Why did many conservatives disagree with new deal economic policies?

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FDR was a President, not a king. His goals were ambitious and extensive, and while he had many supporters, his enemies were legion. Liberals and radicals attacked from the left for not providing enough relief and for maintaining the fundamental aspects of capitalism. Conservatives claimed his policies were socialism in disguise, and that an interfering activist government was destroying a proud history of self-reliance.

Despite big numbers at the ballot booth, Roosevelt needed to temper his objectives with the spirit of compromise and hope that his plans were popular enough to weather criticism. Friends and enemies alike had to admit that FDR was a political genius.

One major threat to FDR came from Father Charles E. Coughlin, a radio priest from Detroit. Originally a supporter of the New Deal, Coughlin turned against Roosevelt when he refused to nationalize the banking system and provide for the free coinage of silver. As the decade progressed, Coughlin turned openly anti-Semitic, blaming the Great Depression on an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers. Coughlin formed the National Union for Social Justice and reached a weekly audience of 40 million radio listeners.

Another reformer who felt the New Deal had not gone far enough was Francis Townsend, a doctor from Long Beach, California. Townsend proposed the Old Age Revolving Pension. This plan called for every American over the age of sixty to retire to open up jobs for the younger unemployed. The retirees would receive a monthly check for $200, a considerable income during the Depression. There was one catch. The recipients had to agree to spend the entire sum within a month. Townsend argued that this plan would ignite the economy, as well as provide for a proper pension for those who had worked so hard for so long.

The person considered the greatest threat to Roosevelt politically was Huey "the Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Long was a rollicking country lawyer who became governor of Louisiana in 1928. As governor, Long used strong-arm tactics to intimidate the legislature into providing roads and bridges to the poorest parts of the state. He emerged onto the national scene with his election to the United States Senate in 1930. In 1934, he started a movement called "Share Our Wealth." With the motto "Every Man a King," Long proposed a 100% tax on personal fortunes exceeding a million dollars. The elderly would receive pensions. The poorest Americans were promised an estate worth no less than $5000, with a $2500 yearly minimum income guaranteed. Democrats worried that a Long bid for the Presidency might steal votes from FDR in 1936, but an assassin's bullet ended the Kingfish's life in 1935.

Despite his reelection landslide, Roosevelt's mainstream opponents gained steam in the latter part of the decade. Frustrated by a conservative Supreme Court overturning New Deal initiatives, FDR hatched a "court packing" scheme. He proposed that when a federal judge reached the age of seventy and failed to retire, the President could add an additional justice to the bench. This thinly veiled scheme would immediately enable him to appoint six justices to the high court.

Conservative Democrats and Republicans charged FDR with abuse of power and failed to support the plan. During the 1938 Congressional elections, Roosevelt campaigned vigorously against anti-New deal Democrats. In nearly every case, the conservatives won. This coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans dominated the Congress until the 1960s and effectively ended the reform spirit of the New Deal.

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The New Deal was clearly the most ambitious legislative program ever attempted by Congress and an American President.

Progressive politicians saw their wildest dreams come alive. The Great Depression created an environment where the federal government accepted responsibility for curing a wide array of society's ills previously left to individuals, states, and local governments. This amount of regulation and involvement requires a vast upgrading of the government bureaucracy. An armada of government bureaus and regulatory agencies was erected to service the programs of the New Deal. Collectively, observers called them the "alphabet agencies."

While the CCC, CWA, and WPA were established to provide relief for the unemployed, the New Deal also provided a program intended to boost both industries and working Americans. The National Industrial Recovery Act contained legislation designed to spark business growth and to improve labor conditions. The National Recovery Administration attempted to create a managed economy by relieving businesses of antitrust laws to eliminate "wasteful competition." The NRA, like the AAA for farmers, attempted to create artificial scarcity with commodities. The hope was that higher prices would yield higher profits and higher wages leading to an economic recovery.

To avoid charges of socialism, the NRA allowed each industry to draw up a code setting production quotas, limiting hours of operation, or restricting construction of new factories. Once the President approved each code, pressure was put on each business to comply. A propaganda campaign reminiscent of World War I ensued. Firms that participated in the NRA displayed blue eagles reminding consumers of a company's apparent patriotism.

To enlist the support of labor unions, the NRA outlawed child labor, set maximum hours, and required a minimum wage. The greatest victory for labor unions was the guarantee of the right to collective bargaining, which led to a dramatic upsurge in union membership. Unfortunately, the NRA did little to improve the economy. The increase in prices actually caused a slight slowdown in the recovery. Workers complained that participating industries found loopholes to violate minimum wage and child labor obligations. When the Supreme Court finally declared the NRA unconstitutional in 1936, many had taken to calling it the "National Run Around."

The government blazed other new trails by creating the Tennessee Valley Authority in May 1933. The geography of the Tennessee River Valley had long been a problem for its residents. Centuries of resource exploitation contributed to soil erosion and massive, unpredictable floods that left parts of seven states impoverished and underutilized.

Funds were authorized to construct 20 new dams and to teach residents better soil management. The hydroelectric power generated by the TVA was sold to the public at low prices, prompting complaints from private power companies that the government was presenting unfair competition. Soon flood control ceased to be a problem and FDR considered other regional projects.

There seemed to be no end to the alphabet soup. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created to serve as a watchdog on the stock market. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) provided low interest loans for new home construction. The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) allowed homeowners to refinance mortgages to prevent foreclosure or to make home improvements. The United States Housing Authority (USHA) initiated the idea of government-owned low-income housing projects. The Public Works Administration (PWA) created thousands of jobs by authorizing the building of roads, bridges, and dams. The National Youth Administration (NYA) provided college students with work-study jobs. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was designed to protect the right of collective bargaining and to serve as a liaison between deadlock industrial and labor organizations.

Critics bemoaned the huge costs and rising national debt and spoon-feeding Americans. Regardless, many of the programs found in FDR's "alphabet soup" exist to this day.

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Pensions for the retired or the notion of Social Security was not always the domain of the federal government. Individuals were expected to save a little of each paycheck for the day they would at last retire. Those who were aggressive enough to negotiate a pension plan with an employer were few indeed. The majority of working Americans, however, lived check to check, with little or nothing extra to be saved for the future. Many became a drag on the rest of the family upon retirement. The Social Security Act of 1935 aimed to improve this predicament.

Many nations in Europe had already experimented with pension plans. Britain and Germany had found exceptional success. The American plan was a bit different in its design. Social Security was described as a "contract between generations." The current generation of workers would pay into a fund while the retirees would take in a monthly stipend. Upon reaching the age of 65, individuals would start receiving payments based upon the amount contributed over the years.

Employees would have one percent of their incomes automatically deducted from their paychecks, a rate that was originally envisioned to reach 3%. Employers would also contribute for their employees. The plan was mandatory except for individuals in exempted professions. Roosevelt knew that this reform would be permanent. He guessed that once workers had paid into a system for decades, they would expect to receive their checks. Woe to the politician who tried to end the system once it was in place.

A committee of staffers led by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first female ever to hold a Cabinet position, penned the Social Security Act. In addition to providing old- age pensions, the legislation created a safety net for other Americans in distress. Unemployment insurance was part of the plan, to be funded by employers. The federal government also offered to match state funds for the blind and for job training for the physically disabled. Unmarried women with dependent children also received funds under the Social Security Act.

Roosevelt and his advisers knew that the Social Security Act was not perfect. Like other experiments, he hoped the law would set the groundwork for a system that could be refined over time. Social Security differed from European plans in that it made no effort to provide universal health insurance. The pensions that retirees received were extremely modest — below poverty level standards in most cases. Still, Roosevelt knew the plan was revolutionary. For the first time, the federal government accepted permanent responsibility for assisting people in need. It paved the way for future legislation that would redefine the relationship between the American people and their government.

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Farmers faced tough times. While most Americans enjoyed relative prosperity for most of the 1920s, the Great Depression for the American farmer really began after World War I. Much of the Roaring '20s was a continual cycle of debt for the American farmer, stemming from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery. When the stock market crashed in 1929 sending prices in an even more downward cycle, many American farmers wondered if their hardscrabble lives would ever improve.

The first major New Deal initiative aimed to help farmers attempted to raise farm prices to a level equitable to the years 1909-14. Toward this end, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration was created. One method of driving up prices of a commodity is to create artificial scarcity. Simply put, if farmers produced less, the prices of their crops and livestock would increase.

