Give Me Liberty 3rd Edition

C HAPTER 201919Schenck v. United States1920American Civil Liberties Unionestablished1921Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti1922Washington Naval ArmsConferenceHollywood adopts the HayscodeCable ActHerbert Hoover’s AmericanIndividualism1923Meyer v. Nebraska1924Immigration ActCongress grants all Indiansborn in the United StatesAmerican citizenship1925Scopes trialBruce Barton’s The ManNobody Knows1927Charles Lindbergh fliesnonstop over the Atlantic1927– President Coolidge vetoes1928 McNary-Haugen farm bill1928Claude McKay’s Home toHarlem1929Robert and Helen Lynd’sMiddletownStock market crashesSheppard-Towner Act of 1921repealed1930Hawley-Smoot Tariff1932Bonus march on WashingtonReconstruction FinanceCorporation organized

From Business Cultureto Great Depression:The Twenties, 1920–1932THE BUSINESS OF AMERICATHE CULTURE WARSA Decade of ProsperityA New SocietyThe Limits of ProsperityThe Farmers’ PlightThe Image of BusinessThe Decline of LaborThe Equal Rights AmendmentWomen’s FreedomThe Fundamentalist RevoltThe Scopes TrialThe Second KlanClosing the Golden DoorRace and the LawPluralism and LibertyPromoting ToleranceThe Emergence of HarlemThe Harlem RenaissanceBUSINESS AND GOVERNMENTThe Retreat from ProgressivismThe Republican EraCorruption in GovernmentThe Election of 1924Economic DiplomacyTHE BIRTH OF CIVILLIBERTIESThe “Free Mob”A “Clear and Present Danger”The Court and Civil LibertiesTHE GREAT DEPRESSIONThe Election of 1928The Coming of the DepressionAmericans and the DepressionResignation and ProtestHoover’s ResponseThe Worsening EconomicOutlookFreedom in the Modern WorldBlues, a 1929 painting by Archibald Motley Jr., depicts one side of the 1920s: dance halls,jazz bands, and drinking despite the advent of Prohibition.

F OCUS Q UESTIONS Who benefited and whosuffered in the new consumer society of the 1920s? In what ways did thegovernment promote business interests in the 1920s? Why did the protection ofcivil liberties gain importance in the 1920s? What were the majorflash points between fundamentalism and pluralism in the 1920s? What were the causesof the Great Depression,and how effective werethe government’sresponses by 1932? lIn May 1920, at the height of the postwar Red Scare, police arrested twoItalian immigrants accused of participating in a robbery at a SouthBraintree, Massachusetts, factory in which a security guard was killed.Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an itinerantunskilled laborer, were anarchists who dreamed of a society in whichgovernment, churches, and private property had been abolished. Theysaw violence as an appropriate weapon of class warfare. But very littleevidence linked them to this particular crime. One man claimed to haveseen Vanzetti at the wheel of the getaway car, but all the other eyewitnessesdescribed the driver quite differently. Disputed tests on one of the sixbullets in the dead man’s body suggested that it might have been fired froma gun owned by Sacco. Neither fingerprints nor possession of stolen moneylinked either to the crime. In the atmosphere of anti-radical and antiimmigrant fervor, however, their conviction was a certainty. “I havesuffered,” Vanzetti wrote from prison, “for things that I am guilty of. I amsuffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have sufferedbecause I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian.”Although their 1921 trial had aroused little public interest outside theItalian-American community, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti attractedinternational attention during the lengthy appeals that followed. Therewere mass protests in Europe against their impending execution. In theUnited States, the movement to save their lives attracted the support of animpressive array of intellectuals, including the novelist John Dos Passos,the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Felix Frankfurter, a professor atHarvard Law School and a future justice of the Supreme Court. Inresponse to the mounting clamor, the governor of Massachusettsappointed a three-member commission to review the case, headed byAbbott Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard University (and formany years an official of the Immigration Restriction League). Thecommission upheld the verdict and death sentences, and on August 23,1927, Sacco and Vanzetti died in the electric chair. “It is not everyprisoner,” remarked the journalist Heywood Broun, “who has a presidentof Harvard throw the switch for him.”The Sacco-Vanzetti case laid bare some of the fault lines beneath thesurface of American society during the 1920s. The case, the writerEdmund Wilson commented, “revealed the whole anatomy of Americanlife, with all its classes, professions and points of view and . . . it raisedalmost every fundamental question of our political and social system.” Itdemonstrated how long the Red Scare extended into the 1920s and howpowerfully it undermined basic American freedoms. It reflected the fiercecultural battles that raged in many communities during the decade. Tomany native-born Americans, the two men symbolized an alien threat totheir way of life. To Italian-Americans, including respectable middle-classorganizations like the Sons of Italy that raised money for the defense, the

