Chapter 15 from Textbook: The Years of Change 1920-1932

 -called the "roaring twenties", "Jazz age", "Era of Wonderful Nonsense", "Nervous Generation", "Prosperity Decade"; half of US population lived in cities of 2500 or more; urbanization was focus of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
-during "good times", farmers borrowed from bank and mortgaged their land (gave farms to banks as security for loans); farmers were producing more food than Americans could eat because of machines and food became much cheaper; however, these cheap prices prevented farmers from paying back loans and they entered economic recession long before the Great Depression
-cotton was still king of the South, but when boll weevil insects killed an entire crop in 1915, blacks were forced off the land; many blacks got factory jobs in the North in 1917; ghettos sprang up such as Harlem in NYC
-ragtime and jazz were created which inspired white songs such as Black Bottom and Charleston; composers such as George Gershwin turned it into operas like Porgy and Bess and symphonies like Rhapsody in Blue; whites were attracted to jazz and visited "night clubs" in ghettos
-Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey formed Universal Negro Improvement Association and focused on "black pride"; he believed in segregation (blacks could only develop separated from whites) and said blacks were superior to whites and wanted them all to return to Africa; he bought a ship to do so called the Black Star Line; he was then charged with fraud and deported back to Jamaica; blacks were still "the last hired and the first fired"
-1920, 19^th Amendment had given women the right to vote nationally; more women worked outside home in factories; some entered college to become secretaries, teachers, and social workers; they would not give up the jobs they won in WW1
-they "revolted" with the "new woman" "flapper" look which according to Fitzgerald was "lovely, and expensive and nineteen"; they had short "bobbed" hair, straight dress with a straight line, white stockings, and dared to do things such as smoke in public and drink alcohol
-Americans feared immigrants because they would change culture of USA (Protestantism and British tradition) which was called nativism; 1921, a quota system of immigration limited number of immigrants each year and discriminated against immigrants from Southern Europe (Italy, Balkans, Austria-Hungary)
-the "Red Scare" of communism began; 1919, terrorist bombs went off but the terrorists were never found; Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer used the bombings to begin a campaign against foreigners and "Reds" (people who have ideals contrary to American ideas); 6000 were arrested and deported even though they had become American citizens; Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for robbing a bank and killing a guard; the 2 Italians were found guilty on circumstantial evidence and executed; 50 years later, they were proclaimed innocent
-1919, "The Great Experiment" was 18^th Amendment of prohibition which made any drink with more than 1/2 percent alcohol illegal; Temperance movement made all grain go the WW1 soldiers and not to beer; "speak-easies" were established to thwart law and Canada "bootleggers" smuggled booze into USA
-in cities like Chicago, mob bosses like Alfonse "Scarface" Capone controlled the gov't and people with murder and monet from booze; he was indirectly linked to about 700 bloody murders, including one of a fellow crime boss with a baseball bat; February 14, 1927, Capone's men in "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" killed 7 competitors by lining them up on a wall and mowing them down with machine guns; he was eventually caught for tax evasion and died from sickness after being released from jail
-1933, prohibition ends and mobsters turn to "the rackets" including gambling, prostitution, "protection" of businesses, union busting, loaning money ("loansharking") and drug trafficking; crime was a "big business"
-race riots broke out in 1919; blacks were hanged from lamp-posts; one of the worst began in Chicago when white sunbathers could not stand their fellow black sunbathers on the beach
-after the movie The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffiths, groups of men wanted to restore the dead Ku Klux Klan; they preyed on the frustrated Southern farmers and used hatred of immigrants to gain support
-they tortured their victims with large crosses on their property, whipping, and lynching; daytime parades of Klansmen and Klanswomen became common even in Washington D.C and it began to gain political power; they might have won the 1924 presidential election if William Jennings Bryan had not denounced their political gameplaying of the candidates; 1925, the "Grand Wizard" was convicting of raping and murdering his secretary and the movement quelled down
-1925, John Scopes was charged for teaching biology in Tennessee and was convinced by the American Civil Liberties Union to teach Darwin's theory of evolution against the law; this became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial; Scopes was defended by the great Clarence Darrow and fought against Williams Jennings Bryan, who had the people's support because their feared Protestantism was crumbling; Scopes was found guilty but only charged $100
-Walter G. Harding won the election by staying at home and bringing the public to him; his Secretary of Treasury Henry Sinclair convinced him to reduce corporate taxes which led to Great Depression later; Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover enforced quality standards on food and products and began trade with USSR, which led to American companies such as Ford and General Electric showing the Russians how to use their technology in their new factories
-President Harding died in 1923 from salmonella poisoning and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge; he argued that public servants such as the police had no right to strike; he said so little that he was called "Silent Cal"; he left American alone and the economy boomed and he was elected into office in 1924
-in 1928, Coolidge simply said "I do not choose to run" and Herbert Hoover was nominated who defeated his opponent Alfred E. Smith because Smith was Catholic
