Prosperity and Crisis

1. Prosperity and Crisis 1919 - 1939 • The Jazz Age – 1920 - 1930 • The Great Depression – 1929 - 1933 • The New Deal – 1933 -1939 • The interwar years of the United States brought economic prosperity followed by economic disaster to Americans. • From new forms of entertainment and the age of credit to bank panics and the failure of Wall Street, the United States experienced tremendous change economically, socially, and politically. • A new leader would emerge, someone who would transform the American nation.

2. The Jazz Age 1920-1930 • During the “Roaring Twenties”, Americans sought new forms of entertainment, such as radio programs, movies, and jazz music. • Boom Times • Life in the Twenties • A Creative Era

3. 1919-1939 1. Boom Times • “One hundred thousand people flocked into the showrooms of the Ford Company in Detroit; mounted police were called out to patrol the crowds in Cleveland; in Kansas City so great a mob stormed Convention Hall that platforms had to be built to lift the new car high enough for everyone to see it.” • Charles Merz, Only Yesterday, by Frederick Lewis Allen

4. 1919-1939 Prosperity and Productivity • Republican pro business policies and tax cuts encourages investment and led to economic growth • 1920’s-American houses have electricity and a number of electrical appliances-mixers, food grinders, sewing machines, and washing machines. • Frederick W. Taylor and his scientific management was based on every kind of work could be broken down into a series of small tasks.

5. 1919-1939 The Automobile Industry • Henry Ford used scientific management and lowered the costs of automobiles. • Model T – 1908 sturdy, low cost automobile • $250,000 a year by 1915 • Assembly line – to help factories make goods faster; workers stood in one place as partially assembled products moved past on a conveyor belt. • Price - $850.00 in 1909 to $290 in 1924 • One of Americas biggest industries was automobiles

6. Ford’s Philosophy • “It will cost a man his job to have the odor of beer, wine, liquor on his breath or have any of these intoxicants in his home.”

7. 1919-1939

8. 1919-1939

9. 1919-1939 Changes in Work • The assembly line changed the nature of work • Ford and his workers • Shortened the work day and raised the wages to $5.00 • Workers must reach company standards. • Ford regulated morality and personal behavior of his workers. • The impact of a new electrical products and automobiles did have a negative effect on unemployment for some, such as servants and delivery services. “This chain system you have is a slaver driver! My God! Mr. Ford. My husband has come home and thrown himself down and won’t eat his supper-so done out! Can’t it be remedied? . . . That $5 a day is a blessing-a bigger one than you know but oh they earn it.” Wife of Ford worker, Personal Complaints, by David Hounshell

10. 1919-1939 A Land of Automobiles • Auto-tourism • 400,000 miles of new roads and highways decorated with billboards and family restaurants. • Auto tourism – seeking the countryside by means of the automobile – camping and sightseeing • The automobile transformed family life. • “The extensive use of this new tool [the automobile] by the young has enormously extended their mobility and the range of alternatives before them; joining a crowd motoring over to a dance . . . Twenty miles away may be a matter of a moment’s decision, with no one’s permission asked.” • Robert and Helen Lynd, Middletown

11. Critics of the Automobile This led to make out point • Many claimed that cars reduced people’s sense of community. The Automobile created new social opportunities for teenagers. Before the automobile teenagers spent much of their leisure time at home, after the automobile, teenagers could spend their free time differently. • “What on earth do you want me to do? Just sit around home all evening!” This isn’t very romantic. Ouch! A bug just bit me!

12. 1919-1939 Creating Consumers • Alfred P. Sloan, head of General Motors, designed more expensive cars that emphasize industry. • Marketing • Sloan introduced the installment plan, which allowed consumers to pay for cars over time –establishing credit • Credit spread to cover other purchased such as kitchen appliances and sewing machines. • Planned obsolescence meant coming up with new or yearly models of cars or appliances.

15. 1919-1939 Advertising • 1929-3 billion dollars in advertising • most targeted women • As the number of products increased so did the consumer demand, which led to a growing retail industry, such as A & P.

