Chapter 18 Cause and Effect Timeline s1
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AP U.S. History, Chapter 24 “A New Era,” STUDY GUIDE
Where are we at, circa 1920? After World War I, what is the condition of the United States? Compare that to the U.S. in 1784, 1817, 1866: economic slump … and then, then what?
The Roaring Economy
____ - ____ average incomes climb nearly $150____ - ____ the cost of a tire and inner tube falls 50%
____ - Oregon, N. Mexico, Colorado tax gasoline
____- Ford Model Ts roll off assembly line every 10 seconds
(no date) Ford institutes “Five Dollar Day”
(what is it?) / (workers’ reactions)
____ - _____ 8,000 firms disappeared into larger firm / (three results)
____ The “American Plan” is launched
____ The Gastonia Strike
The Consumer Culture (what is it?) / (impact on use of Credit)
For discussion: who enjoyed the roaring economy: capital, labor, farming, consumers … none of them? All of them?
A Mass Society
Cause: World War I spurs the “new woman”(how?) / Results for
Labor force:
Women’s careers:
Women’s politics:
(during the decade) American Birth Control League / Social outcomes:
Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity & Infancy Act: (Date and define)
Equal Rights Amendment: (Date and Define, even though it didn’t pass)
For discussion: How do these developments support Davidson’s subtitle of “A New Woman”? What was so new?
By ____ more than 20,000 movie houses offered lavish entertainment____ “The air is your theater, your college, your newspaper, your library…” / The social outcomes / significance of this technology were:
1)
2)
3)
By ______55 giant newspaper chains reached a circulation of 13 million.
For discussion: What do these developments tell us about U.S. “mass media” in the 1920s?
Date, Author, Title, description____ T.S. Eliot The Waste Land:
____ Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises and ___ A Farewell to Arms:
____ Sinclair Lewis, Main Street and Babbit:
____ F. Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise:
For discussion: Davidson says that ‘young writers had begun to rebel against Victorianism” and that “the savagery of the war drove them away from reason or progress.” Choose two of these and tell me how they show this trend.
_____ Universal Negro Improvement Association formedHarlem becomes a cultural capital of Black America / This ‘movement’ was called the: ______
Examples:
1) Claude McKay:
2) Aaron Douglas:
3) Langston Hughes:
4) Zora Neale Hurston:
For discussion: Race, gender, literature: how would you characterize Davidson’s “A Mass Society”?
Defenders of the Faith
“Foul pictures, corrupt literature, leprous shows, gambling slot machines, saloons, and Sabbath breaking … we are trying to raise saints in hell.” / Who said that?What point is Davidson making here?
“a hybrid race of people as worthless and futile as the good-for-nothing mongrels of Central America and Southeastern Europe” / Who said that?
What point is Davidson making by quoting this?
How are Socco and Vanzetti – and their trial - an example of this?
______First National Origins Act
______Second National Origins Act
For discussion: Nativism and restriction. Again. When before have seen a problem with immigration / restriction?
_____ 18th Amendment went into effect.Pay attention to the social class nature of prohibition.
Discussion: What was so noble about prohibition?
______John Scopes teaches evolution in TNModern KKK is very active and growing during the 1920s
For discussion: what “faith” is being defended here? It’s not necessarily religious faith.
Republicans Ascendant
Note that when Harding was elected, the post-war economy looked like this:
/ “In 1920, 155 banks failed, and in 1921, 506 banks went under … Export markets also abruptly disappeared as financially strapped European counties were no longer able to buy American products with the proceeds of American government loans, and American earnings from the carrying trade evaporated as the worldwide shipping shortage eased and freight rates declined.” - Attack & Passel. A New Economic View of American History
“By the middle of 1920 the downturn in production had become severe, falling 21% over the following 12 months. Conditions were worse than they would be in the first year of the Great Depression. Yet scarcely any American even knows that such a slowdown occurred … likely because it was so short-lived.”
- Woods, Thomas. Meltdown. 2009.
