Settling the Northern Colonies
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William Jennings Bryan was among those who were against him, but the one-time “boy orator” was made to sound foolish and childish by expert attorney Clarence Darrow, and five days after the end of the trial, Bryan died. The trial proved to be inconclusive. Increasing numbers of Christians were starting to reconcile their differences between religion and the findings of modern science, as evidenced in the new Churches of Christ (est. 1906). The Mass-Consumption Economy Prosperity took off in the “Roaring 20s,” despite the recession of 1920-21, and it was helped by the tax policies of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellons, which favored the rapid expansion of capital investment. Henry Ford perfected the assembly-line production to where this famous Rouge River Plant was producing a finished automobile every ten seconds. The automobile now provided more freedom, more luxury, and more privacy. A new medium arose as well: advertising, which used persuasion, ploy, seduction, and sex appeal to sell merchandise. In 1925, Bruce Barton’s bestseller The Man Nobody Knows claimed that Jesus Christ was the perfect salesman and that all advertisers should study his techniques. Sports was buoyed by people like home-run hero George Herman (“Babe”) Ruth and boxers Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier. Putting America on Rubber Tires Americans adapted, rather than invented, the gasoline engine. People like Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds (famous for Oldsmobile) developed the infant auto industry. Early cars stalled and weren’t too reliable, but eventually, cars like the Ford Model T became cheap and easy to own. In 1929, when the bull market collapsed, 26 million motor vehicles were registered in the United States, or 1 car per 4.9 Americans. The Advent of the Gasoline Age The automobile spurred 6 million people to new jobs and took over the railroad as king of transportation. New roads were constructed, the gasoline industry boomed, and America’s standard of living rose greatly. Cars were luxuries at first, but they rapidly became necessities. The less-attractive states lost population at an alarming rate . However, accidents killed lots of people, and by 1951, 1,000,000 people had died by the car—more than the total of Americans lost to all its previous wars combined. Cars brought adventure, excitement, and pleasure. Humans Develop Wings On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first airplane for 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet. Aviation slowly got off the ground, and they were used a bit in World War I, but afterwards, they really took off (pun not intended) when they became used for mail and more functions. The first transcontinental airmail route was established form New York to San Francisco in 1920. At first, there were many accidents and crashes, but later, safety improved. Charles Lindbergh became the first person ever to fly across the Atlantic Ocean when he did it in his Spirit of St. Louis, going from New York to Paris. The Radio Revolution In the 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi had already invented wireless telegraphy and his invention was used for long distance communication in the Great War. Then, in November of 1920, the first voice-carrying radio station began broadcasting when KDKA (in Pittsburgh) told of President Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory. While the automobile lured Americans away from home, the radio lured them back, as millions tuned in to hear favorites like “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and listen to the “Eveready Hour.” Sports were further stimulated while politicians had to adjust their speaking techniques to support the new medium, and music could finally be heard electronically. Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies Thomas Edison was one of those who invented the movie, but in 1903, the real birth of the movie came with The Great Train Robbery. A first full-length feature was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which glorified the KKK of the Reconstruction era. Hollywood, California, quickly became a hot spot for movie production, due to its favorable climate and landscape. The first movies featured nudity and heavy-lidded female vampires called “vamps” until a shocked public forced codes of censorship to be placed on them. Propaganda movies of World War II would really boost the popularity of movies. Critics, though, did bemoan the vulgarization of popular tastes wrought by radio and movies. These new mediums led to the loss of old family traditions, like the telling of an old story by a grandparent. The Dynamic Decade For the first time, most Americans lived in urban areas, not the countryside. The birth-control movement was led by fiery Margaret Sanger, and the National Women’s Party began in 1923 to campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. The Fundamentalists of old religion even lost ground to the new Modernists, who liked to think that God was a “good guy” and the universe was a nice place. A new fad that shocked many conservative older folk (who labeled it as full of erotic suggestions and totally inappropriate) arrived, and the youths who practiced it were called “flappers.” They danced new dances like the “Charleston” and dressed more provocatively. Sigmund Freud said that sexual repression was