Chapter 24
What accounted for the rise in the popularity of sports in the post
war era?-Sports was extremely popular in postwar area. People had more money to spend and more free time to fill. Radio was bringing suspenseful play-by-play accounts of sports to millions of homes, thereby encouraging sports viewing. New advertising techniques sold sporting events and the athletes in them. First big athlete was Jim Thorpe.Sac & Fox Indian who won the pentathlon and decathlon at 1912 Olympic Games, was on All American football team 1912 and 1913, became major league baseball player, then initial founder of National Football League
How did fundamentalists want to change schools? How successful were they? Who was their biggest asset?
A resurgence of religious fundamentalism swept through American rural areas in the 1920s. Concentrated among Baptists and Methodists, fundamentalists held a powerfully conservative outlook, rejected Darwin's theory of evolution, and resented modern urban culture and its temptations. William Jennings Bryan, who devoted his later life to moral and religious causes, was perhaps the most prominent fundamentalist figure. He and other fundamentalists rejected Darwin's theory of evolution and believed it should not be taught in the public schools.
What effect did outstanding athletes have on sports?
Achievements of athletes had cumulative effect. New stadiums were built. Record crowds who paid unprecedented sums. Football was preeminent school sport. Tens of thousands of men and women took up tennis, golf, swimming and calisthenics n Social dancing became more athletic.
How did manufactures try to increase consumer demands?
Advertising and salesmanship, concentrated on making goods more attractive and changing models frequently, as well as introduction of installment plan for expensive items.
Why was the FCC developed?
Advertising had mixed effects on broadcasting.1927: Congress limited the number of stations and parceled out wavelengths to prevent interference.1934: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established. Sums paid by businesses for airtime made possible elaborate entertainments. Because advertisers hungered for mass markets, they preferred to sponsor programs of little intellectual content, uncontroversial, and aimed at low
Why were immigrants especially interested in migrating to the U.S. in the 1920s?
After the Great War, many Europeans sought to escape the desperate postwar economic conditions in Europe by immigrating to the United States
Discuss airplane developments at this time.
Airplane manufacture in 1920 laid basis for changes in lifestyles and attitudes. Inventions of internal combustion engine made invention of airplane possible.
Despite female gains, explain how the double standard still existed.
Although divorce laws were liberalized and more women entered the work force, the double standard remained. Women took jobs that were menial, low-paying, or unwanted by men: clerks, receptionists, elementary school teachers, and telephone operators. Another blow was dealt to working women in 1923, when the Supreme Court in Adkins v. Children's Hospital struck down a federal law that limited the hours of working women in the District of Columbia.
Explain the affects of the assembly line.
Assembly line simplified laborer's task, increased pace of work, and made each laborer more productive.
In what ways were ghettos advantageous for blacks?
Black writers, musicians, and artists found in the ghettos both an audience and the spiritual emancipation that unleashed their capacities
What is 'scientific' child rearing?
Childcare experts agreed that routine medical examinations and good nutrition were of central importance. They became divided about how socialization and psychological development of the young should be handled. Two methods emerged: Rigid training: toilet training should begin early, thumb sucking should be suppressed, too much kissing was bad for boys and More permissive training: toilet training could wait, parents should pay attention to children's expressed needs, should not impose a generalized set of rules.
Describe the "Jazz Age". Why do you think this developed after WWI?
Children "created" the Jazz Age "to create a way of life that was free from the bondage of an authority that has lost all meaning."
How did conservatives view this time?
Conservatives decried the loss of moral standards, the fragmentation of family and the decline of parental authority.
How do we see new freedoms of the Jazz Age in dating?
Dating became more casual. Men no longer asked for parental permission, and dates usually consisted of a man picking a woman up for a night out.
What other female restrictions and limitations were breaking down during this time?
Divorce laws were modified in most statesMore women were taking jobs, attracted by expanding opportunities for clerks, typists, salespeople, receptionists, telephone operators and other service occupations.1920:8.4million women worked.1930:10.6 million women worked. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau was founded in 1920
Explain Hemingway and his works? What is an expatriate?
Ernest Hemingway graphically portrayed the rootless desperation of their world in The Sun Also Rises. In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway's sparse style evoked the confusion and horror of war. Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence offered a penetrating portrait of the vanished world of the nineteenth century.
Explain how the movie industry was developing.
First motion pictures were made around 1900. Early films were brief, action-packed, unpretentious, and often viewed with contempt by professional actors and educated people. 1912: 13,000 movie houses in U.S. Originally people were fascinated by simple recording of movement but success led to rapid technical and artistic improvements.
