THE ROARING TWENTIES A New Economy and New

THE ROARING TWENTIES A New Economy and New Society

AN ECONOMY OF MASS CONSUMERISM

THE CONSUMER ECONOMY Farm City = AG Industrial Manufacturing up 60% � Income up 20% � Inflation trivial � Prosperity by all! Middle class: installment plans � “These standard advertised wares- toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot water heaters- were the symbols and proofs of excellence” –Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt � Economy of Scale Large v. Small business � Price � Availability �

WORKERS IN THE AGE OF CAPITALISM Capital = $$ for investment Welfare Capitalism � Benefits for workers � Felt by relatively few State of the Unions � Weakened by shop committees � William Green- AFL � Open shops = The American Plan

"I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces. "

IMPACT OF THE TIN LIZZIE prosperity of 1920 s � Impact on other industries � Cheap, available $850 $290 social change � Positive & negative Assembly Line �= mass production cheap goods � Frederick Winslow Taylor & scientific management

ADVERTISING demand for products Bruce Barton � Ad exec. & author � The Man Nobody Knows Jesus = founder of modern business (strong, worldconquering, work from bottom up) Vs. “Sunday School Jesus” (weak, moral) How? � magazines = mass circulation � Commercial radio

RADIO KDKA � Pittsburgh, PA � 11/2/1920 Commercial Radio � NBC, CBS 1927 � Golden Age of Broadcasting � Rudy Vallee- “The Dream Man” "This is KDKA, of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We shall now broadcast the election returns. " —Leo Rosenburg, on the very first radio broadcast by KDKA, November 2, 1920

AVIATION Wright Brothers, 1903 � Kitty Hawk, NC WWI use New technology commercial flights � Lindberg, 1927 � Federal aid to air transport, navigation 1 st solo flight Earhart 1931 solo flight � 1937 last flight �

THE NEW SOCIETY

ON PRAIRIE TOWNS. . . A “SAVORLESS PEOPLE, GULPING TASTELESS FOOD, AND SITTING AFTERWARD, COATLESS AND THOUGHTLESS, IN ROCKING CHAIRS PRICKLY WITH INANE DECORATIONS, LISTENING TO MECHANICAL MUSIC, SAYING MECHANICAL THINGS ABOUT THE EXCELLENCE FORD AUTOMOBILES, AND VIEWING THEMSELVES AS THE GREATEST RACE IN THE WORLD. ” -SINCLAIR LEWIS, MAIN STREET

Disruptive social behavior Disruptive intellectual currents Defensive temper Repressive movements

THE JAZZ AGE New forms of sexuality, recreation, music Jazz = improvisation Jazz/ragtime new dance shock & awe � Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway

ALL THAT JAZZ! The Black Bottom � http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=j. TR 6 x. Be. C 2 x. A � http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=GMCo. OEKkvs. A The Charleston � http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=psch 9 N 4 Pm. O 4

THE NEW MORALITY This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald � College life @ Princeton � Victorian mothers v. Modern daughters Books, magazines, moves spread knowledge of city life, parties, bathtub gin, promiscuity, speakeasies Freud & psychoanalysis � Well known in “prudish America” More open about sexuality

THE FLAPPER: DEGENERATING SOCIETY Fashion = rebellion vs. prudishness Flapper fashion is new feminism + masculinity New expression of “rugged individualism” � “By sheer force of violence, [the flapper] ]has established the feminine right to equal representation in such hitherto masculine fields of endeavor as smoking and drinking, swearing, petting, and upsetting the community peace. ” - NYT d

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=UU_SAPOdq. Gk

THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT Suffrage revisited � 1912, Alice Paul- NAWSA Pickets, chains, hunger strikes, provoke police http: //historymatters. gmu. edu/d/5336/ � 1915, Carrie Chapman Catt- NWSA Worked w/ Wilson June 4, 1919 = 19 th Amendment August 20, 1920 = ratification

No sudden release from social customs, legal discrimination Push for Equal Rights Amendment � Paul- no legal distinction b/t sexes 20 s-30 s = increase in women working � Traditional occupations

“EVERY CHILD A WANTED CHILD. ” Margaret Sanger & The Woman Rebel NY nurse, militant socialist, cultural radical � Comstock Law � 1914 - birth control info. out to working class women Why? � Effects � Reproductive freedom, control of body Family planning clinics, American Birth Control League Promotion by conservatives for social control Eugenics, “racial health” Buck v. Bell (‘ 27) = sterilization of. . .

HARLEM RENAISSANCE Great Migration black political influence Spirit of protest literary, artistic cultural expression � Claude Mc. Kay- to rediscover black folk culture Harlem Shadows = defiance � Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson � “New Negro” Negro Nat’lism � Racial pride + self-reliance

A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH Eatonville � Post-CW: leave, assimilate, separate Struggles of black life through writing, poetry, folk lore Sense of place, challenge to tradition, role of race "I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions. " - Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen

GARVEYISM Marcus Garvey � Jamaican � Black expression + black exclusiveness Liberation from white culture � “We have outgrown slavery, but our minds are still enslaved to the thinking of the Master Race. ” � Threat of whites

Negro Nat’lism spreads � “Social & political seperation of all peoples to the extent that they promote their own ideals and civilization” � Black version of Xnty, own businesses, own newspaper � Attempt to build own republic in Africa Universal Negro Improvement Assoc. (UNIA) “He gave my people backbone where they had wishbone” MAIL FRAUD- 1925 -1927

NAACP 1910 - led by N. white liberals + black leaders � W. E. B. Du. Bois (Niagra Movement) 14 th & 15 th Amendments Guinn v. U. S. (1915) � Overthrow OK grandfather clause 1919 - campaigns vs. lynching � Mob murder = federal offense � Struck down

A SOUTHERN RENAISSANCE Reflect world in rebirth � Mirrored modernist lit in Europe, US � Tradition v. modern Klan + fundamentalism Thomas Wolfe: Look Homeward, Angel � Turned against tradition � Desire for knowledge, experience, outside world William Faulkner � Aimless drifting hometown writing � Sense of place + questioning of myths, traditions How does the past shape the present and future? What role does skin color, our ancestors, or economic situation determine our lives? Zora Neale Hurston