responsible for most of society’s ills, and that pleasure and health demanded sexual gratification and liberation. Jazz was the music of “flappers,” and Blacks like Handy, “Jelly Roll” Morton, and Joseph King Oliver gave birth to it. Black pride spawned such great leaders as Langston Hughes (famous for The Weary Blues, which appeared in 1926) and Marcus Garvey (founder of the United Negro Improvement Association and inspiration for the Nation of Islam). Literary Liberation By the dawn of the 1920s, many of the old writers (Henry James, Henry Adams, and William Dean Howells) had died, and those that survived, like Edith Wharton and Willa Cather were popular (well, some of them were). Many of the new writers, though, hailed from different backgrounds (not Protestant New Englanders). H.L. Mencken, the “Bad Boy of Baltimore,” found fault in lots of things in America. He wrote the monthly American Mercury. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby, both of which captured the society of the time as it was. Theodore Dreiser wrote An American Tragedy and dealt with the same theme of the glamour and cruelty of an achievement-oriented society. Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, and Farewell to Arms. Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio, and wrote about small-town life. Sinclair Lewis disparaged small-town America in his Main Street and Babbitt. William Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying all were very famous. Poetry also was innovative, as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot were two great poets. Eugene O’Neill was an actor in plays like Strange Interlude, and he came from New York. Other famous writers included Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston. Architecture also made its marks with the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Empire State Building debuted in 1931. Wall Street’s Big Bull Market There was much overspeculation in the 1920s, especially on Florida home properties (until a hurricane took care of that), and even during times of prosperity, many, many banks failed each year. The whole system was built on fragile credit. The stock market made headline news. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon reduced the amount of taxes that rich people had to pay, thus thrusting the burden onto the middle class. He reduced the national debt, though, but he has been accused of indirectly encouraging the Bull Market. Whatever the case, the prosperities of the 1920s was setting up the crash that would lead to the poverty and suffering of the 1930s. Chapter 35: “The Politics of Boom and Bust” ~ 1920 – 1932 ~ The Republican “Old Guard” Returns Newly elected President Warren G. Harding was tall, handsome, and popular, but he had a mediocre mind and he did not like to hurt people’s feelings. Neither could he detect the corruption of his cabinet. His cabinet did have some good officials, though, such as Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who was masterful, imperious, incisive, and brilliant, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon. However, people like Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, a scheming anti-conservationist, became secretary of the interior, and Harry M. Daugherty took over reigns as attorney general. These two became the worst of the scandalous cabinet members. GOP Reaction at the Throttle A good man but a weak one, Harding was the perfect front for old-fashioned politicians to set up a McKinley style old order back onto the U.S. It hoped to improve on laissez-faire, and one of the examples of this was the Supreme Court, where Harding appointed four of the nine justices, including William H. Taft, former president of the United States. In the early 1920s, the Supreme Court killed a federal child-labor law. In the case of Adkins vs. Children’s Hospital, the court reversed its ruling in the Muller vs. Oregon case by invalidating a minimum wage law for women. Under Harding, corporations could expand again, and anti-trust laws were not as enforced or downright ignored. Men sympathetic to railroads headed the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Aftermath of the War Wartime government controls disappeared (i.e. the dismantling of the War Industries Board) and Washington returned control of railroads to private hands by the Esch-Cummins Transportation Act of 1920. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 authorized the Shipping Board, which controlled about 1500 vessels, to get rid of a lot of ships at bargain prices, thus reducing the navy. Labor lost much of its power, as a strike was ruthlessly broken in 1919, and the Railway Labor Board ordered a wage cut of 12% in 1922. Labor membership shrank by 30% from 1920 to 1930. In 1921, the Veterans’ Bureau was created to operate hospitals and provide vocational rehabilitation for the disabled. Many veterans wanted the monetary compensation promised to them for their services in the war. The Adjusted Compensation Act gave every former soldier a paid-up insurance policy due in twenty years, and was passed by Congress twice (the second time to override president Calvin Coolidge’s veto). America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens Since America had never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, it was still technically at war with Germany, so in July of 1921, it passed a simple joint resolution ending the war. The U.S. did not cooperate much with the