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  • Episode 32: The Roaring 20s?

  • Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History and today were going to learn

  • about one the best eras ever, the 1920s. The 20s gave us Jazz, movies, radio, making

  • out in cars, illegal liquor. And the 20s also gave us prosperity, although

  • not for everybody and gangsters and a consumer culture based on credit and lots of prejudice

  • against immigrants and eventually the worst economic crisis the U.S. has seen.

  • Mr. Green, Mr. Green, but what about Gatsby? Yeah, Me from the Past, it’s true that Gatsby

  • turned alright in the end, but what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust trailed in the wake

  • of his dreams did temporarily close out my interest in the aborted sorrows and short-winded

  • elations of men. intro

  • So there’s a stereotypical view of the 1920s as theRoaring 20s,” a decade of exciting

  • change and new cultural touchstones, as well as increased personal freedom and dancing.

  • And it really was a time of increased wealth. For some people.

  • The quote of the decade has to go to our famously taciturn president from Massachusetts, Calvin

  • Coolidge, who said, “the chief business of the American people is business.”

  • Jay-Z would later update this for the 21st century noting, “I'm not a businessman,

  • I'm a business, man.” But anyway during the 1920s the government

  • helped business grow like gangbusters, largely by not regulating it much at all. This is

  • known aslaissez-fairecapitalism. Orlaissez-fairecapitalism if youre

  • good at speaking French. The Republican Party dominated politics in

  • the 1920s, with all the presidents elected in the decade being staunch conservative Republicans.

  • The federal government hewed to the policies favored by business lobbyists, including lower

  • taxes on personal income and business profits, and efforts to weaken the power of unions.

  • Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover stocked the boards of the Federal Reserve and the

  • Federal Trade Commission with men who shared their pro-business views, shifting the country

  • away from the economic regulation that had been favored by Progressives.

  • And that was very good for the American economy. At least in the short run. The 1920s were

  • also marked by quite a bit of government corruption, most of which can be pinned to the administration

  • of Warren G. Harding. Now, Harding himself wasn’t terribly corrupt, but he picked terrible

  • friends. They included attorney general Harry Daughtery,

  • who accepted money to not prosecute criminals, and Interior Secretary Albert Fall, who took

  • half a million dollars from private business in exchange for leases to government oil reserves

  • at Teapot Dome. Fall later became the first cabinet member

  • ever to be convicted of a felony. But on the other hand: Business, man!

  • Productivity rose dramatically, largely because older industries adopted Henry Ford’s assembly

  • line techniques, and newer industries like aviation, chemicals, and electronics grew

  • up to provide Americans with new products and new jobs.

  • During the 1920s annual production of cars tripled to 4.8 million and automobile companies

  • were gradually consolidated into the big three that we know today: Ford, Chrysler, and Harley

  • Davidson. What? General Motors. By 1929 half of all American families owned

  • a car. And thus began the American love affair with the automobile, which is also where love

  • affairs were often consummated. Which is why, in the 1920, cars came to be

  • known asskoodilypooping chariots.” What’s that? They were calledBrothels on Wheels”?

  • And the economy also grew because American corporations were extending their reach overseas

  • and American foreign investment was greater than that of any other country.

  • The dollar replaced the pound as the most important currency for trade and by the end

  • of the decade America was producing 85% of the world’s cars and 40% of its overall

  • manufactured goods. Stan, can I get a Libertage? Libertage

  • And companies churned out all kinds of labor saving devices like vacuum cleaners, toasters,

  • refrigerators. And not having to spend all day washing your

  • clothes or turning over your own toast like some kind of commoner meant that Americans

  • had more time for leisure. And this was provided by radios, and baseball

  • games, boxing matches, vacations, dance crazes. I mean before Gangnam Style, there was the

  • the Lindy and the Charleston. But probably the most significant leisure

  • product was movies. And I’m not just saying that because I’m staring into a camera.

  • The American film industry moved out to Hollywood before World War I because land was cheap

  • and plentiful, all that sunshine meant that you could shoot outside all year round. And

  • it was close to everything: desert, mountains, ocean, plastic surgeons.

  • And by 1925 the American film industry had eclipsed all of its competitors and become

  • the greatest in the world, especially if you count by volume and not quality.

  • And more and more people had money to go see those movies thanks to consumer debt.

  • The widespread use of credit and layaway buying plans meant that it was acceptable to go into

  • debt to maintain what came to be seen as the Americanstandard of livingand this

  • was a huge change in attitude. These days we don’t even think of credit

  • cards as debt really, but they are. And that was a relatively new idea. As was

  • another feature of American life in the 20s that is still with us: celebrity.