The AAA identified seven basic farm products: wheat, cotton, corn, tobacco, rice, hogs, and milk. Farmers who produced these goods would be paid by the AAA to reduce the amount of acres in cultivation or the amount of livestock raised. In other words, farmers were paid to farm less!

The press and the public immediately cried foul. To meet the demands set by the AAA, farmers plowed under millions of acres of already planted crops. Six million young pigs were slaughtered to meet the subsidy guidelines. In a time when many were out of work and tens of thousands starved, this wasteful carnage was considered blasphemous and downright wrong.

But farm income did increase under the AAA. Cotton, wheat, and corn prices doubled in three years. Despite having misgivings about receiving government subsidies, farmers overwhelmingly approved of the program. Unfortunately, the bounty did not trickle down to the lowest economic levels. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers did not receive government aid; the subsidy went to the landlord. The owners often bought better machinery with the money, which further reduced the need for farm labor. In fact, the Great Depression and the AAA brought a virtual end to the practice of sharecropping in America.

The Supreme Court put an end to the AAA in 1936 by declaring it unconstitutional. At this time the Roosevelt administration decided to repackage the agricultural subsidies as incentives to save the environment. After years and years of plowing and planting, much of the soil of the Great Plains and become depleted and weak. Great winds blew clouds of dust that fell like brown snow to cover homes across the region as residents of the "Dust Bowl" moved west in search of better times.

The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act paid farmers to plant clover and alfalfa instead of wheat and corn. These crops return nutrients to the soil. At the same time, the government achieved its goal of reducing crop acreage of the key commodities.

Another major problem faced by American farmers was mortgage foreclosure. Unable to make the monthly payments, many farmers were losing their property to their banks. Across the Corn Belt of the Midwest, the situation grew desperate. Farmers pooled resources to bail out needy friends. Minnesota and North Dakota passed laws restricting farm foreclosures. Vigilante groups formed to intimidate bill collectors. In Le Mars, Iowa, an angry mob beat a foreclosing judge to the brink of death in April 1933.

FDR intended to stop the madness. The Farm Credit Act, passed in March 1933 refinanced many mortgages in danger of going unpaid. The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act allowed any farmer to buy back a lost farm at a law price over six years at only one percent interest. Despite being declared unconstitutional, most of the provisions of Frazier-Lemke were retained in subsequent legislation.

In 1933 only about one out of every ten American farms was powered by electricity. The Rural Electrification Authority addressed this pressing problem. The government embarked on a mission of getting electricity to the nation's farms. Faced with government competition, private utility companies sprang into action and by sending power lines to rural areas with a speed previously unknown. By 1950, nine out of every ten farms enjoyed the benefits of electric power.

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Out of work Americans needed jobs. To the unemployed, many of whom had no money left in the banks, a decent job that put food on the dinner table was a matter of survival.

Unlike Herbert Hoover, who refused to offer direct assistance to individuals, Franklin Roosevelt knew that the nation's unemployed could last only so long. Like his banking legislation, aid would be immediate. Roosevelt adopted a strategy known as "priming the pump." To start a dry pump, a farmer often has to pour a little into the pump to generate a heavy flow. Likewise, Roosevelt believed the national government could jump start a dry economy by pouring in a little federal money.

The first major help to large numbers of jobless Americans was the Federal Emergency Relief Act. This law gave $3 billion to state and local governments for direct relief payments. Under the direction of Harry Hopkins, FERA assisted millions of Americans in need. While Hopkins and Roosevelt believed this was necessary, they were reticent to continue this type of aid. Direct payments might be "narcotic," stifling the initiative of Americans seeking paying jobs. Although FERA lasted two years, efforts were soon shifted to "work-relief" programs. These agencies would pay individuals to perform jobs, rather than provide handouts.

The first such initiative began in March 1933. Called the Civilian Conservation Corps, this program was aimed at over two million unemployed unmarried men between the ages of 17 and 25. CCC participants left their homes and lived in camps in the countryside. Subject to military-style discipline, the men built reservoirs and bridges, and cut fire lanes through forests. They planted trees, dug ponds, and cleared lands for camping. They earned $30 dollars per month, most of which was sent directly to their families. The CCC was extremely popular. Listless youths were removed from the streets and given paying jobs and provided with room and shelter.

Earning $15 per week, CWA workers tutored the illiterate, built parks, repaired schools, and constructed athletic fields and swimming pools. Some were even paid to rake leaves. Hopkins put about three thousand writers and artists on the payroll as well. There were plenty of jobs to be done, and while many scoffed at the make-work nature of the tasks assigned, it provided vital relief during trying times.

The largest relief program of all was the Works Progress Administration. When the CWA expired, Roosevelt appointed Hopkins to head the WPA, which employed nearly 9 million Americans before its expiration. Americans of all skill levels were given jobs to match their talents. Most of the resources were spent on public works programs such as roads and bridges, but WPA projects spread to artistic projects too.

The Federal Theater Project hired actors to perform plays across the land. Artists such as Ben Shahn beautified cities by painting larger-than-life murals. Even such noteworthy authors as John Steinbeck and Richard Wright were hired to write regional histories. WPA workers took traveling libraries to rural areas. Some were assigned the task of transcribing documents from colonial history; others were assigned to assist the blind.

Critics called the WPA "We Piddle Around" or "We Poke Along," labeling it the worst waste of taxpayer money in American history. But most every county in America received some service by the newly employed, and although the average monthly salary was barely above subsistence level, millions of Americans earned desperately needed cash, skills, and self-respect.

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In days past, depositing money in a savings account carried a degree of risk. If a bank made bad investments and was forced to close, individuals who did not withdraw their money fast enough found themselves out of luck. Sometimes a simple rumor could force a bank to close. When depositors feared a bank was unsound and began removing their funds, the news would often spread to other customers. This often caused a panic, leading people to leave their homes and workplaces to get their money before it was too late.

These runs on banks were widespread during the early days of the Great Depression. In 1929 alone, 659 banks closed their doors. By 1932, an additional 5102 banks went out of business. Families lost their life savings overnight. Thirty-eight states had adopted restrictions on withdrawals in an effort to forestall the panic. Bank failures increased in 1933, and Franklin Roosevelt deemed remedying these failing financial institutions his first priority after being inaugurated.

Roosevelt, unlike Hoover, was quick to act. Two days after taking the oath of office, Roosevelt declared a "bank holiday." From March 6 to March 10, banking transactions were suspended across the nation except for making change. During this period, Roosevelt presented the new Congress with the Emergency Banking Act. The law empowered the President through the Treasury Department to reopen banks that were solvent and assist those that were not. The House allowed only forty minutes of debate before passing the law unanimously, and the Senate soon followed with overwhelming support.

Banks were divided into four categories. Surprisingly, slightly over half the nation's banks were deemed first category and fit to reopen. The second category of banks was permitted to allow a percentage of its deposits to be withdrawn. The third category consisted of banks that were on the brink of collapse. When the holiday was ended, these banks were only permitted to accept deposits. Five percent of banks were in the final category — unfit to continue business.

On the Sunday evening before the banks reopened, Roosevelt addressed the nation through one of his signature "fireside chats." With honest words in soothing tones, the President assured sixty million radio listeners that the crisis was over and the nation's banks were secure. On the first day back in business, deposits exceeded withdrawals. By the beginning of April, Americans confidently returned a billion dollars to the banking system. The bank crisis was over.

But the legislation was not. On June 16, 1933, Roosevelt signed the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act. This law created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Under this new system, depositors in member banks were given the security of knowing that if their bank were to collapse, the federal government would refund their losses. Deposits up to $2500, a figure that would rise through the years, were henceforth 100% safe. The act also restricted banks from recklessly speculating depositors' money in the stock market. In 1934, only 61 banks failed .

Letters poured in to the White House from grateful Americans. Workers and farmers were thrilled that their savings were indeed now safe. Bankers breathed a sigh of relief knowing that Roosevelt did not intend to nationalize the banking system as many European countries had already done. Although radical in speed and scope, Roosevelt's banking plan strengthened the current system, without fundamentally altering it. One of his advisors quipped, "Capitalism was saved in eight days."

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When America hit rock bottom, Americans expected bold leadership.