League of Nations, but eventually, “unofficial observers” did participate in conferences. In the Middle East, Secretary Hughes secured for American oil companies the right to share in the exploitation of the oil riches there. Disarmament was another problem for Harding, who had to watch the actions of Japan and Britain for any possible hostile activities. Ship-Scrapping at the Washington Conference The Washington “Disarmament” Conference of 1921-22 resulted in a plan in which a 5:5:3 ratio of ships that could be held by the U.S., Britain, and Japan (in that order) was proposed by Hughes, surprising many delegates (the Soviet Union, which was not recognized by the U.S., was not invited and did not attend). The Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 embodied Hughes’s ideas on ship ratios, but only after Japanese received compensation. A Four-Power Treaty, which bound Britain, Japan, France, and the U.S. to preserve the status quo in the Pacific, replaced the 20-year-old Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 kept the open door open in China. However, despite all this apparent action, there were no limits placed on small ships, and Congress only approved the Four-Power Treaty on the condition that the U.S. was not bound, thus effectively rendering that treaty useless. Frank B. Kellogg, Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of State, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Kellog-Briand Pact (Pact of Paris), which said that all nations that signed would no longer use war as offensive means. Hiking the Tariff Higher Businessmen did not want Europe flooding American markets with cheap goods after the war, so Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Law, which raised the tariff from 27% to 35%. Presidents Harding and Coolidge were much more prone to increasing tariffs than decreasing them. However, this presented a problem: Europe needed to sell goods to the U.S. in order to get the money to pay back its debts, and when it could not sell, it could not repay. The Stench of Scandal However, scandal rocked the Harding administration in 1923 when Charles R. Forbes was caught with his hand in the till and resigned as the head of the Veterans’ Bureau. He and his accomplices looted the government for over $200 million. The Teapot Dome Scandal was the most shocking of all. Albert B. Fall leased land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California, to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, but not until Fall had received a “loan” (actually a bribe) of $100,000 form Doheny and about three times that amount from Sinclair. There were reports as to the underhanded doings of Attorney General Daugherty, in which he was accused of the illegal sale of pardons and liquor permits. President Harding, however, died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, of pneumonia and thrombosis, and he didn’t have to live through much of the uproar of the scandal. Calvin Coolidge: A Yankee in the White House New president Calvin Coolidge was serious and never spoke more than he needed to. A very morally clean person, he was not touched by the Harding scandals, and he proved to be a bright figure in the Republican Party. Frustrated Farmers World War I had given the farmers much prosperity, as they had produced much food for the soldiers. New technology in farming, such as the gasoline-engine tractor, had increased farm production dramatically. However, after the war, these products weren’t needed, and the farmers fell into poverty. Farmers looked for relief, and the Capper-Volstead Act, which exempted farmers’ marketing cooperatives from antitrust prosecution, and the McNary-Haugen Bill, which sought to keep agricultural prices high by authorizing the government to buy up surpluses and sell them aboard, helped a little. However, Coolidge vetoed the second bill…twice. A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924 Coolidge was chosen by the Republicans again, while Democrats nominated John W. Davis after 102 ballots in Madison Square Garden. The Democrats also voted by one vote NOT to condemn the Ku Klux Klan. Senator Robert La Follette led Progressive Party as the third party candidate. He gained the endorsement of the American Federation of Labor and the shrinking Socialist Party, and he actually received 5 million votes. However, Calvin Coolidge easily won the election. Foreign-Policy Flounderings Isolationism continued to reign in the Coolidge era, as the Senate did not allow America to adhere to the World Court, the judicial part of the League of Nations. In the Caribbean and Latin America, U.S. troops were withdrawn from the Dominican Republic in 1924 but remained in Haiti from 1914 to 1934. Coolidge took out troops from Nicaragua in 1925, and then sent them back the next year, and in 1926, he defused a situation with Mexico where the Mexicans were claiming sovereignty over oil resources. However, Latin Americans began to resent the American dominance of them. The European debt to America also proved tricky. Unraveling the Debt Knot Because America demanded that Britain and France pay their debts, those two nations put huge reparation payments on Germany, which then, to pay them, printed out lots of paper money that cause inflation to soar. At one point in October of 1923, a loaf of bread cost 480 million marks. Finally, in 1924, Charles Dawes engineered the Dawes Plan, which rescheduled German reparations payments and gave the way for further American private loans to Germany. Essentially, the payments were a huge circle, with American never really gaining any money or repaid in genuine. Also, the U.S. gained bitter enemies in France and Britain who were angry over America’s apparent greed and careless nature for others. