The Roaring Twenties.

The Roaring Twenties included both cultural greatness and fights against racism. It included both economic growth and massive economic inequality. It was a time unparalleled in American history and one of the most interesting periods in world history. From jazz to cars, creativity persisted during the 1920’s. From 1919 to 1929, America experienced massive changes. The economy boomed. More revolutionary means of production allowed American consumers to buy more items quicker. Stock prices grew. Factories produced more goods and wages increased. With this reality, more Americans brought for items. The car maker Henry Ford revolutionized mass production. Mass production was about the mass production of large numbers of identical products in order to create things more efficiently. Back in the beginning of the 20th century, mostly the rich could afford cars. The automobile was seen as a tool of the privileged. When cars came into rural areas, they were filled with dust and scared animals like goats and cows. By 1901, an inexpensive car was created by Ransom Olds called the Oldsmobile.

By 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Model T. This was another inexpensive car. It sold for $850. He made a new plant in the Detroit River to have the car created from steel, glass, oil, and rubber. These items were manufactured in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Ford used assembly lines. They were similar to meatpacking plants using tools to move meat around in preparing for foods. The Assembly line had a worker add an item to the machine and then another worker would do a different job until the car was completely created. This process decreased the time to form a Model T from more than 12 hours to just 90 minutes. So, the cost of the Model T declined from $350 to $290 by 1927. From 10 percent of Americans owning the Model T to 56% of Americans owning it in 1927, it was the first car that ordinary Americans could buy. Gas stations developed in America. Cars influenced the developments of the highway system. Route 66 ran from Illinois to California. Advertising developed greatly and more Americans traveled in vacations. Wages for car makers also increased. Henry Ford increased wages because he knew if people had fair wages and were given more leisure time, then more consumers would buy his products and his car development plans would massively improve. 

The automobile industry transformed America. Steel, glass, rubber, asphalt, wood, gasoline, insurance, and road-construction industries were helped by the car industry. Oil discoveries in California, Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma gave workers new economic resources in the Southwest. 1926 was when the federal government invested in more highways. In these places, service stations, diners, and motor hotels or motels grew. Railroads and trolleys declined in use because of the rise of the usage of cars. More Americans saw freedom and prosperity with automobiles. Families traveled to the country. More people went into the suburbs from the cities with cars. More people from the suburbs also came to work into large cities. Economically, the 1920’s saw a consumer boom. More people brought items with credit from washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and irons. Electricity governed the power of machines. Installment buying or paying a down payment on something and pay the rest later grew. Rising stock prices developed in the bull market. Some bought on margin as in credit. More people flocked to the cities from the rural areas including African Americans via the Great Migration. Cities like New York City, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Detroit grew massively in population from 1910 to 1930. The Empire State Building was finished in 1931. Suburbs grew too as cars allowed people to travel into a diversity of places. There were economic problems too like lower farm incomes, income inequality, more wealth sent to the super wealthy, and suffering in rural communities. Many people ignored the rural struggles of the 1920’s back then. Warren G. Harding was the Republican President who wanted to promote a laissez faire approach to government. He wanted normalcy. He and the other President Calvin Coolidge promoted a conservative government in the United States of America.  Harding wanted this far right agenda and that is why he choose Andrew Mellon as the Secretary of Treasury. Mellon is a total robber baron and big business advocate. Mellon wanted to promote business interests and he desired low taxes on individuals and corporations. Congress reduced spending form $18 billion to $3 billion. Then, the Treasury saw a surplus. Harding signed a bill that increased the protective tariff by 25 percent. He wanted to promote American business interests. European markets retaliated by increasing their tariffs causing a trade war. The trade war harmed the U.S. economy. Harding trusted the Ohio gang and others to handle many political including economic issues. The Teapot Dome scandal harmed the Harding Presidency. By August 2, 1923, Harding died of a heart attack in Alaska.

