CHAPTER 20 From Business Culture to Great Depression: The
Twenties, 1920–1932
This chapter concentrates on the history of the 1920s. The chapter opens with the Sacco-Vanzetti case, which encapsulated divisions
within the larger society. Nativists dwelled on the defendants’ immigrant origins. Conservatives insisted that these alien anarchists
must die, despite the lack of evidence. By contrast, prominent liberals, such as future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and
socialist Eugene Debs, rallied around the convicted men. Despite these divisions, the 1920s was a decade of economic prosperity for
many, as the business of America became business. Illustrating the meaning of freedom as linked to prosperity is Andre Siegfried’s
Atlantic Monthly piece in Voices of Freedom. The chapter looks at the decline of labor, the shift in the women’s movement after the
Nineteenth Amendment, and the predominance of the Republican Party in overseeing business prosperity and economic diplomacy.
The birth of civil liberties is explored next, discussing Hollywood, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Supreme
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Sacco-Vanzetti Case
II. The Business of America
A. A Decade of Prosperity
2. The automobile was the backbone of economic growth.
a. It stimulated the expansion of steel, rubber, and oil production, road construction, and other sectors of the economy.
3. American multinational corporations extended their reach throughout the world.
B. A New Society
1. Consumer goods of all kinds proliferated, marketed by salespeople and advertisers who promoted them as ways of satisfying
C. The Limits of Prosperity
1. The fruits of increased production were very unequally distributed.
D. The Farmers’ Plight
1. Farmers did not share in the prosperity of the decade.
a. California received many displaced farmers.
2. New technology impacted farming.
a. Immigrant labor
E. The Image of Business
2. Numerous firms established public relations departments.
F. The Decline of Labor
2. Propaganda campaigns linked unionism and socialism as examples of the sinister influence of foreigners on American
life.
G. The Equal Rights Amendment
1. The achievement of suffrage in 1920 eliminated the bond of unity between various activists.
H. Women’s Freedom
1. Female liberation resurfaced as a lifestyle, the stuff of advertising and mass entertainment.
a. The flapper
2. Sex became a marketing tool.
III. Business and Government
A. The Retreat from Progressivism
1. Public Opinion and The Phantom Public repudiated the Progressive hope of applying intelligence to social problems in a
mass democracy.
2. In 1929, the sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd published Middletown.
B. The Republican Era
1. Government policies reflected the pro-business ethos of the 1920s.
2. The Supreme Court remained strongly conservative.
C. Corruption in Government
1. The Harding administration quickly became one of the most corrupt in American history.
2. Harding surrounded himself with cronies who used their offices for private gain.
D. The Election of 1924
2. Robert La Follette ran on a Progressive platform.
E. Economic Diplomacy
2. Much foreign policy was conducted through private economic relationships rather than through governmental action.
a. Bankers loaned Germany large sums of money.
3. The government continued to dispatch soldiers when a change in government in the Caribbean threatened American
economic interests.
IV. The Birth of Civil Liberties
A. The “Free Mob”
2. In 1922, the film industry adopted the Hays Code.
3. Even as Europeans turned in increasing numbers to American popular culture and consumer goods, some came to view
B. A Clear and Present Danger
2. In its initial decisions the Supreme Court delivered the concept of civil liberties a series of devastating blows.
1. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis began to speak up for freedom of speech.
3. Anita Whitney was pardoned by the governor of California on the grounds that freedom of speech was the “indispensable
V. The Culture Wars
A. The Fundamentalist Revolt
1. Many evangelical Protestants felt threatened by the decline of traditional values and the increased visibility of Catholicism
and Judaism because of immigration.
2. Convinced that the literal truth of the Bible formed the basis of Christian belief, fundamentalists launched a campaign to
4. Fundamentalists supported Prohibition, while others viewed it as a violation of individual freedom.
5. Prohibition also raised questions about the balance between federal authority and local law and the virtue of legislating
morality; it would split the Democratic Party.
B. The Scopes Trial
2. The Scopes trial reflected the enduring tension between two American definitions of freedom.
4. Fundamentalists retreated for many years from battles over public education, preferring to build their own schools and
colleges.
C. The Second Klan
1. Few features of urban life seemed more alien to small-town, native-born Protestants than immigrant populations and
cultures.
3. By the mid-1920s, the Klan spread to the North and West.
D. Closing the Golden Door
2. Efforts to restrict immigration made gains when large employers dropped their traditional opposition.
4. To satisfy the demands of large farmers in California who relied heavily on seasonal Mexican labor, the 1924 law established no
limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere.
6. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) features the anti-immigrant sentiment delivered by Texas
representative Lucian Parrish to the U.S. Congress in 1921.
E. Race and the Law
1. By the early 1920s, political leaders of both North and South agreed to the relegation of blacks to second-class
citizenship.
3. The 1924 immigration law also reflected the Progressive desire to improve the quality of democratic citizenship and to
employ scientific methods to set public policy.
F. Pluralism and Liberty
1. Cultural pluralism described a society that gloried in ethnic diversity rather than attempting to suppress it.
2. The most potent defense of a pluralist vision of American society came from the new immigrants themselves.
G. Promoting Tolerance
1. Immigrant groups asserted the validity of cultural diversity and identified toleration of difference as the essence of
American freedom.
3. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) features Justice James McReynolds’s majority opinion in favor of
civil liberties in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923).
H. The Emergence of Harlem
1. The 1920s also witnessed an upsurge of self–consciousness among black Americans, especially in the North’s urban
ghettos.