Herbert Hoover was perceived as doing nothing to help when the nation was in its darkest hour. When the votes were tallied in 1932, Americans made a strong statement for change, and sent Franklin D. Roosevelt to the White House. Ironically, Roosevelt made few concrete proposals during the campaign, merely promising "a new deal for the American people." The plan that ultimately emerged during his Presidency was among the most ambitious in the history of the United States.

Franklin Roosevelt was born in 1882 to a wealthy New York industrialist. The fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, FDR became involved in politics at a young age. A strong supporter of Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, Roosevelt became the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Vice-President in 1920. The following year he contracted polio, and learned that he could never walk without crutches again.

Roosevelt campaigned hard for fellow New Yorker Al Smith's 1924 and 1928 Presidential bids and then received Smith's support to run for governor of New York. In his two terms as governor of New York, Roosevelt earned a reputation as a progressive reformer. He then threw his hat into the ring of Presidential politics.

Roosevelt had no grand strategy to fix the Depression. He was a bold experimenter. FDR liked to examine an idea and evaluate it on its philosophical merits. The details could be negotiated later. If it worked, fine. If not, he was more than willing to start over with a new plan. He surrounded himself with competent advisors, and delegated authority with discretion and confidence. As a master of the radio, his confidence was contagious among the American populace.

Before his first term expired, Roosevelt signed legislation aimed at fixing banks and the stock market. He approved plans to aid the unemployed and the nations farmers. He began housing initiatives and ventures into public-owned electric power. New Deal programs aided industrialists and laborers alike. His friends and enemies grew with every act he signed into law.

The New Deal sparked a revolution in American public thought regarding the relationship between the people and the federal government.

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No nation could emerge from the cauldron of national crisis without profound social and cultural changes. While many undesirable vices associated with hopelessness were on the rise, many family units were also strengthened through the crisis. Mass migrations reshaped the American mosaic. While many businesses perished during the Great Depression, others actually emerged stronger. And new forms of expression flourished in the culture of despair.

The Great Depression brought a rapid rise in the crime rate as many unemployed workers resorted to petty theft to put food on the table. Suicide rates rose, as did reported cases of malnutrition. Prostitution was on the rise as desperate women sought ways to pay the bills. Health care in general was not a priority for many Americans, as visiting the doctor was reserved for only the direst of circumstances. Alcoholism increased with Americans seeking outlets for escape, compounded by the repeal of prohibition in 1933. Cigar smoking became too expensive, so many Americans switched to cheaper cigarettes.

Higher education remained out of reach for most Americans as the nation's universities saw their student bodies shrink during the first half of the decade. High school attendance increased among males, however. Because the prospects of a young male getting a job were so incredibly dim, many decided to stay in school longer. However, public spending on education declined sharply, causing many schools to open understaffed or close due to lack of funds.

Demographic trends also changed sharply. Marriages were delayed as many males waited until they could provide for a family before proposing to a prospective spouse. Divorce rates dropped steadily in the 1930s. Rates of abandonment increased as many husbands chose the "poor man's divorce" option — they just ran away from their marriages. Birth rates fell sharply, especially during the lowest points of the Depression. More and more Americans learned about birth control to avoid the added expenses of unexpected children.

Mass migrations continued throughout the 1930s. Rural New England and upstate New York lost many citizens seeking opportunity elsewhere. The Great Plains lost population to states such as California and Arizona. The Dust Bowl sent thousands of "Okies" and "Arkies" looking to make a better life. Many of the migrants were adolescents seeking opportunity away from a family that had younger mouths to feed. Over 600,000 people were caught hitching rides on trains during the Great Depression. Many times offenders went unpunished.

Classic films like Frankenstein, It Happened One Night, and Gone with the Wind debuted during the Great Depression. Radio flourished as those who owned a radio set before the crash could listen for free. President Roosevelt made wide use of radio technology with his periodic "fireside chats" to keep the public informed. Dorothea Lange depicted the sadness of Depression farm life with her stirring photographs.

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President Herbert Hoover had the distinction of stepping into the White House at the height of one of the longest periods of growth in American history. Less than seven months after his inauguration, the worst depression in American history began.

Undoubtedly, the fault of the Great Depression was not Hoover's. But as the years of his Presidency passed and the country slipped deeper and deeper into its quagmire, he would receive great blame. Urban shantytowns were dubbed Hoovervilles. Newspapers used by the destitute as bundling for warmth became known as Hoover blankets. Pockets turned inside out were called Hoover flags. Somebody had to be blamed, and many Americans blamed their President.

Running for President under the slogan "rugged individualism" made it difficult for Hoover to promote massive government intervention in the economy. In 1930, succumbing to pressure from American industrialists, Hoover signed the Hawley-Smoot Tariff which was designed to protect American industry from overseas competition. Passed against the advice of nearly every prominent economist of the time, it was the largest tariff in American history.

The amount of protection received by industry did not offset the losses brought by a decrease in foreign trade. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff proved to be a disaster. Believing in a balanced budget, Hoover's 1931 economic plan cut federal spending and increased taxes, both of which inhibited individual efforts to spur the economy.

Finally in 1932 Hoover signed legislation creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. This act allocated a half billion dollars for loans to banks, corporations, and state governments. Public works projects such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Los Angeles Aqueduct were built as a result of this plan.

Hoover and the RFC stopped short of meeting one demand of the American masses — federal aid to individuals. Hoover believed that government aid would stifle initiative and create dependency where individual effort was needed. Past governments never resorted to such schemes and the economy managed to rebound. Clearly Hoover and his advisors failed to grasp the scope of the Great Depression.

The stage was set for the election of 1932. New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt won the Democratic nomination on the fourth ballot of their national convention. Roosevelt promised "a new deal for the American people" that included a repeal of the prohibition amendment. The Republicans renominated Hoover, perhaps because there were few other interested GOP candidates.

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Many in America wondered if the nation would survive.

Although the United States had little history of massive social upheaval or coup attempts against the government, hunger has an ominous way of stirring those passions among any population. As bread riots and shantytowns grew in number, many began to seek alternatives to the status quo. Demonstrations in the nation's capital increased, as Americans grew increasingly weary with President Hoover's perceived inaction. The demonstration that drew the most national attention was the Bonus Army march of 1932.

In 1924, Congress rewarded veterans of World War I with certificates redeemable in 1945 for $1,000 each. By 1932, many of these former servicemen had lost their jobs and fortunes in the early days of the Depression. They asked Congress to redeem their Bonus certificates early.

Led by Walter Waters of Oregon, the so-called Bonus Expeditionary Force set out for the nation's capital. Hitching rides, hopping trains, and hiking finally brought the Bonus Army, now 15,000 strong, into the capital in June 1932. Although President Hoover refused to address them, the veterans did find an audience with a congressional delegation. Soon a debate began in the Congress over whether to meet the demonstrators' demands.

As deliberation continued on Capitol Hill, the Bonus Army built a shantytown across the Potomac River in Anacostia Flats. When the Senate rejected their demands on June 17, most of the veterans dejectedly returned home. But several thousand remained in the capital with their families. Many had nowhere else to go. The Bonus Army conducted itself with decorum and spent their vigil unarmed.

However, many believed them a threat to national security. On July 28, Washington police began to clear the demonstrators out of the capital. Two men were killed as tear gas and bayonets assailed the Bonus Marchers. Fearing rising disorder, Hoover ordered an army regiment into the city, under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur. The army, complete with infantry, cavalry, and tanks, rolled into Anacostia Flats forcing the Bonus Army to flee. MacArthur then ordered the shanty settlements burned.

Many Americans were outraged. How could the army treat veterans of the Great War with such disrespect? Hoover maintained that political agitators, anarchists, and communists dominated the mob. But facts contradict his claims. Nine out of ten Bonus Marchers were indeed veterans, and 20% were disabled. Despite the fact that the Bonus Army was the largest march on Washington up to that point in history, Hoover and MacArthur clearly overestimated the threat posed to national security. As Hoover campaigned for reelection that summer, his actions turned an already sour public opinion of him even further bottomward.

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When the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, few Americans believed that a decade long depression was underway. After all, only 4 million Americans had money invested on Wall Street. 90% of American households owned precisely zero shares of stock. President Herbert Hoover quickly addressed the nation, professing his faith in the soundness of the American economy. But soothing words were clearly not enough to stop the shrinking of a deeply flawed national economic system.

