The Roaring 20s, Great Depression, And The New Deal

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Unit Eleven Terms
The Roaring 20s, Great Depression, and the New Deal
The Roaring Twenties (Decade of the Foolish Nonsense)
• Warren Harding o Republican President 1920, elected by a landslide o Unclear about where he stood on every issue o American people wanted a “return to normalcy” o Return of the conservative Republicans o Appointed able men to his cabinet
• Pardoned socialist leader Debs
• Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act (1922) o Approved by Harding o Increased tariff rates
• Bureau of the Budget o Established by Harding o Procedures for all government expenditures to be placed in a single budget for Congress to review and vote on
• Teapot Dome o Harding appointed the dishonest man, Albert Fall o Fall accepted bribes for granting oil leases near Teapot Dome, Wyoming o The lands were meant to be used by the US navy o He leased the land privately and accepted bribes for land o Fall was the first cabinet member to go to jail
• Calvin Coolidge o Harding’s Vice President and successor o Massachusetts governor, nicknamed Silent Cal for being a man of few words o “The business of America is business” o Served 2 terms o Vetoed laws that would exempt farmers cooperatives from the anti-trust laws
• Herbert Hoover o President for 1928 o Spotless reputation, self-made millionaire
• Alfred E. Smith o Democratic opponent, New York governor o Roman catholic and opponent of prohibition, he appealed to many immigrant voters
• Business prosperity o 1922-1928, the standard of living for most Americans improved significantly o Resulted from three factors:
• Increased productivity
• Henry Ford & the Assembly line o Perfected a system for manufacturing automobiles
• Energy technologies
• Increased use of oil and electricity for automobiles and factories
• Government policy
• Governments favored the growth of big business & offered corporate tax cuts and doing nothing to enforce anti-trust laws
• Open Shop: Keeping jobs open to nonunion workers
• Welfare Capitalism: voluntarily offering their employees improved benefits and higher wages in order to remove the need for organizing unions
• Jazz Age o African American musicians (started in New Orleans) o Rhythm & blues mixed with country music o Symbol of the “new and modern” culture of the cities o Music was available to a huge and young public o Louis Armstrong- symbol of this era
• Consumerism o Automobiles
• Became more affordable
• Changed pattern of American life
• One car per family
• Replaced the railroad industry
• Affected all that Americans did: shopping, traveling, commuting to work and dating o Radio
• Over 800 stations broadcasting to 10 million radios (1/3 of US homes)
• Enabled people from one end of the country to the other to listen to the same programs: news, sports, soap operas, comedies, tv shows
• First radio station is PA- KDKA o Movies
• Going to the movies became a national habit
• Sexy glamorous movie stars were idolized
• Elaborate movie theaters were built for the general public
• 1927- talking (sound pictures)- Talky, were invented
• Charles Lindberg o Popular hero o 1927- thrilled the nation and the entire world by flying nonstop across the Atlantic from Long Island to Paris o People listened by radio for news of Lindberg’s flight o Symbol of bravery and adventure, showed invincibility attitude of the era
• Sigmund Freud o Austrian psychiatrist who stressed the role of sexual repression o Others took premarital sex as if it was one of the inventions of the modern age
• Margaret Sanger o Advocate of birth control; achieved growing acceptance in the twenties
• Modernism o Large number of Protestants to define their faith in a new way o Believed they could accept Darwin’s theory of evolution w/o abandoning their faith
• Fundamentalism o Against Modernism o Taught that every word in the Bible must be accepted as literally true o Creationism: explained the origin of all life o Rejected