January 18-22

Monday - Watched videos and took notes

Tuesday - Watched videos and took notes

Wednesday - Watched videos and took notes

Thursday - Watched videos and took notes

Friday - Watched videos and took notes

1920’s Topics:

*Republican Era - All presidents were republican

*The Jazz Age - Jazz music was huge

*Boom to Bust - Stock market crashed

*Prosperity Decade - Time of prosperity

*Advertising Age - A lot of new popular products (electricity)

*The Golden Age of Sports - Popular time for sports

 

1.-Prohibition and gangsters

  • Noble Experiment

  • 18th amendment- the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages was illegal

  • supporters believed alcohol brought about corruptions, crime wife and child abuse and accidents

  • supporters came mostly from rural south and west- protestant

  • anti-saloon league and women’s christian temperance union led the attack on alcohol

  • Alcohol was allowed for medicinal and religious purposes

  • Prescriptions and sacramental

  • saloons closed and drunkenness went down

  • the Volstead act created the prohibition bureau to enforce the law

  • prohibition failed for three reasons

    • people despised it, saw it as government meddling in lives

    • the Prohibition bureau was underfunded- had 1500 people to supervise the country

    • organized crime became commonplace

  • Prohibition Bureau would go and break cegs

  • Bootlegging-illegally making or distributing alcohol

  • Bootleggers

    • people that made or transported alcohol

    • named because people carried liquor in the logs of boots

    • most imported alcohol came from Canada or outside the US

  • Biggest threat to the bootlegging- hijacking

  • Moonshine- alcohol made secretly in homemade stills

  • Several hundred people a year died from drinking moonshine during the 1920’s

  • IN 1929 it is estimated that 700 million gallons of beer were produced in American homes

  • Speakeasies- to obtain alcohol illegally, people went underground to secret bars, could be anywhere, moved frequently, to be admitted a card or passard had to be given

  • Every major city had it’s gang

  • Al Capone's bootlegging business in chicago made over 60 million per year

  • Due to gang violence only 19 of the Americans supported prohibition by 1925

  • Prohibition was repealed in 1933 by the 21st amendment

  • Al Capone- scarface

    • St. Valentine’s massacre,

    • taken down by tax evasion

    • died in 1940’s

2.-Women’s rights and freedoms

  • 19th Amendment people have rights to vote - They now have a say in the government

*Women started going to college and working. 

  • Typical jobs were clerks, cleaning, waitress, teaching, nursing
  • Only 25%

*Flapper Girls

  • Bobbed hair, fringe dresses, makeup, no more corsets
  • They had a fun attitude, wanted to go to college and get a job before they wanted marriage or kids
  • Smoked and drank in public, earned their own money
  • Clara Bow - famous actress that was the sex symbol of the 20s
  • Most women were traditional

*Cult of Domesticity

  • Developed throughout the 1800s
  • Four characteristics - piety (religious), purity (wait till marriage, one man, innocent), domesticity (stay home take care of house), submissiveness (woman will not argue, not to speak up)

*WWI

  • Interrupted the campaign for woman suffrage
  • Women took the mens' jobs while they were at war, showing that they could do hard work

*Margaret Sanger

  • 1921 she found the American Birth Control League (ABCL) 
  • Known as planned parenthood today
  • Women could then control their own bodies 

*Education

  • By 1928, women were earning 39% of the college degrees in the U.S.
  • In 1900 it was 19%
  • Almost 60% today

*1928 Olympics

  • First Olympics that women competed in
  • Some argued physical competition wasn't adequate, or historically innapropriate

*"Pink Collared" Jobs 1920s-70s

  • Low paying service occupations
  • Nurses, secretaries, teachers, cleaning
  • Make less money in general

3.-Politics-elections, Normalcy and isolationism, President’s backgrounds and accomplishments, scandals, Republican philosophy

*Small government

  • States had a lot of say in things
  • Government was doing good

*Harding

  • Died
  • Sneaky
  • Put his own friends in office

  • Teapot dome Scandal - Oil reserves there, Harding's guy decided to lease it to oil companies but he only gave it to the ones who bribed him

*Coolidge

  • Did well
  • Didn't get involved in many things

*Hoover

  • Known as a terrible president
  • Was popular when first started

*Republican Philosophies

  • Trickle-down theory - Government gives tax breaks on the wealthy
  • Laissez-faire - Government stays out of business, doesn't have regulations
  • Rugged individualism - It is up to you to work hard, government isn't giving you money
  • Normalcy - United States is going to focus on ourselves