-economy boomed further by John B. Watson who invented commercials and said advertising based on the feeling that "the mentality of the average American is twelve years of age"; Thomas A. Edison had perfected the light bulb in 1877 and it was widespread by 1929
-Alexander Graham Bell had invented the telephone in 1876; 1930, over 30 million phones were used; 1901, Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first wireless signal from NewFoundland to England; commercial radio sales mounted to $22 million a year by 1922 and in 1929, sales were at $852 million a year
-Thomas A. Edison had also invented the movie projector in 1880s and filmed the first "story" which was of a long kiss; the few movie producers that existed such as Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffiths moved their studios to California were wages were lower and made Hollywood; "talkies" did not appear until 1927; some popular movies were "the Vamp", "the It Girl", "the Flapper", "the Latin Lover", "cowboys and Indians", and "gangsters"
-sports like college football and baseball became organized and players began to be paid; football's Red Grange soon became known all across the nation along with George Herman "Babe" Ruth (1895-1948)
-1927, Charles A. Lindburgh flew an airplane from USA to France and was first to do it totally self-dependant; automobile became "American way of life"; first cars were built in 1880s in Germany by a man named Benz who invented internal combustion motor; 1902, speed limit for cars was 8 miles per hour in San Francisco
-Germans were so impressed by Henry Ford that they invented a new word for him: "Fordisimus"; he was born on a farm in Michigan and became fascinated by motors in 1890s; he invented the model-T Ford for everyone to use and used the assembly line invented by Eli Whitney and Samuel Colt in the making of guns; it took only 93 minutes to make a Model-T in 1914; he realized he had to keep his workers happy so he was first to give each person $5 a day
-everyone wanted cars and borrowed from the banks to do so; they wanted freedom and followed the advertising; Miami formed because roads were finally built there for vacation spots
-"Black Tuesday" October 29, 1929, the stock market crashes after a week of stumbling; "buying on margin" (10% down-payment) created too much debt and banks went bankrupt because they could not give back the people's money; stock promoters scared the public by investing their money into the market to get more buyers, then taking their money out; only 0.5% of Americans had invested in stock market, and in the 1930s, unemployment was about 5% each year; companies got discouraged from the lower amount of buyers and laid off many people, which led to even less buyers
-about 58% of Americans were middle-class "white collar workers" who had jobs as office workers, salesmen, and managers; most were laid off when productivity slowed and soon were forced to be standing in the bread lines for a bit of charity
-President Hoover tried to revitalize the stock market with "voluntary noncoercive cooperation" in which he made many tax breaks but did not invent in the economy or else he feared he will be doing the same as communism; he tried to persuade farmers to cut down on wheat and cotton production to revitalize their economies; 1930, he made a network of relief centres to clothe and feed the unemployed; Hoover also stopped lending money to Germany in the "Hoover Moratorium" and by January 1931, the economy began to shape up
-however, Democrats pass a law to make tariffs so high that only American goods will be affordable; however, they did not know what Hoover knew: 22 countries of the world soon responded by setting their tariffs so high America could no longer export; 1931, USSR needs money to repay loans made to Austria, so they sell their wheat at half America's price; however, Russia ends up making no money and can't afford to grow their own crops which is known as "The Banker's Panic"
-after lending all the money to a bankrupt Russia, Austria borrowed money from Germany but were blocked by the concerned French who did not want the two WW1 buddies to become strong again; May 193, both French and German banks go bankrupt from the stalemate in trade; Germany had borrowed a lot of money from America so when Germany went bankrupt, 2000 American banks collapsed; 1931, most people had lost their life savings
-1932, Hoover establishes Reconstruction Finance Corporation for emergency loans to banks, trusts, cooperatives, railroads, insurance companies, and mortgage associations; in 6 months, it made over 5000 loans worth $1.5 billion; however, he feared that these "handouts" would limit American's self-reliance "rugged individualism"
-farmers refused to sell their milk because prices were too low and dumped it into the fields; WW1 soldiers who had lost their pensions went on a "Bonus March" to Washington for bonus pensions; 1931, the "Bonus Army" set up camp with tents (Hoovervilles) and ate scraps of food (Hoover-meals) and illegally rode in trains (Hoover-rides); 1932, the army led by General Douglas MacArthur destroyed the settlement
-1932, 25% of Americans (12 million people) were unemployed and national income was less than 50% what it was in 1929 and Franklin D. Roosevelt crushed Herbert Hoover with a landslide

The Star-Spangled Banner (Francis Scott Key, 1814)

On Sept. 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key visited the British fleet in Chesapeake Bay to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes, who had been captured after the burning of Washington, D.C. The release was secured, but Key was detained on ship overnight during the shelling of Fort McHenry, one of the forts defending Baltimore. In the morning, he was so delighted to see the American flag still flying over the fort that he began a poem to commemorate the occasion. First published under the title "Defense of Fort M'Henry," and later as "The Star-Spangled Banner," the poem soon attained wide popularity as sung to the tune "To Anacreon in Heaven." The origin of this tune is obscure, but it may have been written by John Stafford Smith, a British composer born in 1750. "The Star-Spangled Banner" was officially made the National Anthem by Congress in 1931, although it already had been adopted as such by the Army and the Navy.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust!"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!