The stock market crash had many short-term consequences. Banks that improvidently lent money to futures traders to buy stock on margin found that many of those loans would go unpaid. Consequently, a rash of bank failures swept the nation. This had a tremendous ripple effect on the economy. If a working-class family was unfortunate enough to have their savings held in trust by a failed bank — too bad for them, all their money was lost.

As Americans saw banks close and savings disappear, less money was spent on goods and services. Many consumers who had bought the new conveniences of the Golden Twenties on the installment plan were unable to make their payments. Businesses began to lay off workers to offset new losses. Many manufacturers had overproduced and created huge inventories.

Unemployment brought even less savings and spending, and the economy slowed yet another notch. The downward spiral continued into 1933. The $87 billion 1929 New York Stock Exchange was worth a mere $15 billion in 1932. Unemployment rose from 1.5 million Americans in 1929 to a debilitating 12 million in 1932.

Despair swept the nation. In addition to the nationwide 25% unemployment rate, many laborers were forced to choose between wage cuts and a pink slip. Most people who retained their jobs saw their incomes shrink by a third. Soup kitchens and charity lines, previously unknown to the middle class, were unable to meet the growing demand for food.

Desperate for income, thousands performed odd jobs from taking in laundry to collecting and selling apples on the street. College professors in New York City drove taxicabs to make ends meet. Citizens of Washington State lit forest fires in the hopes of earning a few bucks extinguishing them. Millions of backyard gardens were cultivated to grow vegetables.

Americans prowled landfills waiting for the next load of refuse to arrive in the hopes of finding a few table scraps among the trash.

The strife was uneven across the land. Oklahoma was particularly hard hit, as a drought brought dry winds, kicking up a "Dust Bowl" that forced thousands to migrate westward. African Americans endured unemployment rates of nearly twice the white communities, as African American workers were often the last hired and the first fired. Mexican Americans in California were offered free one-way trips back to Mexico to decrease job competition in the state. The Latino population of the American Southwest sharply decreased throughout the decade, as ethnic violence increased.

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It was a boom time for the stockholder. Stock prices soared to record levels. Millionaires were made overnight. Sound like the stock market of the 1990s? Try the New York Stock Exchange on the eve of the Great Crash in 1929.

Although the 1920s were marked by growth in stock values, the last four years saw an explosion in the market. In 1925, the total value of the New York Stock Exchange was $27 billion. By September 1929, that figure skyrocketed to $87 billion. This means that the average stockholder more than tripled the value of the stock portfolio he or she was lucky enough to possess.

In his Ladies' Home Journal article, "Everyone Ought to Be Rich," wealthy financier John J. Raskob advised Americans to invest just $15 dollars a month in the market. After twenty years, he claimed, the venture would be worth $80,000. Stock fever was sweeping the nation, or at least those that had the means to invest.

Fueling the rapid expansion was the risky practice of buying stock on margin. A margin purchase allows an investor to borrow money, typically as much as 75% of the purchase price, to buy a greater amount of stock. Stockbrokers and even banks funded the reckless speculator. Borrowers were often willing to pay 20% interest rates on loans, being dead certain that the risk would be worth the rewards. The lender was so certain that the market would rise that such transactions became commonplace, despite warnings by the Federal Reserve Board against the practice. Clearly, there had to be a limit to how high the market could reach.

What causes stock prices to fall? Although the workings of the New York Stock Exchange can be quite complex, one simple principle governs the price of stock. When investors believe a stock is a good value they are willing to pay more for a share and its value rises. When traders believe the value of a security will fall, they cannot sell it at as high of a price. If all investors try to sell their shares at once and no one is willing to buy, the value of the market shrinks.

On October 24, 1929, "Black Thursday," this massive sell-a-thon began. By the late afternoon, wealthy financiers like J.P. Morgan pooled their resources and began to buy stocks in the hopes of reversing the trend.

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"Once I built a railroad, I made it run.I made it race against time.Once I built a railroad, now it's done.

Brother, can you spare a dime?"

At the end of the 1920s, the United States boasted the largest economy in the world. With the destruction wrought by World War I, Europeans struggled while Americans flourished. Upon succeeding to the Presidency, Herbert Hoover predicted that the United States would soon see the day when poverty was eliminated. Then, in a moment of apparent triumph, everything fell apart. The stock market crash of 1929 touched off a chain of events that plunged the United States into its longest, deepest economic crisis of its history.

It is far too simplistic to view the stock market crash as the single cause of the Great Depression. A healthy economy can recover from such a contraction. Long-term underlying causes sent the nation into a downward spiral of despair. First, American firms earned record profits during the 1920s and reinvested much of these funds into expansion. By 1929, companies had expanded to the bubble point. Workers could no longer continue to fuel further expansion, so a slowdown was inevitable. While corporate profits, skyrocketed, wages increased incrementally, which widened the distribution of wealth.

The richest one percent of Americans owned over a third of all American assets. Such wealth concentrated in the hands of a few limits economic growth. The wealthy tended to save money that might have been put back into the economy if it were spread among the middle and lower classes. Middle class Americans had already stretched their debt capacities by purchasing automobiles and household appliances on installment plans.

There were fundamental structural weaknesses in the American economic system. Banks operated without guarantees to their customers, creating a climate of panic when times got tough. Few regulations were placed on banks and they lent money to those who speculated recklessly in stocks. Agricultural prices had already been low during the 1920s, leaving farmers unable to spark any sort of recovery. When the Depression spread across the Atlantic, Europeans bought fewer American products, worsening the slide.

When President Hoover was inaugurated, the American economy was a house of cards. Unable to provide the proper relief from hard times, his popularity decreased as more and more Americans lost their jobs. His minimalist approach to government intervention made little impact . The economy shrank with each successive year of his Presidency. As middle class Americans stood in the same soup lines previously graced only by the nation's poorest, the entire social fabric of America was forever altered.

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Despite all the verve of the American social scene in the 1920s, the Presidential leadership of the decade was quite unremarkable. Warren Harding won his bid for the White House in 1920 with the campaign slogan "Return to Normalcy." Republicans believed Americans had grown weary of the turmoil caused by World War I and promised tranquility. Harding found himself mired in scandals unknown in America since the Grant Administration. Although Harding himself was above the graft, his friends were more than willing to dip into the public treasury. Fraud and bribery plagued the Veterans Bureau and the Justice Department. The Teapot Dome Scandal exposed Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall for accepting bribes for allowing private oil companies to lease public lands. Harding fell ill in 1923 and died shortly thereafter.

The Progressives

Calvin Coolidge brought no significant change to Harding's laissez faire, pro-business style. Progressives bemoaned the end of activist Presidents protecting the public good, prompting Fighting Bob LaFollette to launch an unsuccessful run for the Presidency under the Progressive Party banner in 1924. The only successul progressive reforms occurred on the state and local levels. Politics became interesting in the election year of 1928. The Democrats nominated Al Smith, the first Catholic ever to earn the nomination of a major party. Smith raised eyebrows with an open opposition to the Prohibition amendment. As a result, the South broke with a long tradition of supporting Democrats and helped Herbert Hoover to continue Republican domination of the Presidency.

The International Scene

On the international scene, two themes dominated American diplomacy. The first was to take steps to avoid the mistakes that led to World War I. To this end, President Harding convened the Washington Naval Arms Conference in 1921. The United States, Great Britain, and Japan agreed to a ten-year freeze on the construction of battleships and to maintain a capital ship ratio of 5:5:3. They also agreed to uphold the Open Door Policy and to respect each other's holdings in the Pacific. In 1928, the United States and France led an initiative called the Kellogg-Briand Pact, in which 62 nations agreed to outlaw war. These two measures showed the degree to which Americans hoped to forestall another disastrous war. The second priority dealt with outstanding international debt. While practicing political isolation, the United States was completely entangled with Europe economically. The Allies owed the United States an enormous sum of money from World War I. Lacking the resources to reimburse America, the Allies relied on German reparations. The German economy was so debased by the Treaty of Versailles provisions that they relied on loans from American banks for support. In essence, American banks were funding the repayment of the foreign debt. As Germany slipped further and further into depression, the United States intervened again. The Dawes Plan allowed Germany to extend their payments on more generous terms. In the end, when the Great Depression struck, only Finland was able to make good on its debt to the United States.

