CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
WHEELS FOR THE MILLIONS
The author uses the assembly line at Henry Ford’s auto factory as an example of the tremendous abundance of consumer goods being created for the American people after World War I. The new emphasis on consumption, however, eroded traditional values of thrift and savings, and provoked a cultural war.
THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The first Industrial Revolution took place when steam was harnessed to run heavy machinery. The second took place in the 1920s when electricity replaced steam and the modern assembly line was introduced for the production of consumer goods. At this time, the United States developed the highest standard of living in the world.
A. The Automobile Industry
The automobile industry epitomized the changes taking place in the economy. The car was an expensive item and once purchased was not quickly replaced. Auto makers, therefore, relied on model changes and advertising to stimulate sales. The auto industry itself fostered the growth of other businesses, like service stations, and encouraged the spread of the suburbs farther from the inner cities.
B. Patterns of Economic Growth
Other industries also flourished in the 1920s, including electricity, light metals, and the chemical industry. Professional managers who believed profit-making was compatible with social responsibility replaced individual entrepreneurs, and corporations became the dominant business form. To a large degree, the success of large business brought standardization and uniformity to America at the cost of regional flavor. Every town had the same A & P, the same “five and ten.”
C. Economic Weaknesses
Although there was real prosperity in the United States in the 1920s, there were also disguised economic problems. Traditional industries, such as railroads and coal, were in deep trouble, and farmers suffered from a decline in both exports and prices. Laborers saw their real wages rise, but not nearly as rapidly as the income of the middle-class manager, who benefitted the most from the new Industrial Revolution. The increasing income of the middle class created its own peculiar problem. Because the middle class had so much idle money, much of it went into speculation. It is not surprising that the 1920s ended in a stock-market crash.
CITY LIFE IN THE JAZZ AGE
As Americans poured into the cities, a new urban culture divorced from traditional rural values became dominant.
A. Women and the Family
Although women continued to crusade for equal rights, and even lobbied for an Equal Rights Amendment, some younger women deserted these causes in favor of exercising individual freedom. The “flapper” drank, smoked, and demanded sex with the same gusto traditionally reserved to men. For the most part, however, women played the same role in society in the 1920s as they had in the 1790s; the greatest change in family life was the discovery of adolescence. Teenaged sons and daughters of the smaller, middle-class families no longer had to work and could indulge their craving for excitement.
B. The Roaring Twenties
The decade was notable for its obsessive interest in crime figures, athletes, and heroes of any kind, no matter how frivolous their achievement. Young men and women openly discussed sex, which became an all-consuming topic of interest in movies, tabloids, and popular music.
C. The Flowering of the Arts
Serious artists unanimously attacked American civilization in the 1920s for its materialism and conformity. Many writers went into “exile” to escape the sterility of America. Ironically, these artists produced works that put the United States in the forefront of world literature. Eliot, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others, captured an international audience. African Americans were especially prominent in music and poetry, and Harlem became an exciting, stimulating cultural capital.
THE RURAL COUNTERATTACK
Rural Americans resented urban culture, which they identified with Communism, crime, and sexual immorality. The Progressives attempted to force reform on the American people, which resulted in an upsurge of bigotry and an era of repression.
A. The Fear of Radicalism
Alarmed by the violent acts of a handful of anarchists and Communists, the government resorted, in 1919, to illegal roundups of innocent people and the forcible deportation of aliens. The government’s actions encouraged lynchings and other acts of terror against “radicals” and immigrants. The Red Scare quickly subsided, but bigotry and fear of foreign influence played a part in the arrest, conviction, and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927.
B. Prohibition
Congress adopted the Prohibition Amendment in 1917, and in 1920 the production, sale, or transport of alcoholic beverages became illegal. Prohibition actually did cut down the consumption of alcohol in the general population, but the law was bitterly resented in urban areas and easily evaded by the upper classes. Bootlegging became a big business, and gangsters became socially respectable. By 1933, the Prohibition experiment had failed, and the law was repealed.
C. The Ku Klux Klan
The Klan revived in the 1920s. It was no longer merely an antiblack movement. The Klan attacked Catholics, Jews, immigrants, liberated women, and almost anything that seemed “citified.” The Klan used violence on occasion, but sought to win America by persuasion, and members even went into politics. It offered a sanctuary of traditional values for those frightened or disgusted by the modern world. By the mid-1920s, the Klan counted nearly five million members, but its violence and internal corruption led to its decline and virtual disappearance by the end of the decade.
D. Immigration Restriction
Nativist forces had scored their first success in restricting immigration in 1917, but complete victory came in 1924, when Congress severely restricted all immigration and gave preferential quotas to northern Europeans. Exempt from the quota, the number of Mexican immigrants increased, filling the need for unskilled labor.
E. The Fundamentalist Challenge
The 1920s witnessed a rebirth of fundamentalist Christianity. Intellectuals believed that fundamentalism had been dealt a death blow in the Scopes trial of 1925, but rural Americans continued to believe in a literal reading of the Bible, and they took their religion with them when they migrated to the cities.
POLITICS OF THE 1920s
On the surface, the era seemed to be dominated by the Republican party. Beneath the surface, the urban wing of the Democratic party was emerging as the single most powerful political force in the nation.
A. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover
These three Republicans enjoyed wide popularity because they appealed to traditional American values. The scandals connected with Harding became news only after his death; Coolidge represented America in his austerity and rectitude, while Hoover represented the self-made man.
B. Republican Policies
The Republicans attempted to return the nation to “normalcy.” They raised tariffs and cut corporate and income taxes. Nevertheless, the government ran a surplus in its budget because spending was also cut. Congress voted to help farmers, who suffered from low prices, but President Coolidge refused to go along because he preferred the government to keep hands off the economy. More and more, Republican policies resulted in close cooperation between government and business and expansion of the government bureaucracy.
C. The Divided Democrats
Urban and rural Democrats split dramatically at their 1924 convention. Neither side could nominate a presidential candidate, and only mutual exhaustion led to the choice of a compromise candidate, John Davis, who was easily defeated by the Republican, Calvin Coolidge. The Democratic defeat, however, disguised a major shift in political loyalties. In congressional elections after 1922, Democrats were gaining more seats than Republicans.
D. The Election of 1928
The urban Democrats nominated Al Smith, governor of New York and a Roman Catholic, to run against Herbert Hoover, a midwestern Protestant. Religion was the decisive issue in the campaign, and Hoover won easily, but Smith carried the nation’s twelve largest cities, a portent of the emerging Democratic majority.
CONCLUSION: THE OLD AND THE NEW
Americans were struggling to enter the modern age during the 1920s, but there was a conflict between urban and rural values, between the frivolity of the jazz generation and the sobriety of their elders, between the American-born and recent immigrants. If the new age had delivered on its promise of increasing abundance, the forces of traditional values would have been routed, but the new economy was surprisingly fragile.