speakeasies were found everywhere – penthouses, tenements, hardware stores, etc. In Madison , the modern restaurant, Mariner's Inn , started out as a speakeasy.

People also made their own liquor. Those people were called bootleggers. People also “imported” (smuggled) liquor into the United States from Canada and Cuba .

Organized Crime – “The Mob”

Prohibition contributed to organized crime – gangsters competed for territory within the cities to capitalize on the illegal sale of alcohol, prostitution, and other illegal activities. Organized crime existed in every major U.S. city.

One example, Al Capone of Chicago , made +/- $60 million a year from organized crime.

By the mid 1920s, approximately 20% of Americans supported Prohibition. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt repealed the 18 th Amendment in 1933 by ratifying the 21at Amendment.

Economic Boom

The 1920s saw unprecedented prosperity. By the middle of the 1920s, Americans were enjoying the highest standard of living in the world. Approximately 75% of all household goods were purchased on credit.

Department store chains such as J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, and Woolworth's would buy goods in “bulk (meaning, buy a large amount at one time)” and sell them to consumers at cheap prices.

Advertising became a way to increase sales – catalogs, billboards, radio advertising…all got their start in the 1920s. Companies would SPONSOR (pay money to support a radio show in return for an advertising plug) radio shows.

Assembly lines were created to increase the rate of production --- produce more gods in less time and sell goods at cheaper prices.

The economic prosperity paved the way for the Republican Party.

WHAT BROUGHT THE ECONOMIC BOOM TO AN END?

The Stock Market –

As the economy boomed, BIG money was being made for some through the stock market. As the general public became more involved in speculative investments, they would even go so far as to BORROW money from a stock brokerage house in order to invest. This is known as buying on MARGIN. Page 558 explains about margin buying.

Other factors for the market crash—

Weak banking system

The integrity of the corporation

Overproduction

Income gap

Black, Bold, and Beautiful

Great Migrations

European immigrants fled poverty and persecution, arriving in the United States by the millions. African-American immigrants fled poverty and persecution, moving from the South to the North by the hundreds of thousands. Black and white, the immigrants crowded into Northern U.S. cities during the first decades of the 20th century. There, they found new kinds of poverty, persecution, and opportunity.

Between 1910 and 1929, nearly a million African Americans moved from the South to the North. They left behind sharecropping, permanent debt, the Southern Ku Klux Klan (there were groups in the North), and lynchings . As World War I began, factories desperately needed workers. Black migrants filled the jobs, as well as the tenements in quickly segregated Northern cities.

Hope in Harlem

The new African-American immigrants found work in factories across the North. They settled in Chicago and Detroit and Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. Some 200,000 filled the part of New York called Harlem.

As African Americans moved in, whites moved out. Soon, all of Harlem was black and brown. New African-American immigrants from Mississippi and Alabama mingled with immigrants from the West Indies. Spanish Harlem became a new home for Puerto Ricans who left the island.

Bold and Beautiful

Though Harlem suffered from poverty, it also bloomed with talent. Writers, actors, poets, playwrights, musicians, and artists all came together in the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance . They called themselves the "New Negro Movement." They celebrated black culture and achievement. Their art and writing focused on the lives of black people. They held up black culture and

accomplishment as worthy of admiration. In Harlem, patrons went to black clubs and cabarets to enjoy jazz , the most popular music of the day. They listened to Bessie Smith , Louis Armstrong , and Duke Ellington . They read African-American writers published in the new journals The Crisis, Opportunity, and The Messenger . They admired the paintings of black artists, including Aaron Douglas and A. J. Motley. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League expressed black political demands for equality. W. E. B. Du Bois described the "two-ness" of being black and American. Marcus Garvey preached black pride and urged African Americans to return to Africa.

Black is Fashionable

Many white New Yorkers flocked to Harlem. They wanted to hear the newly fashionable black music and poetry. The "New Negro" intellectual became popular in white society. But segregation of the races continued, even in the North. In the popular nightspot the Cotton Club, for example, black performers entertained all-white audiences. The entertainers could not even sit on the dance floor.

Racism Remains

Just after World War I began, whites in East St. Louis, Illinois became angry that African Americans had jobs in a factory with government contracts. The whites attacked, killing at least 40 African Americans, beating men, women, and children, and driving about 6,000 African Americans from their homes. The white race riot was answered with dignified, silent protest marches in Harlem. The white riot, continued lynchings in the South, and residential segregation that made Harlem the center of black life in New York all were evidence of the continuing racism of American society. Even under the shadow of racism, African-American genius blazed brilliantly in the Harlem Renaissance.

MORE TO COME!

* These class notes constitute only a small part of what we discuss in class.

** These notes are part of Professor Stanley Schutz's History 102 website and are used only as a partial guide to provide congruency between K-12 and post-secondary content knowledge, based on U.W. Madison's American History survey.