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, 1928 In 1928, Calvin Coolidge said, “I do not choose to run,” and his logical successor immediately became economics genius Herbert Hoover. Hoover was opposed by New York governor Alfred E. Smith, a man who was blanketed by scandal (he drank during a Prohibitionist era and was a Roman Catholic). Radio turned out to be an important factor in the campaign, and Hoover’s personality sparkled on this new medium (compared to Smith, who sounded stupid and boyish). Hoover had never been elected to public office before, but he had made his way up from poverty to prosperity, and believed that other people could do so as well. There was, once again, below-the-belt hitting on both sides, as the campaign took an ugly turn, but Hoover triumphed in a landslide, with 444 Electoral votes to Smith’s 87. President Hoover’s First Moves Hoover’s Agricultural Marketing Act, passed in June of 1929, was designed to help the farmers help themselves, and it set up a Federal Farm Board to help the farmers. In 1930, the Farm Board created the Grain Stabilization Corporation and the Cotton Stabilization Corporation to bolster sagging prices by buying surpluses. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%!!! Foreigners hated this tariff that reversed a promising worldwide trend toward reasonable tariffs and widened the yawning trade gaps. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties Herbert confidently predicted an end to poverty very soon, but on October 29, 1929, a devastating crash caused by overspeculation and overly high stock prices built only upon non-existent credit struck the nation. Losses, even in blue-chip securities, were unbelievable, as by the end of 1929, stockholders had lost over $40 million in paper values (more than the cost of World War I)!!! By the end of 1930, 4 million Americans were jobless, and two years later, that number shot up to 12 million. Over 5000 banks collapsed in the first three years of the Great Depression. Lines formed at soup kitchens and at homeless shelters. Hooked on the Horn of Plenty The Great Depression might have been caused by an overabundance of farm products and factory products; the nation’s capacity to produce goods had clearly outrun its capacity to consume or pay for them. Also, an over-expansion of credit created unsound faith in money, and many bought too much to pay. Britain and France, which had never fully recovered from World War I, worsened. In 1930, a terrible drought scorched the Mississippi Valley and thousands of farms were sold to pay for debts. By 1930, the depression was a national crisis, and hard-working workers had nowhere to work; thus, people turned bitter and also turned on Hoover. Villages of shanties and ragged shacks were called Hoovervilles and were inhabited by the people who had lost their jobs. Rugged Times for Rugged Individualists Hoover unfairly received the brunt of the blame for the Great Depression, but he did pass measures that made the depression less severe than it could have been. Critics noted that he could feed millions in Belgium (after World War I) but not millions at home in America. He did not believe in government tampering of the economic machine, and he felt that depressions like this were simply parts of the natural economic process. However, by the end of his term, he had started to take steps for the government to help the people Herbert Hoover: Pioneer for the New Deal Finally, Hoover voted to withdraw $2.25 billion to start projects to alleviate the suffering of the depression. The Hoover Dam of the Colorado River was one such project. The Muscle Shoals Bill, which was designed to dam the Tennessee River and was ultimately embraced by the Tennessee Valley Authority, was vetoed by Hoover. Early in 1932, Congress, responding to Hoover’s appeal, established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which became a government lending bank. However, giant corporations were the ones that benefited most from this, and the RFC was another one of the targets of Hoover’s critics. In 1932, Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injection Act, which outlawed anti-union contracts and forbade the federal courts to issue injunctions to restrain strikes, boycotts, and peaceful picketing. Remember that in past depressions, the American public was often forced to “sweat it out,” not wait for government help. Routing the Bonus Army in Washington Many veterans which had not been paid their compensation marched to Washington, D.C. to demand their entire bonus/ The “Bonus Expeditionary Force” erected unsanitary camps and shacks in vacant lots, creating health hazards and annoyance. Riots followed after troops came in to intervene (after Congress tried to pass a bonus bill but failed), and many people died. Hoover falsely charged that the force was led by riffraff and reds, and the American opinion turned even more against him. Japanese Militarists Attack China In September 1931, Japan, alleging provocation, invaded Manchuria and shut the Open Door. Peaceful peoples were stunned, as this was a flagrant violation of the League of Nations covenant, and a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, was