  • Opera singer Enrico Caruso has often been called the first modern celebrity but now

  • he’s a lot less famous than Charlie Chaplin, or Rudolph Valentino, or Babe Ruth.

  • But probably the biggest celebrity of the decade was Charles Lindbergh, whose claim

  • to fame was flying across the Atlantic Ocean by himself without stopping. Although he did

  • use an airplane, which makes it slightly less impressive.

  • Now Lindbergh wasn’t a truly contemporary celebrity in the sense of being famous for

  • being famous, but he was a business more than a businessman.

  • High culture also flourished. This was the age of theLost Generationof American

  • writers, many of whom lived and worked in Europe, but America had its own version of

  • Paris in New York. The decade of the 1920s saw continued migration

  • of African American people from the south to cities in the North, and Harlem became

  • the capital of Black America. And speaking of migration, let us now migrate

  • to the chair for the Mystery Document. The rules here are simple.

  • I guess the author of the Mystery Document. I’m either right or I get shocked with the

  • shock pen. Alright let’s see what weve got here.

  • If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

  • While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot

  • Like men well face the murderous, cowardly pack,

  • Pressed to the wall, dying but fight back.

  • Stan, thank you for the poetry. I appreciate that it’s not some obscure document from

  • 18th century blah blah blah. It’s Claude McKay, Harlem Renaissance poet,

  • the poem is calledIf We Must Die.” It’s the only thing in the world I’m actually

  • good at. Now I know this from the imagery alone, especially

  • the line about mad and hungry dogs that would figuratively and literally make up the mobs

  • at the lynchings, but the giveaway here is the ultimate sentiment thatwewill

  • fight back. This was part of the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, which rejected stereotypes

  • and prejudice and sought to celebrate African American experience.

  • Meanwhile, things were changing for women as well as they found ways to express autonomy.

  • Flappers kept their hair and skirts short, smoked and drank illegally in public and availed

  • themselves of birth control. And marketers encouraged them to buy products like cigarettes,

  • christenedtorches of freedomby Edward Bernays.

  • Liberationhad its limits, though. Most women were still expected to marry, have children,

  • and find their freedom at home through the use of washing machines. But the picture of

  • prosperity is, as usual, more complicated than it at first appears. The fact that so

  • many Americans were going into debt in order to pursue the American dream meant that if

  • the economy faltered, and it did, there was going to be lots of trouble. Let’s go to

  • the Thought Bubble. Prosperity in the 1920s wasn’t equally distributed

  • through the population. Real industrial wages rose by a quarter between 1922 and 1929, but

  • corporate profits rose at twice that rate. By 1929, 1% of the nation’s banks controlled

  • 50% of the nation’s financial resources and the wealthiest 5% of Americansshare

  • of national income exceeded that of the bottom 60%. An estimated 40% of Americans lived in

  • poverty. Now, many Americans celebrated big business

  • and Wall Street was often seen as heroic, possibly because by 1920 about 1.5 million

  • Americans owned some kind of stock. But big business also meant that smaller businesses

  • disappeared.

  • During the 1920s the number of manufacturing workers declined by 5%, the first time this

  • class of workers had seen its numbers drop, but not the last.

  • Now, some of these jobs were made up for by new jobs in retail, finance, and education,

  • but as early as the 1920s New England was beginning to see unemployment and deindustrialization

  • as textile companies moved their operations to the South, where labor was cheaper.

  • And working class people still made up the majority of Americans and they often couldn’t

  • afford these newfangled devices. Like in 1930, 75% of American homes didn’t have a washing

  • machine, and only 40% of them had a radio. Farmers were even worse off. Many had prospered

  • during World War I when the government subsidized farm prices in order to keep farms producing

  • for the war effort. But, when the subsidies ended, production didn’t subside, largely

  • due to mechanization and increased use of fertilizer.

  • Farmersincomes dropped steadily and many saw banks foreclose upon their property. For

  • the first time in American history, the number of farms declined during the 1920s. For farmers,

  • the Great Depression began early. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So, organized labor

  • also took a big hit. Although some companies engaged in welfare capitalism, providing pensions,

  • medical insurance, and greater guarantees of workplace safety, many more continued to

  • oppose unions and their efforts to improve working conditions. They employed stri kebreakers

  • and continued to blacklist union organizers. And coupled with the market logic that led

  • companies to move their businesses to the low-wage south, organized labor lost more

  • than 2 million members in the 1920s. So, in general the federal government did

  • little to nothing to help farmers or workers. The Supreme Court was the only segment of

  • the government that kept any progressive ideas alive, as they began to craft a system of

  • ideas that we call the jurisprudence of civil liberties.