4.-Entertainment, sports, music, radio, movies and fads

*Famous People

  • Charlie Chaplin - very famous, was a communist and left the U.S.
  • Black Face - sing dance, painted their faces black
  • The Marx Brothers - famous actors
  • Harry Houdini - magician, escape artist
  • Babe Ruth - baseball
  • Bobby Jones - golfer
  • Bill Tilden - Tennis
  • Red Grange - football
  • F Scott. Fitzgerald - Author of The Great Gatsby

5.-Economy-Booming economy and stock market, buying on credit, high tariffs\

*Massive Strikes after WWI

  • Some people wanted better wages, conditions, hours
  • Boston Police Strike - crime rised because police weren't working
  • Things got better after WWII

*Stock market

  • Stock market was booming
  • Buying on margin "Buy now pay later"

*High Tariff Policy

  • Republicans rose tariffs so people would buy American products since they would be cheaper
  • The Progressives pushed for lower tariffs, good for consumers because there's more options
  • No longer making a lot of money from other countries, they put tariffs on you too 

*The era of "Permanent Prosperity"

  • "As long as everyone has faith, everything will be fine."

6.-Red Scare-anti-immigration, Sacco and Vanzetti case (1919-1920)

*United States was fearful of communist takeover

  • The Palmer Raids - Mitchell Palmer searched out communists, house was bombed
  • Hysteria reached an all time high when they heard a communist takeover would happen

  • Sacco and Vanzetti - Italian radicals that were accused of killing someone and put to death (probably innocent)

*Russia dropped out of WWI and became communist

  • Vladimir Lenin - first Russian leader, he dies
  • Joseph Stalin - Made communism what we think of today (fear)

*Communism...

  • Karl Marx
  • No personal freedoms

*Immigration Act of 1924 

  • Greatly reduced immigration to the US, 
  • The law was aimed at restricting immigration of Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, and Jews
  • Severely restricted immigration from Aftica, prohibited Arabs, East Asians, and Indians
  • The purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity"

7.-Harlem Renaissance-KKK

  • African Americans moving from the south to cities in the North
  • Art and music 

*Famous jazz artists

  • Louis Armstrong
  • Duke Ellington 
  • Cab Callington
  • Bassie Smith

  • The cotton club, very famous

*Klu Klux Klan

  • Tried to keep our country "pure"
  • W.A.S.P .... White anglo saxon protestant

8.-Lots of strikes-Boston Police, US Steel, United Mine Workers

9.-The Model T and the impact of the automobile

*Was made for the average American

*Affordable for everyone

*Impact:

  • Transporting
  • Could live in small towns and drive to work
  • Could work other places
  • Vacationing
  • Created jobs (Car, gas stations, roads, mechanics)

10.-Electricity in the homes and new applicances

  • Changed the way people live
  • Prior to electricity, people used kerosene lamps and fire
  • Only the richer people had it in the beginning, country people didn't have it until 40s or 50s

11.-Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhardt and the airplane

  • Airplanes used for carrying mail, entertainment shows, and competitions, military purposes

*Charles Lindbergh

  • Most famous person in U.S.
  • First person to fly against the Atlantic Ocean (New York - Paris)
  • Lost fame in late 1930s due to racism, non jewish

*Amelia Earhart

  • First woman to fly across the Atlantic ocean 
  • Tried to become the first to fly around the world, crashed in the south pacific and disappeared

12.-Scopes-Monkey Trial

  • There was a struggle between the modern scientific people and the christian fundamentalists

  • Fundamentalists believed everything could be explained by the Bible

  • They disagreed with the theory of evolution especially

  • Charles Darwin- theory of evolution

  • In 1925 tennessee passed the first law making it illegal to teach evolution in school

  • The American Civil Liberties Union said it would defend any teacher willing to break the law

  • John Scopes, biology teacher from Dayton accepted

  • Scopes taught evolution and was arrested

  • Clarence Darrow was hired by the AClU to defend Scopes

  • William Jennings Bryan was the special prosecutor

  • Scopes did not deny teaching evolution

  • Darrow called Bryan to the stand and asked him questions about the Bible

  • Darrow made Bryan look foolish

  • In the end, Scopes was found guilty and fined 100 dollars

13.-Cause of the stock market crash

*People buying on stock margin

  • stocks would go down, brokers would want their money back but they wouldn't have it. Banks and people would lose money

*Dow Jones 30

  • 30 of the biggest companies in the stock market (U.S.)
  • If Dow Jones is doing good, most things are

*Causes of the crash

  • Stock prices were grossly inflated, did not have real value-watered stock prices
  • Overspeculation during the 20s ^
  • Buying on margin (led to people being in debt)
  • Overproduction of goods - under consumption of consumers
  • Uneven distribution of wealth
  • Too much borrowing from banks
  • Federal Reserve increased interest rates
  • Lack of government regulation

E-mail me when people leave their comments –

You need to be a member of History 360 to add comments!

Join History 360

eXTReMe Tracker