What was Ford's major accomplishment?
Ford was responsible for "getting prices down to buying power" and creating the model T ford.
Who founded the KKK? What were their major goals? Where did the Klan flourish? Who were their scapegoats? What caused its' downfall?
Former preacher William J. Simmons organized a new Ku Klux Klan in 1915 amid the distrust some felt toward foreigners, blacks, Catholics, and Jews. By 1923, two publicity agents had gained control of the Klan and claimed a total of 5 million members. The Klan vowed to return to an older, supposedly finer America and to stamp out nonconformity. It encouraged frustrated people to intimidate minorities and nonconformists from behind the anonymity of their masks. The Klan's membership declined when rival factions squabbled over money collected from dues, and when the Indiana Klansman David C. Stephenson was convicted of assaulting and causing the death of a young woman, the rank and file began to desert the organization in droves.
Explain the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem became a cultural center for blacks-Harlem Renaissance. Sociologists and psychologists were showing causes of black poverty were environmental not hereditary.
What was the Comstock Act of 1873?
Her articles on contraception ran afoul of 1873 Comstock Act, which banned the distribution of information about contraception from the mails1921: founded the American Birth Control League and two years later a research center
How does the Sacco and Vanzetti case reflect prejudice opinions of the time?
In 1920, two men in South Braintree, Massachusetts, killed a paymaster and a guard in a daylight robbery of a shoe factory. Two Italian immigrants and anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of the murders. Their trial was a travesty of justice—the judge, for example, called the defendants "those anarchist bastards." The case became an international cause célèbre, but the pair was eventually electrocuted, to the disillusionment of many intellectuals. Some historians, impressed by ballistic studies of Sacco's gun, now suspect that he may have been guilty.
Explain the emergency quota system in 1921.
In 1921 Congress reflected widespread prejudice against southern and eastern Europeans by establishing a quota system.
What affect did the National Origins Act have? How was this different than America's historical view of immigration?
In 1924, the National Origins Act set the quota at 2 percent of the number of foreign-born residents that were in the United States in 1890, thereby decreasing even more the proportion of southern and eastern Europeans that could be admitted. A 1929 law further reduced immigration to fewer than 150,000 a year.
What was the purpose of the Scopes Trial? What was the verdict? What did it show about fundamentalists?
In 1925, Tennessee passed a law that forbade teachers in state schools and colleges to teach Darwin's theory of evolution. The American Civil Liberties Union financed a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the statute. John T. Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, agreed to break the law, and his arrest led to the sensational Monkey Trial. Clarence Darrow, Scopes' defense attorney, declared that civilization, not Scopes, was on trial. Such reporters as Henry L. Mencken flocked to Dayton to ridicule Bryan, who affirmed the biblical account of creation. Scopes, who was convicted and fined $100, subsequently left Dayton, the trial judge was defeated for reelection, and Bryan collapsed and died a few days after the trial ended.
Why did the automobile have the largest affect on the nation's economy?
It created a newfound demand/demands for rubber, paint, glass, nickel, and petroleum.
What did Jazz music represent?
Jazz was the creation of black musicians working in New Orleans before the turn of the century.
Who was Marcus Garvey? What were his ideas? What successes did he have?
Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, despised whites and proposed that African Americans return to the African homeland of their ancestors. Garvey's Black Star steamship line went into bankruptcy, and he later was imprisoned for defrauding investors in his various enterprises. But Garvey's promotion of a "New Negro" sparked pride among African Americans and made them willing to resist mistreatment.
How might you describe writers of this time?
Most literature of the 1920s reflected the disillusionment of intellectuals, who were made bitter critics of society by the horrors of war, the antics of fundamentalists, and the cruelty of the Klan and red-baiters. These young men and women crushed by the repressive spirit of the age dubbed themselves the "lost generation," yet their negativism produced a literary flowering.
What were the positive effects of prohibition? What were the negative effects of prohibition?
Prohibition significantly reduced the national consumption of alcohol. Arrests for drunkenness and deaths from alcoholism fell off sharply. Had the "drys" been willing to legalize wine and beer, the "noble experiment" might have worked, but secret bars or clubs known as speakeasies, which usually operated with the sanction of the local police, replaced saloons. Smuggling (bootlegging) liquor became a major business.-Prohibition enhanced but did not originate the criminal empires of such gangsters as Chicago's Al Capone. Prohibition also shook the Democratic party by creating a split between southern drys and northern urban wets. Nearly all prominent leaders equivocated shamelessly on the liquor question; politicians denounced the evils of drinking but did not adequately fund the Prohibition Bureau to enforce the law. In fact, they helped undermine public morality by encouraging hypocrisy.