arranged. An American actually attended, but instead of driving Japan out of China, the meeting drove Japan out of the League, thus weakening it further. Secretary of State Henry Stimson did indicate that the U.S. probably would not interfere with a League of Nations embargo on Japan, but he was later restrained from taking action. Since the U.S. did no effective thing, the Japanese bombed Shanghai in 1932, and even then, outraged Americans didn’t do much to change the Japanese minds. Hoover Pioneers the Good Neighbor Policy Hoover was deeply interested in relations south of the border, and during his term, U.S. relations with Latin America and the Caribbean improved greatly. Since the U.S. had less money to spend, it was unable to dominate Latin America as much, and later, Franklin D. Roosevelt would build upon these policies. Chapter 36: “The Great Depression and the New Deal” ~ 1933 – 1938 ~ FDR: A Politician in a Wheelchair In 1932, voters still had not seen any improvement, and wanted a new president. President Herbert Hoover was nominated again without much vigor and true enthusiasm, and he campaigned saying that his policies prevented the Great Depression from being worse than it was. The Democrats nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a tall, handsome man who was the fifth cousin of famous Theodore Roosevelt and had followed in his footsteps. FDR was suave and conciliatory while TR was pugnacious and confrontational. FDR was stricken with polio in 1921, and during this time, his wife, Eleanor, became his political partner. Eleanor was to become the most active First Lady ever. Franklin also lost a friend in 1932 when he and Al Smith both sought the Democratic nomination. Presidential Hopefuls of 1932 In the campaign, Roosevelt seized the opportunity to prove that he was not an invalid, and his campaign also featured an attack on Hoover’s spending (ironically, he would spend even more during his term). The Democrats found expression in the airy tune “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and clearly, the Democrats had the advantage in this race. The Humiliation of Hoover in 1932 Hoover had been swept into the presidential office in 1928, but in 1932, he was swept out with equal force, as he was defeated 472 to 59. Noteworthy was the transition of Blacks from the Republican to the Democratic Party. During the lame-duck period, Hoover tried to initiate some of Roosevelt’s plans but was met by stubbornness and resistance. Hooverites would later accuse FDR of letting the depression worsen so that he could emerge an even more shining savior. FDR and the Three R’s: Relief, Recovery, and Reform On Inauguration Day, FDR asserted, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He called for a nationwide banking holiday to eliminate paranoid bank withdrawals, and then commenced on his Three R’s. The Democratic-controlled Congress was willing to do as FDR said, and the first 100 days of FDR’s administration were filled with more legislative activity than ever before. Many of the New Deal Reforms had been adopted by European nations a decade before. Roosevelt Tackles Money and Banking The Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 as passed first. Then, Roosevelt settled down for the first of his thirty famous “Fireside Chats.” The “Hundred Days Congress” passed the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act, that provided the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insured individual deposits up to $5000, thereby eliminating the epidemic of bank failure and restoring faith to banks. FDR then took the nation off of the gold standard and achieved controlled inflation by ordering Congress to buy gold at increasingly higher prices. In February 1934, he announced that the U.S. would pay foreign gold at a rate of one ounce of gold per very $35 due. Creating Jobs for the Jobless Roosevelt had no qualms about using federal money to assist the unemployed, so he created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which provided employment in fresh-air government camps for about 3 million uniformed young men. They reforested areas, became fire fighters, drained swamps, and controlled floods. However, critics accused FDR of militarizing the youths and acting as dictator The Federal Emergency Relief Act looked for immediate relief rather than long-term alleviation, and its Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was headed by the zealous Harry L. Hopkins. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) made available many millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) refinanced mortgages on non-farm homes and bolted down the loyalties of middle class, Democratic homeowners. The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was established late in 1933, and it was designed to provide purely temporary jobs during the winter emergency. Many of its tasks were rather frivolous and were designed for the sole purpose of making jobs. One FDR opponent was Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest in Michigan who disliked the New Deal and voiced his opinions on radio. Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana was popular for his “Share the Wealth” program, where every family was to receive $5000, allegedly from the rich. His chief lieutenant was former clergyman Gerald L. K. Smith. He was later shot by a deranged medical doctor in 1935. 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