3. The 1920s became famous for slumming.
I. The Harlem Renaissance
1. In art, the term “New Negro” meant the rejection of established stereotypes and a search for black values to put in their
place.
VI. The Great Depression
A. The Election of 1928
2. Hoover’s opponent in 1928 was Alfred E. Smith of New York.
3. Smith’s Catholicism became the focus of the race.
B. The Coming of the Depression
1. On October 21, 1929, Hoover gave a speech that was a tribute to progress, and especially to the businessmen and
scientists.
3. The global financial system was ill-equipped to deal with the crash.
4. In 1932, the economy hit rock bottom.
C. Americans and the Depression
1. The Depression transformed American life.
2. The image of big business, carefully cultivated during the 1920s, collapsed as congressional investigations revealed
massive irregularities among bankers and stockbrokers.
D. Resignation and Protest
2. Milo Reno led the National Farmers’ Holiday Association.
3. Only the minuscule Communist Party seemed able to give a political focus to the anger and despair.
E. Hoover’s Response
F. The Worsening Economic Outlook
1. Some administration remedies made the economic situation worse.
a. Smoot-Hawley Tariff
3. Hoover was still opposed to offering direct relief to the unemployed.
G. Freedom in the Modern World
2. By 1932, the seeds had already been planted for a new conception of freedom.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Discuss and analyze the significance of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
• How did consumer goods, consumer credit, and the rise of advertising shape American lives and ideas of freedom?
• How did the automobile change American life?
• Debate the merits of the ERA. Why did Alice Paul see it as a logical extension of the Nineteenth Amendment?
• Discuss what the Supreme Court and Congress did during the 1920s to reverse some of the achievements of the Progressive era.
How was freedom used to justify these actions?
• How was the fundamentalist revolt a reaction to the modernization of American society in the 1920s?
• As reflected in Voices of Freedom, how was the meaning of freedom transformed during the 1920s?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
ACLU
This Library of Congress American Memory site discusses “Prosperity and Thrift” in the Coolidge era (1921–1929) through consumerism and ad-
vertising.
Emergence of Advertising in America
The Great Depression
The Dust Bowl (PBS, American Experience, Ken Burns, 2 hrs.)
Harlem Renaissance: Visual Art
The Sacco-Vanzetti Case
The Scopes Trial
The National Humanities Center. Teacher Serve: Divining America.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Best, W. D. Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago, 1915–1952. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2005.
Clements, Kendrick. Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism: Engineering the Good Life. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000.
Conkin, Paul. When All the Gods Trembled: Darwinism, Scopes, and American Intellectuals. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
Crunden, Robert. Body and Soul—The Making of American Modernism: Art, Music and Letters in the Jazz Age, 1919–1926. New York: Basic
Books, 2000.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Group Listening Exercise: The Age of Big-Band Swing
Following the popularization of sheet music, the commercial market for popular music in the United States began with the mass production of
phonographic records in the early twentieth century. With the “electric age” of record players and the distribution of radio in the 1920s, music be-
came an essential commercial expression of popular culture. At the center of this commercialization of music was big-band swing, which was part
of the emergence of jazz.
The source for this interactive activity is a recording of Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians’ “Any Ice Today, Lady?” (1926), accompanied by
images of ice-making, delivery, and consumption in the 1920s. The director of one of the best-selling recording bands of the 1920s, Fred Waring
increasingly turned to choral arrangements later in his career, which continued on radio and television into the 1970s.
A. Discussion Activities:
1. What is the mood and tempo of the music? What was it meant for?
2. Transcribe the lyrics or look them up online. What story does the song tell?
B. Research Activities:
1. Ask students to research Waring’s Pennsylvanians online. What were their origins? How did they rise to prominence? How does this com-
pare to the success stories of rock and indie bands in the 2000s?
2. Ask students to locate other songs performed by Waring’s Pennsylvanians. What kinds of topics and themes do they address? Given that War-
ing’s Pennsylvanians were among the best-selling recording bands of the 1920s, what does this music tell us about societal values of the 1920s?
3. Ask students to locate African–American jazz bands of the 1920s. How might their success have differed from that of Fred Waring’s, and
why?
C. Group Activities:
1. Divide students into groups of four or five. Ask them to discuss the appeal of “Any Ice Today, Lady?” to college students. How do they feel
about this style of music? Can they identify themes or characteristics that this song might have with the music they listen to?
2. Group Activity: The Life and Career of Anna May Wong
In the 1920s, the American consumer economy came to maturity. Along with this new society emerged a national popular culture promoted via
radio and the movie industry. Hollywood offered the growing middle-class audience narratives of romance and adventure, as well as the fantasy
lifestyles of celebrities such as Douglas Fairbanks and Clara Bow, the “It” Girl. But it also offered Anna May Wong. The life and career of this
Chinese-American actress serves as a powerful testimony to the complex racial and gender boundaries of the American identity in an age of mass
culture, the “new woman,” and anti-Asian nativism.
A. Discussion Activities:
1. What roles could Anna May Wong play, and which ones could she not play? Why? (Make sure to remind students of the existence of anti–
miscegenation laws in California that prohibited interracial relationships.)
2. What different interpretations of Anna May Wong’s career exist? What positions do students take? Did Wong betray her Chinese-
B. Research Activities:
1. Have students research the biography of Anna May Wong. What hardships did she suffer, and what opportunities did she experience? How
did her Chinese-American identity shape her life and career?
C. Group Activities
Split the class into two or three groups with no more than seven members per group, and ask them to discuss how much has changed for