20. 1919-1939 2. Life in the Twenties • “About four or five days after I had gotten the vacuum tube hooked up, I started to hear music coming across the wires. Music! And then, between the music, I could hear somebody talking. . . . ‘I am Dr. Conrad. I am experimenting with radio station 8XK.’ . . . By January of 1921, I had decided to build my own broadcast station. I built a hundred-watter and then applied for an experimental broadcast license. In March, I got a letter saying: ‘One of my first official duties as Secretary of Commerce is to award you this license. Aren’t you the young fellow I met . . . In Marion, Ohio? . . . What’s a fourteen-year-old kid going to do with a broadcast station?” • Albert Sindlinger, The Century, Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster

21. 1919-1939 Prohibition • Prohibition, prohibiting the distribution or sale of alcohol, was a major issue in the 1920’s. • The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale, transportation, and manufacturing of alcohol.

22. 1919-1939 Volstead Act • Congress passed the act in 0ctober, 1919 to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment. • In many areas prohibition was strictly enforced, but many people, especially in cities, did not take a favorable view of prohibition.

23. 1919-1939 Al Capone • AL Capone was the one of the more successful bootleggers. • He controlledChicago’s underworld by wiping out all of his competition.

26. Do your homework, or else . . .

27. 1919-1939 Bootlegging • One of the decade’s most profitable businesses. • The Federal Prohibition Bureau, an agency created to stem bootlegging, corruption, and violence, hired Eliot Ness, special agent who organized top young detectives to go after the gangsters.

28. 1919-1939 The Untouchables • The Untouchables, as Ness and his detectives were nicknamed, were successful in ending Capone’s reign in Chicago. He was eventually arrested on tax evasion. • Prohibition led a widespread breakdown of law and order, and eventually Congress, in 1933, passed the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment.

29. 1919-1939 Youth Culture • Many young Americans ignored prohibition laws. As a result, a new youth culture began to emerge in the 1920s.

30. 1919-1939 The New Woman • Flappers, women who often defied traditional standards of female behavior, were the “new women” and caught the attention of the media. • During the 1920’s, magazines, movies, and literature began to describe the new women as adventurous, stylish, independent, and often career minded.

32. 1919-1939 College Life • Most Americans, in the early 1900’s, received little education pass high school. • The growing number of college students influenced popular culture. • During the 1920’s, college enrollment dramatically increased. • “College style has a definite meaning. . . . Fall ’23 can almost be called the young man’s season with the style of pace set by the collegian.” 1923 California university newspaper

33. 1919-1939 Leisure fads and fun • New leisure activities and a variety of fads spread throughout America in the 1920’s. • The “Dance Derby of the Century;” • Miss America Beauty Pageant • Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly – 145 flagpoles in 1929

36. 1919-1939 Mass Entertainment • Radio • Movies • Professional Sport

37. 1919-1939 Radio • Commercial Radio also grew. First Stations were Detroit’s WWJ and Pittsburgh’s KDKA. • By 1929, 800 stations over 10 million homes. Radio stations also offered advertising as a form of making money. • National Broadcasting Company (NBC) offered networks packages of programs to broadcast.

39. 1919-1939 Movies • Movie Director Cecil B. DeMille introduced a new style of movies based on epic plots and complex characters. • The era of silent movies (Charlie Chaplin) was replaced in 1927, by the first movie with sound, produced by Warner Brothers, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson. • It would not be long, until the public realized that movies and eventually television needed to be government regulated. Movie Director Cecil B. DeMille

40. It looks like I am out of work! Unless I finally start talking!

42. 1919-1939 Sports • Sports, like football, became quite popular. Opening day for the Chicago Bears attracted 35, 000 fans, the largest crowd to date. • Baseball remained the most popular sport despite the Chicago White Sox scandal. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Lou Gehrig dominated the game.

44. 1919-1939 Books and Magazines • New monthly and weekly publications provided Americans with sources of information and entertainment. • Reader’s Digest was founded in 1921, and reprinted articles from other magazines in shorter form.

45. 1919-1939 Celebrities and Heroes • Jim Thorpe • One of the more talented athletes of the 20th century was Jim Thorpe. • He participated in the 1912 Olympics, and became the first competitor to win the pentathlon and the decathlon. • He also played baseball and football. • Charles Lindbergh • One of the biggest celebrities of the 1920’s. • Lindbergh was the first pilot to travel across the Atlantic Ocean, using the Spirit of St. Louis. (New York to Paris) • Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic and disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

49. 1919-1939 Religion in the 1920s • Some Americans found the social change of the 1920’s more troubling than exciting. Religion remained a vital part of American culture.

50. 1919-1939 Revivalism • Many Americans became concerned with the decline of morality because of the evils of popular entertainment. • Revivalism referred to return of moral standards throughout America, usually through religious leaders. • Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the more popular revivalists.