Pay attention to Harding’s attitude about executive leadership and notice the good and bad appointments he made; notice how they reflect his approach to the presidency. Consider also this evidence: “The government is not an insurer of its citizens against the hazards of the elements.”
Coolidge becomes president how:
His attitude: / ____ Coolidge returned to White House by voters / It was a sign that:
Consider what the following statements show you about Coolidges attitude about Business and Government.
“The men and women of this country who [work] are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that [the government] carelessly [spends] means their life will be more meager. Every dollar that [the government] saves means their life will be more abundant.” – President Calvin Coolidge; “The man who builds a factory builds a temple, that the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise.” –Calvin Coolidge
Discussion: How will this attitude determine his policies? Who will not like Coolidge’s approach?
Sec. of Treasury Andrew Mellon devoted himself to:For discussion, consider: “High taxes cause the capitalist to no longer exert himself and the country will be deprived of his efforts on which the greatness of the country depends.” --Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, 1921-1929
Discussion: Think about why, then, he devoted himself to cutting taxes.
Please note: Mellon never used the term “trickle down” prosperity. No one ever has except critics of his policies.
Also consider: “Harding inherited one of the sharpest recessions in American history. By July 1921 it was all over and the economy was booming again. Harding and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon had done nothing except cut government spending by a huge 40 percent from Wilson’s peacetime level … [and] allowing wages to fall to their natural level. … The cuts were part of a careful plan to bring the spending of the monster state which had emerged under Wilson back under control. Source: Johnson, Paul. A history of the American People.
Consider the image over there à. A jazz player labeled “C.C.” plays a sax labeled “praise” while a large, smiling flapper (yes, a woman) labeled “Big Business” in short hair, beads, slim skin-revealing dress with knee socks dances the Charleston* and says, “Yes sir, He’s my baby!!**”.For discussion: Was big business happy to dance to the tune that “C.C.” played? Did “C.C.” “praise” business? What 2 or 3 cultural trends show up in this editorial?
*Popular dance.
**Popular jazz tune. /
Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover was not ______; he promoted a ______brand of capitalism called ______.
Define it:
Through associationalism, Hoover:
Note the slobbering love-fest Davidson has for Hoover. Hmmm.
Distress Signals at Home …
Note how farmers as an economic class fared during the 1920s. Why did they have problems in the late 1800s? Is the 1920s any different?Note how the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 led to changes in attitudes about Federal responsibility.
… and Abroad
The Dawes Plan: (date and define)Washington Conference: (date and define)
Kellogg-Briand Pact: (date and define)
For discussion: Davidson says that these are distress signals abroad. What stress might it be showing?
For discussion: do these actions by the U.S. abroad jive with the Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles?
Election of 1928Democrats / Republicans
Candidate: / Candidate:
Platform: / Platform:
Who voted for him? / What new group voted for him?
This election demonstrated that no longer were voters:
Increasingly, what was impacting voters:
The Great Bull Market
The Rampaging Bull (A “bull market” is when investors are rabidly optimistic about rising stock prices.) What made this “bull” market go on a stock-buying “rampage”?1) There was a speculative ______.
2) Money and credit ______; the money supply ______.
3) Corporate profits ______(this will attract investors even more).
4) Brokers’ loans ______(which made investors buy even more stock).
5) “margin requirements” allowed stock buyers to buy even more stock with less money down.
(Note what the Federal Reserve tries to do – it’s job, basically – but this will have adverse affects within 10 months.)
So the stock market crashes when investors figure out stock prices are too high and they try to get their money back by selling their stock at prices that are rapidly falling below what investors paid for them, after they had borrowed to pay for them, and now can’t get their money back to pay those loans. Oops.
Note how nearly the entire world is experiencing a “sickening slide” into economic depression.
Causes
Workers’ wages:
Consumer Debt:
Distribution of wealth:
Banking system:
Corporate structure: (why was Fed Reserve ineffective on them?)
“Sick” Industries:
Tariffs: / The Great Depression
For discussion: The economy is again following a pattern we’ve seen 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1892, 1907, 1920. What social changes come out of those panics / crashes and depressions? How long did they generally last? What should we then expect about this panic, recession, depression?