  • For instance, the courts stepped back from decisions like Schenk v. U.S. That was partly

  • down to the newly created ACLU, which through lawsuits brought new meaning to freedom of

  • speech and eventually the right to privacy. Now, the court still voted to uphold convictions

  • of left wing critics of the government, but gradually began to embrace the idea that people

  • had the right to express dissonant views in what Oliver Wendell Holmes called themarketplace

  • of ideas.” In Near v. Minnesota the Supreme Court struck

  • down censorship of newspapers, and by 1927, Justice Brandeis was writingthat freedom

  • to think as you will and to speak as you think are indispensable to the discovery and spread

  • of political truth.” But despite increased free speech and torches

  • of liberty and flappers and the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s was in many ways a reactionary period

  • in American history. For instance, the decade saw the resurgence

  • of the Ku Klux Klan in a new and improved form and by improved I mean much more terrible.

  • Spurred on by the hyper-patriotism that was fostered during World War I, the Klan denounced

  • immigrants, and Jews, and Catholics as less than 100% American. And by the mid 20s the

  • Klan claimed more than 3 million members and was the largest private organization right

  • here in my home state of Indiana. And with more immigrants coming from Southern

  • and Eastern Europewho were often Catholic and JewishWhite Protestants became more

  • and more concerned about losing their dominant position in the social order. Spoiler alert

  • it turns out okay for you, white Protestants. The first immigration restriction bill was

  • passed in 1921 limiting the number of immigrants from Europe to 357,000. In 1924 a new immigration

  • law dropped that number to 150,000 and established quotas based on national origin.

  • The numbers of immigrants allowed from southern and eastern Europe were drastically reduced

  • and Asians (except for Filipinos) were totally forbidden.

  • The quota for Filipinos was set at 50 per year although they were still allowed to emigrate

  • to Hawaii because their labor was needed there. There were no restrictions however on immigration

  • from the Western Hemisphere because California’s large-scale farms were dependent upon seasonal

  • laborers from Mexico. These immigration restrictions were also influenced

  • by fear of radical anarchists and pseudo-scientific ideas about race. Whites were seen as scientifically

  • superior to people of color and as president Coolidge himself declared when he signed the

  • 1924 immigration law, “America must be kept American.”

  • Tell me, Calvin Coolidge, about how American you are. Are you Cherokee? Or Cree? Or Lakota?

  • The 1920s also saw increased tension between science education in the United States and

  • religious beliefs. The best known example is, of course, the

  • trial of John Scopes in Tennessee in 1925. Scopes was tried for breaking the law against

  • teaching evolution, which he had been encouraged to do by the ACLU as a test case for the freedom

  • of speech. Scopes was prosecuted by William Jennings

  • Bryan, whom you will remember as having recently resigned as Secretary of State and who had

  • become a leader of the fundamentalist movement. And Scopes was defended by Clarence Darrow,

  • that famous defense attorney who contemporary defense attorneys always point to to argue

  • that defense attorneys aren’t all scum. Scopes and Darrow actually lost the trial

  • but the case drew national attention and ultimately led to evolution being taught in more American

  • schools. The Scopes trial is often seen as a victory

  • for free thinking, and science, and modernism, and I suppose it was, but for me it’s more

  • a symbol of the contradictions of the 1920s. This is the decade that gave us mass consumer

  • culture and celebrity worship, which are important and very complicated legacies.

  • And it also saw the birth of modern conceptions of civil liberties. It was a period when tolerance

  • became an important value, but at the same time it saw a rise in lynchings.

  • Immigrants were necessary for the economic boom of the 1920s, but at the same time their

  • numbers were restricted as they were seen as a threat totraditional American values.”

  • And that raises a question that were still struggling with today: what are those values?

  • I don’t mean that rhetorically. Let me know in comments. Thanks for watching. I’ll see

  • you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan

  • Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. The associate producer is Danica Johnson.

  • The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, Rosianna Rojas, and

  • myself. And our graphics team is Thought Café. I nailed that.

  • Every week, there’s a new caption for the libertage. You can suggest your own in comments

  • or ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians.

  • Thank you for watching Crash Course. If you enjoyed today’s video, make sure youve

  • subscribed. And as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.

  • Roaring 20s -

Episode 32: The Roaring 20s?

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