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They were called the Lost Generation. America's most talented writers of the 1920s were completely disillusioned by the world and alienated by the changes in modern America. The ghastly horrors of trench warfare were a testament to human inhumanity. The ability of the human race to destroy itself had never been more evident. The materialism sparked by the Roaring Twenties left many intellectuals empty. Surely there was more to life than middle-class conformity, they pined. Intolerance toward immigrants and socialists led many writers to see America as grossly provincial. Thus the literature of the decade was that of disaffection and withdrawal, and many of America's greatest talents expatriated to Europe in despair.

The Writers

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the excesses of the Jazz Age. He and his wife Zelda operated among the social elite in New York, Paris, and on the French Riviera. The Great Gatsby, his most famous novel, highlights the opulence of American materialism while harshly criticizing its morality. Ernest Hemingway wrote of disillusioned youths wandering Europe in the wake of World War I in search of meaning in The Sun Also Rises. T.S. Eliot commented on the emptiness of American life in his epic poem The Waste Land. American theater earned worldwide acclaim in the 1920s. The foremost playwright of this newly respected American genre was Eugene O'Neill, noted for Desire Under the Elms and A Long Day's Journey Into Night. The sharpest critic of American middle-class lifestyle was Sinclair Lewis. In Main Street, he takes aim on small-town American life. Babbitt denounced the emptiness of middle-class life in the city. After a string of successful novels, Lewis brought honor to American writers by becoming the first to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature.

The Movies

While the written page marked a quest for intellectual insight, the movie industry catered to mass audiences. Every town seemed to have at least one theater for the new craze. The early decade saw millions flock to the screens to see silent action films and slapstick comedies by the likes of Charlie Chaplin. Sex appeal reigned supreme as American women swooned for Rudolph Valentino and American men yearned for the all-American beauty Mary Pickford. To keep standards of morality high in the film industry, the Hays Office stifled artistic license by censoring objectionable scenes. Because of soaring profits, studios sought quantity rather than quality. Therefore the decade saw few pictures of merit. The first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, appeared in 1927. Walt Disney introduced Mickey Mouse to the American public the following year in Steamboat Willie. By the end of the decade over 100 million viewers attended moviehouses each week, more than the number of weekly churchgoers.

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Sometimes the battle got ugly. Old versus new was not a conscious topic to be discussed calmly at the nation's dinner tables. In an effort to preserve so-called true American values, the forces against change sometimes displayed intolerance ranging from restrictive legislation to outright violence. Immigrants from areas outside Northern and Western Europe became targets of narrow-mindedness. African Americans faced new threats from a resurgent Ku Klux Klan. Socialists, anarchists, and atheists beware! The message was simple and clear. Conform or else.

Restricting Immigration

Since the 1880s, America's shores were flooded with immigrants primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe. The old nativist arguments grew louder in the first two decades of the 20th century. Critics of an open immigration policy cried that America's racial stock was being overrun by undesirable ethnicities. Protestant fundamentalists worried as the numbers of Jewish and Catholic Americans grew larger. Labor leaders claimed that immigration lowered wages. As a result, Congress slowly built walls against the newcomers. The first line of defense was a literacy test, passed in 1917. The results were not as encouraging as the nativists had hoped. About 1.25 million immigrants still entered America in the first two years of the twenties. An outright cap on immigrant numbers was enacted in 1921. Ethnic nationalists claimed that these conditions favored Southern and Eastern immigrants too favorably. The result was the National Origins Act of 1924. This law based admission to America on nationality. Immigrants from Northern and Western Europe were granted higher quotas than from other parts of the world. Asian immigration was banned completely. As a sign of pan-Americanism, there were no restrictions placed on immigrants from the western hemisphere.

Resurgence of the KKK

By 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was almost dead. William Simmons of Atlanta, a history teacher at Lanier College, summoned a secret gathering on Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving Day. As the sun set, the participants massed around a burning cross and pledged once again to reassert white supremacy. The Klan grew slowly, boasting only about five thousand members in 1920. That year, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Y. Clarke used their professional fundraising experience to boost the Klan's numbers. They raised membership dues and sold a great variety of Klan merchandise, including the infamous hoods and robes. Simmons is credited with much of the Klan terminology. Local chapters were called Klaverns, songs were called Klodes, and the leader was called the Imperial Wizard. By the middle of the decade there were an estimated 5 million Klansmen, with a significant women's auxiliary. This new Klan was national, particularly strong in the Midwest and South but powerful as far west as Oregon. The targets of this group went beyond African Americans. Catholics, Jews, and "non-Nordic" immigrants were victimized by the new reign of terror. Toward the end of the decade, corruption and sex scandals among the national leadership discredited the high and mighty message the Klan was trying to promote, and membership numbers sharply dropped.

"Back to Africa" Movement

The environment of intolerance and a new KKK prompted a drastic response by Marcus Garvey. Garvey believed that equality for African Americans could never be achieved in the United States. He formed the United Negro Improvement Association to promote economic cooperation among black businesses. Garvey made fiery speeches and created uniforms and flags to symbolize a new black pride. The ultimate goal for blacks across the world should be to return to the "Motherland." Only in Africa could a strong nation dedicated to promotion of black culture flourish. After amassing about 80,000 followers, Garvey founded the Black Star Steamship Company to begin transporting African Americans "back to Africa." Closely watched by government officials, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and deported to Jamaica.

Sacco and Vanzetti Trial

The intolerance of the decade is embodied in the murder trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. These two self-avowed anarchists and atheists were arrested in April 1920 for two Massachusetts murders. From the start, it was clear their trial was not about the murders, but about their backgrounds and beliefs. The judge violated all semblance of impartiality by criticizing their political views in court. Their guilt or innocence remains uncertain, and the circumstantial evidence on which they were convicted was murky. The jury found them guilty, and after six years of delay, Sacco and Vanzetti were silenced permanently by the electric chair.

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When Darwin announced his theory that humans and apes had decended from a common ancestor, he sent shock waves through the Western world.

In the years that followed his 1859 declaration, America's churches hotly debated whether to accept the findings of modern science or continue to follow the teachings of ancient scripture. By the 1920s, most of the urban churches of America had been able to reconcile Darwin's theory with the Bible, but rural preachers preferred a stricter interpretation.

Amid the dizzying changes brought by the roaring decade, religious fundamentalists saw the Bible as the only salvation from a materialistic civilization in decline.

Darwin Banned

In 1925, the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Law, which forbade the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in any public school or university. Other Southern states followed suit.

OF THE

STATE OF TENNESSEE

PASSED BY THE

SIXTY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

1925

________

CHAPTER NO. 27

House Bill No. 185

AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the violation of this Act, Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ (100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense.

Section 3. Be it further enacted,That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.

Passed March 13, 1925

W.F. Barry,
Speaker of the House of Representatives

L.D. Hill,
Speaker of the Senate

Approved March 21, 1925.

Austin Peay,
Governor.

The American Civil Liberties Union led the charge of evolution's supporters. It offered to fund the legal defense of any Tennessee teacher willing to fight the law in court. Another showdown between modernity and tradition was unfolding.

The man who accepted the challenge was John T. Scopes, a science teacher and football coach in Dayton, Tennessee. In the spring of 1925, he walked into his classroom and read, from Dayton's Tennessee-approved textbook Hunter's Civic Biology, part of a chapter on the evolution of humankind and Darwin's theory of natural selection. His arrest soon followed, and a trial date was set.

Darrow versus Bryan

Representing Scopes was the famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow. Slick and sophisticated, Darrow epitomized the urban society in which he lived.

The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state. The "Great Commoner" was the perfect representative of the rural values he dedicated his life to defend.

Bryan was a Christian who lobbied for a constitutional amendment banning the teaching of evolution throughout the nation.

A Media Circus — with Monkeys

The trial turned into a media circus. When the case was opened on July 14, journalists from across the land descended upon the mountain hamlet of Dayton. Preachers and fortune seekers filled the streets. Entrepreneurs sold everything from food to Bibles to stuffed monkeys. The trial became the first ever to be broadcast on radio.

Scopes himself played a rather small role in the case: the trial was reduced to a verbal contest between Darrow and Bryan. When Judge John Raulston refused to admit expert testimony on the validity of evolutionary theory, Darrow lost his best defense.

He decided that if he was not permitted to validate Darwin, his best shot was to attack the literal interpretation of the Bible. The climax of the trial came when Darrow asked Bryan to take the stand as an expert on the Bible. Darrow hammered Bryan with tough questions on his strict acceptance of several Bible's stories from the creation of Eve from Adam's rib to the swallowing of Jonah by a whale.

