HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 8 Outline of Last Lecture I Woodrow Wilson II World War I III Mobilization Over Here Bureaucrats Labor and the War Minority Migration The Treaty of Versailles IV Wilson and the Peace Conference Wilson at Versailles The Senate and the Treaty Legacies of the War Trauma in the Wake of the War Outline of Current Lecture I Prosperity Decade a The Economics of Prosperity b The Automobile Driving the Economy c Get Rich Quick The Speculative Mania d Agriculture Depression in the Midst of Prosperity These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute II The Roaring Twenties a The Automobile and American Life b A Homogenized Culture Searches for Heroes c Alienated Intellectuals d Renaissance Among African Americans e Flaming Youth III Traditional America Roars Back IV Race Class and Gender in the 1920s V The Politics of Prosperity Current Lecture The 1920s 1920 1932 I Prosperity Decade a The Economics of Prosperity Declining prices for agricultural products brought lower prices for food and clothing Persuading Americans to consume an array of products became crucial to keeping the economy healthy o The marketing of Listerine demonstrates the rising importance of creative advertising Selling sex saying it ll make you kissable o Cigarettes became more fashionable after World War I as soldiers had found them easier to carry and smoke than pipes or cigars Technological advances contributed in other ways to the growth of consumer oriented manufacturing o As the number of residences with electricity increased advertisers stressed the time and labor that housewives could save by using electrical appliances o o Vacuum cleaners dishwashers washers dryers Created a radical change in lifestyle for women and longer lifespan from 50 years to 80 Increased consumption contributed to a change in people s spending habits In the 1920s many retailers adopted the installment plan Buy now pay later Large marketing scheme b The Automobile Driving the Economy The automobile more than any other single product epitomized the consumer oriented economy of the 1920s o MAJOR CHANGE going from horse and buggy society to car society within 10 years Henry Ford scored the greatest success by developing a mass production system that drove down production costs o By the late 1920s America s roadways sported nearly one automobile for every five people Ford s company also provides an example of efforts by American businesses to reduce labor costs by improving labor efficiency o Ford doubles wages of autoworkers so they could buy his cars he had a long term view The automobile industry in the 1920s often led the way in promoting new sales techniques o By 1927 two thirds of all American automobiles were sold on credit c Get Rich Quick The Speculative Mania Stock market speculating buying a stock and expecting to make money by selling it at a higher price ran rampant as more people saw the stock market as a certain route to riches o Problem is that the stock market doesn t always go up Just as Americans bought their cars and radios on the installment plan some also bought stock on credit this was called buying on the margin Driven partly by real economic growth and partly by speculation stock prices rose higher and higher o This created a bubble stock goes up but actual value doesn t which will eventually pop d Agriculture Depression in the Midst of Prosperity Prosperity never extended to agriculture since many farmers did not recover from the postwar recession and struggled to survive financially throughout the 1920s II Many had expanded their operations during the war in response to government demands for more food After the war as European farmers resumed production and American production increased the glut of agricultural goods on world markets caused prices to fall o Prices fell as a consequence of this overproduction corn and wheat sold for about half their wartime prices o Good for buyers bad for the farmers Throughout the 1920s farmers pressed the government for help o A congressional Farm Bloc promoted legislation to assist farmers o Farmers burned dumped food and shot cattle while a depression goes on in the cities and people were starving The Roaring Twenties a The Automobile and American Life During the 1920s the automobile profoundly changed American patterns of living o Highways significantly shortened the traveling time from cities to rural areas thereby reducing the isolation of farm life o Trucks allowed farmers to take more products to market more quickly and conveniently than ever before Needed fewer farm hands o The spread of gasoline powered farm vehicles also reduced the need for human farm labor and so stimulated migration to urban areas o If the automobile changed rural life it had an even more profound impact on life in the cities suburbs mushroomed b A Homogenized Culture Searches for Heroes Together with the new technologies of radio and film the automobile and restrictive immigration laws began to homogenize the culture Radio and film joined newspapers and magazines the media in prompting national trends and fashions as Americans pursued one fad after another o Such fads in turn created markets for newfangled consumer goods o The media also contributed to the development of national sports heroes Baseball Babe Ruth Lou Gehrig Ty Cobb Honus Wagner Boxing Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey Football Knute Rockne and Notre Dame beginnings of college football with huge stadiums and pro football o The rapid spread of movie theaters created a new category of fame the movie star Hollywood Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Beauregard John Wayne Gary Cooper Clara Bo Greta Garbo Joan Crawford Restrictive immigration laws were closing the door to immigrants from abroad Laws designed to restrict immigration resulted in major part from nativist antagonism against immigrants especially those who did not appear to assimilate as readily as earlier immigrants had The National Origins Act of 1924 limited total immigration to 150 000 people each year with quotas for each country in an attempt to freeze the ethnic composition of the nation c Alienated Intellectuals Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises For Whom the Bell Tolls Old Man and the Sea and F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby Some Americans went to Paris and other European cities in the 1920s to escape what they considered America s dull