Who benefited and who suffered in the new consumer society of the 1920s?819A 1927 photograph shows Nicola Saccoand Bartolomeo Vanzetti outside thecourthouse in Dedham, Massachusetts,surrounded by security agents andonlookers. They are about to enter thecourthouse, where the judge willpronounce their death sentence.outcome symbolized the nativist prejudices and stereotypes that hauntedimmigrant communities. To Dos Passos, the executions underscored thesuccess of the anti-radical crusade: “They are stronger. They are rich. Theyhire and fire the politicians, the old judges, . . . the college presidents.” DosPassos’s lament was a bitter comment on the triumph of pro-businessconservatism during the 1920s.In popular memory, the decade that followed World War I is recalled asthe Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties. With its flappers (young, sexuallyliberated women), speakeasies (nightclubs that sold liquor in violation ofProhibition), and a soaring stock market fueled by easy credit and a getrich-quick outlook, it was a time of revolt against moral rules inheritedfrom the nineteenth century. Observers from Europe, where classdivisions were starkly visible in work, politics, and social relations,marveled at the uniformity of American life. Factories poured outstandardized consumer goods, their sale promoted by national advertisingcampaigns. Conservatism dominated a political system from whichradical alternatives seemed to have been purged. Radio and the moviesspread mass culture throughout the nation. Americans seemed to dressalike, think alike, go to the same movies, and admire the same largerthan-life national celebrities.Many Americans, however, did not welcome the new secular, commercial culture. They resented and feared the ethnic and racial diversity ofAmerica’s cities and what they considered the lax moral standards ofurban life. The 1920s was a decade of profound social tensions—betweenrural and urban Americans, traditional and “modern” Christianity, participants in the burgeoning consumer culture and those who did not fullyshare in the new prosperity.

820Ch. 20 From Business Culture to Great DepressionTHE BUSINESS OF AMERICATHE BUSINESS OF AMERICAAAdvertisements, like this one for arefrigerator, promised that consumer goodswould enable Americans to fulfill theirhearts’ desires.The spread of the telephone networkhastened the nation’s integration andopened further job opportunities forwomen. Lewis Hine photographed thistelephone operator in the 1920s.DECADEOFPROSPERITY“The chief business of the American people,” said Calvin Coolidge, whobecame president after Warren G. Harding’s sudden death from a heartattack in 1923, “is business.” Rarely in American history had economicgrowth seemed more dramatic, cooperation between business and government so close, and business values so widely shared. After a sharp postwarrecession that lasted into 1922, the 1920s was a decade of prosperity.Productivity and economic output rose dramatically as new industries—chemicals, aviation, electronics—flourished and older ones like food processing and the manufacture of household appliances adopted HenryFord’s moving assembly line.The automobile was the backbone of economic growth. The most celebrated American factories now turned out cars, not textiles and steel as inthe nineteenth century. Annual automobile production tripled during the1920s, from 1.5 to 4.8 million. General Motors, which learned the secret ofmarketing numerous individual models and stylish designs, surpassedFord with its cheap, standardized Model T (replaced in 1927 by the ModelA). By 1929, half of all American families owned a car (a figure not reachedin England until 1980). The automobile industry stimulated the expansion of steel, rubber, and oil production, road construction, and other sectors of the economy. It promoted tourism and the growth of suburbs(already, some commuters were driving to work) and helped to reduce ruralisolation.During the 1920s, American multinational corporations extended theirsway throughout the world. With Europe still recovering from the GreatWar, American investment overseas far exceeded that of other countries.The dollar replaced the British pound as the most important currency ofinternational trade. American companies produced 85 percent of theworld’s cars and 40 percent of its manufactured goods. General Electric andInternational Telephone and Telegraph bought up companies in othercountries. International Business Machines (IBM) was the world’s leader inoffice supplies. American oil companies built new refineries overseas.American companies took control of raw materials abroad, from rubber inLiberia to oil in Venezuela.One of the more unusual examples of the global spread of American corporations was Fordlandia, an effort by the auto manufacturer Henry Ford tocreate a town in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. Ford hoped tosecure a steady supply of rubber for car tires. But as in the United States,where he had compelled immigrant workers to adopt American dress anddiet, he wanted to bring local inhabitants up to what he considered theproper standard of life (this meant, for example, forbidding his workersfrom using alcohol and tobacco and trying to get them to eat brown riceand whole wheat bread instead of traditional Brazilian foods). Eventually,the climate and local insects destroyed the rubber trees that Ford’s engineers, lacking experience in tropical agriculture, had planted much tooclose together, while the workers rebelled against the long hours of laborand regimentation of the community.