	DARROW: But what do you think that the Bible itself says? Do you know how that estimate (of the year the flood occurred) was arrived at? BRYAN: I never made a calculation. DARROW: A calculation from what? BRYAN: I could not say. DARROW: From the generations of man? BRYAN: I would not want to say that. DARROW: What do you think? BRYAN: I could not say. DARROW: From the generations of man? BRYAN: I would not want to say that. DARROW: What do you think? BRYAN: I do not think about things I don't think about. DARROW: Do you think about things you do think about? BRYAN: Well, sometimes.

While on the witness stand, William Jennings Bryan frustrated Darrow by not directly answering the defense attorney's questions. Bryan was a Christian, but he did not necessarily interpret the Bible literally. He would not give in, however, to Darrow on the subject of miracles. Bryan believed that miracles happen, though he could not explain how.

The "Great Commoner" felt it important for an articulate defender of the Bible to speak on its behalf. At one point in the testimony, Bryan claimed that the defense had "no other purpose than ridiculing every Christian who believes in the Bible."

Bryan was not opposed to science. He was well regarded in some scientific cricles and belonged to several national science organizations.

Darrow's Defense

The key to Clarence Darrow's defense strategy was to have scientists testify. On the trial's sixth day, Judge Raulston stated, "It is not within the province of the court under these issues to decide and determine which is true, the story of divine creation as taught in the Bible, or the story of the creation of man as taught by evolution." In short, no experts were needed to understand the simple language of the Butler law. Darrow's scientific experts were barred from testifying. By day's end, the sardonic Darrow had been charged with contempt of court.

The trial's seventh day featured charged exchanges between Darrow and Bryan, who was on the stand. But on the trial's eight day, Judge Raulston ruled that Bryan's testimony would not be allowed to stand on the record.

It was clear to Darrow that all was lost in this courtroom. In order to appeal the case to a higher court, Darrow asked the jury to find his client guilty. On July 21, 1925, it did.

It is interesting to speculate how history would have played out had Bryan been able to examine Darrow on the witness stand, which was Bryan's intention. But the trial concluded before Bryan had the chance.

Neither lawyer came out looking like a monkey.

The jury sided with the law. Clearly, Scopes was in violation of Tennessee statute by teaching that humans evolved from apes. He was fined $100 and released. But the battle that played out before the nation proved a victory for supporters of evolutionary theory. A later court dismissed the fine imposed on Scopes, though in the short term, the antievolution law was upheld.

Fundamental Christians were down but not out. Through the radio airwaves, ministers such as Billy Sunday reached audiences of thousands. Aimee Semple McPherson of California preached her fundamentalist message over loudspeakers to arena-sized crowds. At one point, she used a giant electric sports scoreboard to illustrate the triumph of good over evil, foreshadowing generations of televangelists who would follow her lead.

Clearly, the 1920s did not see the end to these conflicts or the answers to their major questions.

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World War I was over, but the hysteria lingered. The Eastern front had not gone well for Russia. The pressures of their losing effort forced the Russian czar to abdicate. The new government had not fared much better. Finally in November 1917, Lenin led a successful revolution of the Bolshevik workers. The ideas of Karl Marx had been known since 1848, but nowhere in the world until now had a successful communist revolution occurred. Once the war against Germany was over, the Western powers focused their energies at restoring Czar Nicholas. Even the United States sent troops to Russia hoping the White Russians could oust the communist Reds. All this effort was in vain. The Bolsheviks murdered the entire royal family and slowly secured control of the entire nation.

The Communist Party Forms

Back in the United States, veterans were returning home. Workers who avoided striking during the war were now demanding wage increases to keep pace with spiraling inflation. Over 3,300 postwar strikes swept the land. A small group of radicals formed the Communist Labor Party in 1919. Progressive and conservative Americans believed that labor activism was a menace to American society and must be squelched. The hatchetman against American radicals was President Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. Palmer was determined that no Bolshevik Revolution would happen in the United States.

On April 15, 1921, two employees of a shoe warehouse in South Braintree, Massachusetts, were murdered during a robbery. The police investigating the crime arrested two Italian immigrants named Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Sacco and Vanzetti maintained their innocence, but they already had a strike against them: they were anarchists and socialists. Just a little over two weeks after their arrest, they were found guilty.

Many people, particularly fellow socialists, protested the verdict, saying the two men were convicted more on political and ethnic prejudice than on any real evidence. Indeed, four years later, another man said he had committed the crime with a local gang.

Despite appeals, Sacco and Vanzetti were never granted a retrial. When they were sentenced to death on April 9, 1927, protests erupted around the country. But to no avail — the men were executed on Aug. 23, 1927. They claimed they were innocent until the moment of their deaths.

Scholars still debate the guilt and innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, but there is little question that the trial was biased against them.

Palmer's Efforts

From 1919 to 1920, Palmer conducted a series of raids on individuals he believed were dangerous to American security. He deported 249 Russian immigrants without just cause. The so-called "Soviet ark" was sent back to Mother Russia. With Palmer's sponsorship, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was created under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover. In January of 1920, federal agents broke into the homes of suspected anarchists without search warrants, jailed labor leaders, and held about 5,000 citizens without respecting their right to legal counsel. Palmer felt that American civil liberties were less important than rooting out potential wrongdoers. Eventually most of the detainees were released, but some were deported.

The climate set by Palmer and Hoover could not be contained. Still agitated by wartime propaganda, members of the American public took matters into their own hands.

American Legionnaires in Centralia, Washington attacked members of the Wobblies. Twelve radicals were arrested; one of them was beaten, castrated, and then shot. The New York State Legislature expelled five Socialist representatives from their ranks. Twenty-eight states banned the public display of red flags. It seemed as though the witch hunt would never end. Responsible Americans began to speak out against Palmer's raids and demand that American civil liberties be respected. By the summer of 1920, the worst of the furor had subsided.

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Not all Americans embraced the new way of life. Many saw the United States as a civilization in decline. The original purpose of the Puritan city upon a hill seemed to be slipping away in the pursuit of materialism and self-gratification. The morals of the Victorian Age were forgotten in the age of Freud and the flapper. Immigrants brought new cultures, religions, and languages to the increasingly complex American mosaic. The success of the Bolshevik Revolution brought a widespread suspicion of socialists, radicals, and labor unions. There were those in America who clung tenaciously to the values of the past. They would not give up without a fight.

The first group to feel the heat were suspected Socialists. The wave of postwar strikes touched off an anti-labor sentiment across America. Fears fueled by the Russian Revolution touched off a witch hunt for potential threats to national security. Immigrants, whose numbers had been transmuting the American ethnic fabric, became targets for intolerance. Ethnic purists succeeded at slamming the open door for immigrants shut. Hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan gained in popularity as working-class Americans took aim at African Americans, immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. The churches of America were similarly torn by the struggle between old and new. Modernists reconciled the theories of Charles Darwin with scripture, while fundamentalists persisted with a strict interpretation of creation theory.

Throughout the struggle, America's political leadership remained remarkably aloof. The White House was occupied by the most conservative Presidents in a generation during the decade of change. Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover seemed content with the status quo, and delegated much of the decision-making to Congress and key Cabinet members. Businesses took advantage of the laissez faire approach.

By the end of the decade, America was on the brink of something special. An industrial revolution was now complete. The United States had proven itself as a global power in acquiring an empire and intervening in the First World War, yet lacked the physical destruction of the conflict that plagued the European continent. The standard of living was rising faster than anywhere in the world. Indeed, when Herbert Hoover took office, he predicted that America would soon see the end of poverty. No one predicted the sheer calamity that was so soon to follow.

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The Roaring Twenties was a time of great change. As exciting as dynamic times may seem, such turmoil generates uncertainty. Sometimes, in an effort to obscure tensions, people seek outlets of escape. Fads — sometimes entertaining, sometimes senseless — swept the nation. Another coping strategy in a time of great uncertainty is to find role models who embody tried and true values. National heroes heretofore unknown to peacetime America began to dominate American consciousness.

