Chapter 32 Reading Guide

American Life in the “Roaring Twenties” 1919-1929

Terms: Red Scare, A Mitchell Palmer, Buford, Sacco and Vanzetti, National Origins Provision of 1929. Emergency Quota Act, Immigration Act 1924, 18th Amendment, Volstead Act, Al Capone, Scopes Monkey Trial, John Dewey, Andrew Mellon, Frederick Taylor, Henry Ford, Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Jelly Roll Morton, Harlem Renaissance, Marcus Garvey, Buying on Margin, The Great Train Robbery, The Birth of the Nation, The Jazz Singer.

I. Radicalism and Reaction in the 1920’s

  1. Seeing Red
  2. How did Americans respond to labor agitation after the war?
  3. What events caused the “red scare” in 1919?
  4. What were the effects of the “red scare”?
  5. How did the “red scare” affect labor?

B. Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK

  1. What did the new klan stand for? (or against)
  2. Why did the klan membership increase in the 1920’s?
  3. What brought this to an end?

C. Stemming the Foreign Flood

  1. Where were 2/3 of the immigrants from in 1920?

2. What was the purpose of immigration restriction in the 1920’s? How did it affect Japan?

D. The Prohibition Experiment

  1. Where was prohibition popular? Where not?
  2. How did prohibition affect American society?

E. The Golden Age of Gangsterism

  1. How did prohibition help lead to gangsterism?

F. Monkey Business in Tennessee

  1. What happened in the Scopes Monkey Trial?

II. Economy: Mass Consumption

A. The Mass- Consumption Economy

  1. How did Mellon’s policies affect the economy? How did WWI?
  2. How did buying on credit affect the economy?

B. Putting America on Rubber Tires

  1. How did the cheap auto affect the economy?
  2. How did Ford’s use of the assembly line lead to cheap cars?
  3. By 1929 what was the ration of autos to people in America?

C. The Advent of the Gasoline Age

  1. How did the auto revolutionize American society?

D. Humans Develop Wings

  1. What were the effects of the airplane?

E. The Radio Revolution

How did the radio affect American society?

III. American Culture and Changing Mores

A. Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies

How did Hollywood affect American society?

B.The Dynamic Decade

  1. How had America changed by 1920?
  2. How did women challenge traditional roles in the 1920’s?
  3. How did advertising affect sexual mores in America?
  4. How did Freud affect the modern age?
  5. What was the Harlem Renaissance?

C.Cultural Liberation

  1. Who was H.L. Mencken? What issues did he attack?
  2. What did the Lost Generation writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra Pound have in common?

IV. Wall Street

A. Wall Street’s Big Bull Market

  1. How did playing the stock market become the nation’s gambling obsession?
  2. How did Mellon’s policies affect stock speculation? What were his policies?