Calvin Coolidge was President as he was once the Vice President. He supported business interests. He promoted Mellon’s ideas of lowering taxes, cutting the budgets, and giving incentives to businesses. Urban Americans and the wealthy saw great profits. Yet, the rural communities suffered. Labor unions wanted higher wages, racial discrimination was huge, and Mexican Americans wanted equality. Coolidge did nothing since he believed that it was the federal government’s responsibility to end economic and racial injustice. That was disgraceful on his part. Coolidge wanted a foreign policy to prevent wars. The U.S. wanted France and Great Britain to pay its loans to America because of WWI. So, the U.S. supported the Dawes Plan which forced Germany to pay reparations to France plus Great Britain. That money would be later sent to America. The crash of 1929 prevented that money to come into America. Ultimately, it would be the economic instability from the 1920’s that contributed to the Great Depression and World War II.

The 1920’s saw a new social reality in America. There was a clash between traditionalists who were conservative religious people. The modernists made up of secularists including many progressive religious leaders. This was like the culture war of the 1920’s.  Religion was powerful back then with preachers like the famous Billy Sunday. He preached against greed, card playing, dancing, and drinking especially. Farmers were suffering and the rural-urban division grew. There were debates on immigration and the teaching of evolution debate. By the 1920 yearly census, more people lived in urban areas than rural areas for the first time in American history. Urban Americans had a consumer culture in full access. Many of them were open to social change and new discoveries of science. Many rural Americans had a traditional view of religion, science, and culture. Education was very important in America in promoting math, science, literacy, etc. High school graduates grew by 1930. By the 1920’s, some Americans thought that their Christian faith was under siege. So, they promoted religious fundamentalism. This view held that the Bible must be literally interpreted completely. Many of supporters of this view condemned the persecution of the Orthodox Church in Russia by Soviet communists and the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico being assaulted by some revolutionary people. The Scopes Trial of 1925 fined a man who taught evolution in a public school, but later laws would legalize the teaching of evolution in public schools since evolution relates to the study of science. Evolution was modernized by Charles Darwin with his book called, “The Origin of the Species.” The ACLU supported the biology teacher John Scopes who was teaching evolution in the high school. Clarence Darrow was the defense attorney who defended Scopes. William Jennings Bryan was the prosecutor and didn’t support Scopes. Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100. Many people back then falsely viewed that evolution taught that humans just descended from modern day monkeys, but evolution taught that humans and primates share a common ancestor. The xenophobia of the 1920’s was huge. New immigrants had jobs. Some nativists believed that these new immigrants took away American jobs and would harm American religious, cultural, and political traditions. The Nativists opposed new immigrants and many of them had ties to eugenicists. Congress forced new immigrants to pass a literacy test to be new citizens. Wilson vetoed the bill and Congress overridden the veto. Many xenophobes feared new socialists and communists coming into Americans. People, who opposed nativism, said that America was made up of immigrants and this is what made an American an American. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924 promoted a quota system involving immigration. This restricted how many immigrants could come into America from specific nations. The National Origins Act said that the number of immigrants of a specific nationality each year couldn’t exceed 2 percent of the number of people of that nationality living in America in 1890. It banned Asian immigrants from coming into America too. The quotas didn’t apply to Mexico, so Mexican immigrants came into America in great numbers. Many Mexican Americans worked in crops found in California, Texas, New Mexico, etc. A smaller number worked in factories of the North and Midwest. 

Immigration hatred influenced the revitalized Ku Klux Klan by the 1920’s. The Klan promoted the doctrines of hate and bigotry plus racism. They committed violence all over America back then. The first Klan brutalized black people during the Reconstruction era. They wanted to prevent black people from voting. The new Klan of the 1920’s promoted hatred against African Americans and they were involved in lynching black people. They also added their hatred of new immigrants including Jewish people, Catholics, and others. There were labor protests and the Klan hated labor unions in general. At its peak, it had 4-5 million white racists in America. They were police officers, judges, and other people in society. Most of them were in the South and the Midwest. In fact, some parts of the Midwest were more racist than the South. Other Klan branches were in the North and the West too. David Stephenson was a Klan leader who controlled politicians too. Some Klan members opposed women from voting. Women groups of Klan members existed too. Klan members terrorized black people, Roman Catholics, and Jewish people via boycotts and terrorism. They opposed businesses owned by black people, Jewish people, and Roman Catholics. They burned crosses in front of homes. The Klan used violence, bribery, rape, and political corruption. They also were exposed heavily by the late 1920’s. The NAACP and the ADL worked hard to oppose the evil actions of the Ku Klux Klan.

By Timothy