New Fads

The radio created the conditions for national fads. Without such a method of live and immediate communication, fads could amount only to local crazes. Roaring Twenties fads ranged from the athletic to the ludicrous. One of the most popular trends of the decade was the dance marathon. New dance steps such as the Charleston swept the nation's dance halls, and young Americans were eager to prove their agility. In a typical dance marathon, contestants would dance for forty-five minutes and rest for fifteen. The longest marathons lasted thirty-six hours or more. Beauty pageants came into vogue. The first Miss America Pageant was staged in Atlantic City in 1921. One of the most bizarre fads was flagpole sitting. The object was simple: be the person who could sit atop the local flagpole for the longest period of time. Fifteen-year-old Avon Foreman of Baltimore set the amateur standard — ten days, ten hours, ten minutes, and ten seconds.

Mah-jongg is a Chinese tile game. Colored tiles with different symbols were randomly arranged geometrically. The object is to remove all the game pieces. Crossword puzzle fever swept the nation when Simon and Schuster published America's first crossword puzzle book. The Book-of-the-Month Club drew thousands of readers into literary circles. Two new periodicals began to grace American coffee tables. The nation's first weekly news magazine, Time, was founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden. Their punchy writing on timely stories and eye-grabbing pictures hit the newsstands in 1923. DeWitt Wallace made a business out of condensing articles from other periodicals. His publication, Reader's Digest, began in 1921 and boasted a half million subscriptions a decade later.

New Heroes

No individual personified the All-American hero more than Charles Lindbergh. His courage was displayed to the nation when he flew his Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris, becoming the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. National and international news was hidden in the back pages of the major newspapers while Lindbergh stole the front pages. Confetti flew and bugles sounded in New York City when he returned successfully, and President Coolidge hosted a gala celebration. There was more to Lindbergh's appeal than his bravery. Throughout the ordeal, Lindbergh maintained a hometown modesty. He declined dozens of endorsement opportunities, ever refusing to sell out. Spectator sports provided opportunities for others to grab the limelight. Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth were role models for hundreds of thousands of American boys. Fortunately, Cobb's outward racism and Ruth's penchant for drinking and womanizing were shielded from admiring youngsters. Football had Red Grange, and boxing had Jack Dempsey. Gertrude Ederle impressed Americans by becoming the first woman to swim the English Channel. These heroes gave Americans, anxious about the uncertain future and rapidly fading past, a much needed sense of stability.

QUIZ TIME: 1920s Quiz

Page 21

Courtesy of the MZTV Museum

Commercial radio in America had humble beginnings. Frank Conrad, an engineer for Westinghouse, set up an amateur radio station above his garage in a Pittsburgh suburb. Since the wireless technology was developed by Guglielmo Marconi in the late 19th century, thousands of enthusiasts across the world experimented with the new toy. After World War I, Conrad began broadcasting a variety of programming from his "station." High school music groups performed, phonograph records were played, and news and baseball scores were reported. Conrad had dramatically improved the transmitter, and soon hundreds of people in the Pittsburgh area were sending requests for air time. The bosses of Westinghouse knew that Conrad was on to something and convinced him to make his hobby commercially profitable.

KDKA on the Air

On the night of November 2, 1920, Conrad and his Westinghouse associates announced that Warren G. Harding had defeated James Cox to become the next President. The message was heard as far north as New Hampshire and as far south as Louisiana. The federal government granted the call letters KDKA to the Pittsburgh station and a new industry was born. For nearly a year, KDKA monopolized the airwaves. But competition came fast and furious; by the end of 1922, there were over 500 such stations across the United States. The federal government excercised no regulation over the nascent enterprise, and the result was complete chaos. Stations fought over call letters and frequencies, each trying to outbroadcast the closest competitor. Finally in 1927, Congress created the Federal Radio Commission to restore order.

Ad Time

One of the great attractions to the radio listener was that once the cost of the original equipment was covered, radio was free. Stations made money by selling air time to advertisers. The possibility of reaching millions of listeners at once had advertising executives scrambling to take advantage. By the end of the decade advertisers paid over $10,000 for an hour of premium time.

The Radio Corporation of America created a new dimension to the venture in 1926. By licensing telephone lines, RCA created America's first radio network and called it the National Broadcasting Company. For the first time, citizens of California and New York could listen to the same programming simultaneously. Regional differences began to dissolve as the influence of network broadcasting ballooned. Americans listened to the same sporting events and took up the same fads. Baseball games and boxing matches could now reach those far away from the stadiums and arenas. A mass national entertainment culture was flowering.

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The 1920s was a decade of increasing conveniences for the middle class. New products made household chores easier and led to more leisure time. Products previously too expensive became affordable. New forms of financing allowed every family to spend beyond their current means. Advertising capitalized on people's hopes and fears to sell more and more goods.

Changing Housework

By the end of the 1920s, household work was revolutionized. A typical work week for a housewife before the twenties involved many tedious chores. All the furniture was moved off the carpets, which were rolled up and dragged outside to beat out the week's dirt and dust. The ice in the icebox was replaced and the waterpan that lay beneath was repeatedly changed. The clothes were scrubbed in a washing tub on a washboard. An iron was heated on the stove to smooth out the wrinkles. Women typically spent the summer months canning food for the long winter. Clothes were made from patterns, and bread was made from scratch. Very few of these practices were necessary by the end of the decade. Vacuum cleaners displaced the carpet beater. Electric refrigerators, washing machines, and irons saved hours of extra work. New methods of canning and freezing made store-bought food cheap and effective enough to eliminate this chore. Off-the-rack clothing became more and more widespread. Even large bakeries were supplying bread to the new supermarkets. The hours saved in household work were countless.

Buying on Credit

"Buy now, pay later" became the credo of many middle class Americans of the Roaring Twenties. For the single-income family, all these new conveniences were impossible to afford at once. But retailers wanted the consumer to have it all. Department stores opened up generous lines of credit for those who could not pay up front but could demonstrate the ability to pay in the future. Similar installment plans were offered to buyers who could not afford the lump sum, but could afford "twelve easy payments." Over half of the nation's automobiles were sold on credit by the end of the decade. America's consumers could indeed have it all, if they had an iron stomach for debt. Consumer debt more than doubled between 1920 and 1930.

Advertising

Fueling consumer demand were new techniques in advertising. This was not a new business, but in the increasingly competitive marketplace, manufacturers looked to more and more aggressive advertising campaigns. One major trend of the decade was to use pop psychology methods to convince Americans that the product was needed. The classic example was the campaign for Listerine. Using a seldom heard term for bad breath — halitosis — Listerine convinced thousands of Americans to buy their product. Consumers might not have known what halitosis was, but they surely knew they did not want it.

Advertisers were no longer simply responding to demand; they were creating demand. Radio became an important new means of communicating a business message. Testimonials from Hollywood film stars sold products in record numbers.

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It was time for a cultural celebration. African Americans had endured centuries of slavery and the struggle for abolition. The end of bondage had not brought the promised land many had envisioned. Instead, white supremacy was quickly, legally, and violently restored to the New South, where ninety percent of African Americans lived. Starting in about 1890, African Americans migrated to the North in great numbers. This Great Migration eventually relocated hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. Many discovered they had shared common experiences in their past histories and their uncertain present circumstances. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, the recently dispossessed ignited an explosion of cultural pride. Indeed, African American culture was reborn in the Harlem Renaissance.

The Great Migration

The Great Migration began because of a "push" and a "pull." Disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws led many African Americans to hope for a new life up north. Hate groups and hate crimes cast alarm among African American families of the Deep South. The promise of owning land had not materialized. Most blacks toiled as sharecroppers trapped in an endless cycle of debt. In the 1890s, a boll weevil blight damaged the cotton crop throughout the region, increasing the despair. All these factors served to push African Americans to seek better lives. The booming northern economy forged the pull. Industrial jobs were numerous, and factory owners looked near and far for sources of cheap labor.

Unfortunately, northerners did not welcome African Americans with open arms. While the legal systems of the northern states were not as obstructionist toward African American rights, the prejudice among the populace was as acrimonious. White laborers complained that African Americans were flooding the employment market and lowering wages. Most new migrants found themselves segregated by practice in run down urban slums. The largest of these was Harlem. Writers, actors, artists, and musicians glorified African American traditions, and at the same time created new ones.

Writers and Actors

The most prolific writer of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Hughes cast off the influences of white poets and wrote with the rhythmic meter of blues and jazz. Claude McKay urged African Americans to stand up for their rights in his powerful verses. Jean Toomer wrote plays and short stories, as well as poems, to capture the spirit of his times. Book publishers soon took notice and patronized many of these talents. Zora Neale Hurston was noticed quickly with her moving novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Music met prose in the form of musical comedy. The 1921 production of Shuffle Along is sometimes credited with initiating the movement. Actor Paul Robeson electrified audiences with his memorable stage performances.

