TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA

1
TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA

• America Past and Present
• Chapter 25

2
The Second Industrial Revolution

• U.S. develops the highest standard of living in
  the world
• The twenties and the second revolution
• electricity replaces steam
• modern assembly introduced

3
The Automobile Industry

• Auto makers stimulate sales through model
  changes, advertising
• Auto industry fosters other businesses
• Autos encourage suburban sprawl

4
Patterns of Economic Growth

• Structural change
• professional managers replace individual
  entrepreneurs
• corporations become the dominant business form
• Big business weakens regionalism, brings
  uniformity to America

5
Glenwood Stove Ad
6
Economic Weaknesses

• Railroads poorly managed
• Coal displaced by petroleum
• Farmers face decline in exports, prices
• Growing disparity between income of laborers,
  middle-class managers
• Middle class speculates with idle money

7
City Life in the Jazz Age

• Rapid increase in urban population
• Skyscrapers symbolize the new mass culture
• Communities of home, church, and school are
  absent in the cities

8
Women and the Family

• Ongoing crusade for equal rights
• Flappers seek individual freedom
• Most women remain in domestic sphere
• Discovery of adolescence
• teenaged children no longer need to work
• indulge their craving for excitement

9
The Roaring Twenties

• Decade notable for obsessive interest in
  celebrities
• Sex becomes an all-consuming topic of interest in
  popular entertainment

10
The Flowering of the Arts

• Alienation from 20s mass culture
• "Exiled" American writers put U.S. in forefront
  of world literature
• T.S. Eliot
• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Harlem Renaissance--African Americans prominent
  in music, poetry

11
The Rural Counterattack

• Rural Americans identify urban culture with
  Communism, crime, immorality
• Progressives attempt to force reform on the
  American people
• upsurge of bigotry
• an era of repression

12
The Fear of Radicalism

• 1919-- Red Scare
• illegal roundups of innocent people
• forcible deportation of aliens
• terrorism against radicals, immigrants
• 1927-- Sacco and Vanzetti executed

13
Prohibition

• 1918--18th Amendment ratified
• 1920--Volstead Act prohibits production, sale, or
  transport of alcoholic beverages
• Consumption of alcohol reduced
• Prohibition resented in urban areas
• Bootlegging becomes big business
• 1933--18th amendment repealed

14
The Ku Klux Klan

• 1925--Klan membership hits 5 million
• Attack on urban culture, inhabitants
• Defense of traditional rural values
• Klan seeks to win U.S. by persuasion
• Violence, internal corruption result in Klans
  virtual disappearance by 1930

15
Immigration Restriction

• 1924--Congress restricts all immigration
• Preferential quotas to northern Europeans
• Mexican immigrants exempt from quota

16
The Fundamentalist Challenge

• Fundamentalism stress on traditional Protestant
  orthodoxy, biblical literalism
• 1925--Scopes Trial discredits fundamentalism
  among intellectuals
• Modernists gain mainline churches
• Fundamentalists strengthen grassroots appeal in
  new churches

17
Politics of the 1920s

• Republican party apparently dominant
• Urban wing of the Democratic party emerging as
  the most powerful force

18
Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover

• Republican presidents appeal to traditional
  American values
• Harding scandals break after his death
• Coolidge represents America in his austerity and
  rectitude
• Hoover represents the self-made man

19
Republican Policies

• Return to "normalcy"
• tariffs raised
• corporate, income taxes cut
• spending cut
• Coolidge blocks Congressional aid to farmers as
  unwarranted interference
• Government-business cooperation
• Expansion of federal bureaucracy

20
The Divided Democrats

• 1924--Urban-rural split weakens Democrats
• Major shift in political loyalties
• Democrats gain more Congressional seats than
  Republicans after 1922

21
(No Transcript)
22
The Election of 1928

• Democrat Al Smith carries urban vote
• governor of New York
• Roman Catholic
• Republican Herbert Hoover wins race
• Midwesterner
• Protestant
• Religion the campaigns decisive issue

23
(No Transcript)
24
The Old and the New

• Old historical view the Depression ended the
  spirit of the twenties
• New historical view the twenties laid the
  foundations of modern America