How did the radio industry change after the war? How did it change/improve society?
Radio was even more pervasive in its effects than movies were. Wireless transmission of sound developed late 19th century in Europe and U.S.During WWI radio was put to important military uses and the airwaves were tightly controlled. After the war, the control ended
How were young women changing their appearance and actions in the 1920s?
Respectable women smoked cigarettes, wore lipstick and perfumes, and shortened their hair and their skirts.
How did rural Americans view city life? Who were fundamentalists and what did they believe?
Rift between urban and rural society became exaggerated in 1920s. City culture seen as sinful, overly materialistic, and unhealthy. Farmers and towns people coveted comfort and excitement of city life at same time they condemned its vices. Changes were to be resisted even at cost of individualism and freedom.
What accounted for the rise in anti
Semitism in the U.S.?-Moreover, Jews, whether foreign-born or native, faced increasing discrimination as they encountered anti-Semitism when they sought admission to colleges and medical schools, or employment in banks and law firms.
How were blacks concentrated in northern cities? How were Northern blacks treated?
Southern blacks continued to move north after the Great War, concentrating in urban ghettos amid de facto segregated conditions. Sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd in their classic analysis of "Middletown" concluded that, despite integrated schools, blacks and whites in the North were segregated in churches, theaters, and other public accommodations Explain Du Bois' argument in The Crisis.-The disappointments of the 1920s produced a new militancy among African Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois, who vacillated between support for integration and black separatism, tried but failed to create an international black movement.
Explain how the family structure and family life changed as a result urban environments. Make sure you address intrafamily democracy.
The 1920 census revealed that for the first time a majority of Americans lived in urban rather than rural areas. Still, about a third of these lived in small towns and held the same ideas and values as rural citizens. Nevertheless, urbanization led to changes in family structure, as couples married more out of love and physical attraction than for social or economic advantage, and in successive decades, married later and had fewer children. Fewer than 10 percent of married women worked outside the home, because most male skilled workers earned enough to support a family in modest comfort. Working women tended to be either childless or highly paid professionals who could employ servants.
Explain the economy of the 1920s. What was it prosperous?
The 1920s was a an exceptionally prosperous decade with 40% of worlds total wealth was in American hands.
How was manufacturing changing? What was Frederick Taylor's development?
The 1920s were exceptionally prosperous, as business boomed, real wages rose, and unemployment declined. Perhaps 40 percent of the total wealth of the world lay in American hands. Prosperity rested on the confidence of the business community, low interest rates, pent-up wartime demand, an increase in industrial output, and the efficiency of manufacturing.
Who was most in support of the 18th Amendment? How did WWI aid the prohibitionists?
The Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in 1919, forbade the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. At the outset of U.S. involvement in the Great War, the Lever Act, as a conservation endeavor, had outlawed the use of grain in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages; state and local laws had already made much of the country "dry" by 1917. The lingering distrust of foreigners also played into the hands of prohibitionists because beer drinking was associated with the Germans.
Explain how automobiles changed society.
The automobile made life more mobile and more encapsulated. It created a generation of amateur mechanics. Affected American thoughts of freedom. Cars became signs of power and status.
Explain the national quota system in 1929.
Ultimately, the foreign-born percentage of the United States population fell, and the quota system committed the United States to preserving a homogeneous "Anglo-Saxon" population. Western European nations failed to meet their quotas, while a backlog of southern and eastern Europeans awaited admission.
What were the goals of the National Woman's Party? Who was the leader?
What were some of their main issues?-Most activists, having achieved the vote, lost interest in agitating for change, though it soon became apparent women did not vote as a bloc.When discovered vote did not bring change, radical feminists founded the Women's party, headed by Alice Paul, and began campaign for an equal rights amendment.Considered protective legislation to be discrimination, which caused social feminists to break away
Who was Margaret Sanger and what were her accomplishments?
Young people in the 1920s were more open about sex than their counterparts of earlier generations, but relatively few engaged in premarital sex. Margaret Sanger, a political radical, prewar bohemian, and former nurse, promoted birth control, largely a concern of married women in the 1920s. Her efforts focused on poor women who knew nothing of birth control methods.
The assembly line, perfected by Henry Ford, speeded production and reduced costs to make it possible for average citizens to own many consumer products. Frederick W. Taylor's time
and- motion studies, applied to hundreds of factories after the war, further streamlined the manufacturing process.