Musicians

No aspect of the Harlem Renaissance shaped America and the entire world as much as jazz. Jazz flouted many musical conventions with its syncopated rhythms and improvised instrumental solos. Thousands of city dwellers flocked night after night to see the same performers. Improvisation meant that no two performances would ever be the same. Harlem's Cotton Club boasted the talents of Duke Ellington. Singers such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday popularized blues and jazz vocals. Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong drew huge audiences as white Americans as well as African Americans caught jazz fever.

The continuing hardships faced by African Americans in the Deep South and the urban North were severe. It took the environment of the new American city to bring in close proximity some of the greatest minds of the day. Harlem brought notice to great works that might otherwise have been lost or never produced. The results were phenomenal. The artists of the Harlem Renaissance undoubtedly transformed African American culture. But the impact on all American culture was equally strong. For the first time, white America could not look away.

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The battle for suffrage was finally over. After a 72-year struggle, women had won the precious right to vote. The generations of suffragists that had fought for so long proudly entered the political world. Carrie Chapman Catt carried the struggle into voting awareness with the founding of the League of Women Voters. Alice Paul vowed to fight until an Equal Rights Amendment was added to the Constitution. Margaret Sanger declared that female independence could be accomplished only with proper birth control methods. To their dismay, the daughters of this generation seemed uninterested in these grand causes. As the 1920s roared along, many young women of the age wanted to have fun.

Life of the Flappers

Flappers were northern, urban, single, young, middle-class women. Many held steady jobs in the changing American economy. The clerking jobs that blossomed in the Gilded Age were more numerous than ever. Increasing phone usage required more and more operators. The consumer-oriented economy of the 1920s saw a burgeoning number of department stores. Women were needed on the sales floor to relate to the most precious customers — other women. But the flapper was not all work and no play.

By night, flappers engaged in the active city nightlife. They frequented jazz clubs and vaudeville shows. Speakeasies were a common destination, as the new woman of the twenties adopted the same carefree attitude toward prohibition as her male counterpart. Ironically, more young women consumed alcohol in the decade it was illegal than ever before. Smoking, another activity previously reserved for men, became popular among flappers. With the political field leveled by the Nineteenth Amendment, women sought to eliminate social double standards. Consequently, the flapper was less hesitant to experiment sexually than previous generations. Sigmund Freud's declaration that the libido was one of the most natural of human needs seemed to give the green light to explore.

The Flapper Look

The flapper had an unmistakable look. The long locks of Victorian women lay on the floors of beauty parlors as young women cut their hair to shoulder length. Hemlines of dresses rose dramatically to the knee. The cosmetics industry flowered as women used make-up in large numbers. Flappers bound their chests and wore high heels. Clara Bow, Hollywood's "It" Girl, captured the flapper image for the nation to see.

Many women celebrated the age of the flapper as a female declaration of independence. Experimentation with new looks, jobs, and lifestyles seemed liberating compared with the socially silenced woman in the Victorian Age. The flappers chose activities to please themselves, not a father or husband. But critics were quick to elucidate the shortcomings of flapperism. The political agenda embraced by the previous generation was largely ignored until the feminist revival of the 1960s. Many wondered if flappers were expressing themselves or acting like men. Smoking, drinking, and sexual experimentation were characteristic of the modern young woman. Short hair and bound chests added to the effect. One thing was certain: Despite the potential political and social gains or losses, the flappers of the 1920s sure managed to have a good time.

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In the 19th century, the American world consisted of children and adults. Most Americans tried their best to allow their children to enjoy their youth while they were slowly prepared for the trials and tribulations of adulthood. Although child labor practices still existed, more and more states were passing restrictions against such exploitation. The average number of years spent in school for young Americans was also on the rise. Parents were waiting longer to goad their youngsters into marriage rather than pairing them off at the tender age of sixteen or seventeen. In short, it soon became apparent that a new stage of life — the teenage phase — was becoming a reality in America. American adolescents were displaying traits unknown among children and adults. Although the word teenager did not come into use until decades later, the teenage mindset dawned in the 1920s.

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From Courtship to Dating

The single greatest factor that led to the emergence of the independent teenager was the automobile. Teens enjoyed a freedom from parental supervision unknown to previous generations. The courtship process rapidly evolved into dating. In earlier times, young boys and girls spent their first dates at home. The boy would meet the girl's parents, they would have a sitting in the parlor, followed by dinner with the entire family. Later in the evening, the couple might enjoy a few moments alone on the front porch. After several meetings, they could be lucky enough to be granted permission for an unchaperoned walk through town. The automobile simply shattered these old-fashioned traditions. Dating was removed from the watchful eyes of anxious parents. Teenagers were given privacy, and a sexual revolution swept America. Experimentation with sexual behaviors before marriage became increasingly common. Young Americans were now able to look beyond their own small towns at an enlarged dating pool.

Impact of the Automobile

Automobile technology led directly to the other major factor that fostered a teenage culture: the consolidated high school. Buses could now transport students farther from their homes, leading to the decline of the one-room schoolhouse. Furthermore, Americans were realizing the potential of a longer education, and states were adding more years to their compulsory schooling laws. As a result, a larger number of teenagers were thrown into a common space than ever before. It was only natural that discussions about commonalties would occur. Before long, schools developed their own cultural patterns, completely unlike the childhood or adult experience. School athletics and extracurricular activities only enhanced this nascent culture. The American teenager was born.

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Saloons were closed, bottles were smashed, and kegs were split wide open. When the states ratified the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages was outlawed. Protestant ministers and progressive politicians rejoiced and proclaimed a holier and safer America. It was predicted that worker productivity would increase, families would grow closer, and urban slums would disappear. Yet for all its promise, prohibition was repealed fourteen years later, after being deemed a dismal failure.

Advantages to Prohibition

In fairness, there were advantages to prohibition. Social scientists are certain that actual consumption of alcohol actually decreased during the decade. Estimates indicate that during the first few years of prohibition, alcohol consumption declined to a mere third of its prewar level. Although no polls or surveys would be accurate, health records indicate a decrease in alcoholism and alcohol-related diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver. Family savings did increase during the decade, but it was difficult to determine whether the increase was due to decreased alcohol consumption or a robust economy.

Disadvantages to Prohibition

The minuses seemed to outweigh the pluses. First, federal allocation of funds to enforce prohibition were woefully inadequate. Gaping loopholes in the Volstead Act, the law implemented to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment, encouraged abuse. Alcohol possession was permitted for medical purposes, and production of small amounts was permitted for home use. The manufacturing of near beer — regular beer without the alcohol — was also permitted. The problem was that to make near beer, it was first necessary to brew the real variety, so illegal breweries could insist their product was scheduled to have the alcohol removed. Soon a climate of lawlessness swept the nation, as Americans everywhere began to partake in illegal drink. Every city had countless speakeasies, which were not-so-secret bars hidden from public view.

While the number of drinkers may have decreased, the strength of the beverages increased. People drank as much as they could as fast as they could to avoid detection. Because alcoholic production was illegal, there could be no regulation. Desperate individuals and heartless profiteers distilled anything imaginable, often with disastrous results. Some alcohol sold on the black market caused nerve damage, blindness, and even death. While women of the previous generation campaigned to ban alcohol, the young women of the twenties consumed it with a passion.

Organized Crime

The group that profited most from the illegal market was organized crime. City crime bosses such as Al Capone of Chicago sold their products to willing buyers and even intimidated unwilling customers to purchase their illicit wares. Crime involving turf wars among mobsters was epidemic. Soon the mobs forced legitimate businessmen to buy protection, tainting those who tried to make an honest living. Even city police took booze and cash from the likes of Al Capone. After several years of trying to connect Capone to bootlegging, federal prosecutors were able to convict him for income tax evasion.

The Eighteenth Amendment was different from all previous changes to the Constitution. It was the first experiment at social engineering. Critics pointed out that it was the only amendment to date that restricted rather than increased individual rights. Civil liberties advocates considered prohibition an abomination. In the end, economics doomed prohibition. The costs of ineffectively policing the nation were simply too high. At the deepest point of the Great Depression, government officials finally ratified the Twenty-First Amendment, repealing the practice once and for all.