New Consumer Society of the 1920s Lecture Notes

Who benefited and who suffered from the new consumer society of the 1920s? Like most eras in American history, the wealthy and powerful benefited from the rise of consumerism, while the wealth gap from poor working men grew even larger. General Motors surpassed Ford in its car manufacturing, with the car industry becoming a star player in the U.S.’s economic growth during the period. The U.S.’s international manufacturing grew exponentially as well, producing 85% of the world's cars and 45% of the world manufactured goods during the 20’s. The annoyingly present and unsustainable consumer/celebrity culture unfortunately had its birth during this era as well. Those who were too poor to participate in the consumer culture got excluded, and for the most part poverty stayed stagnant among the working class. The golden age of farming during WWI began to decline and enter a recession due to the falling price of crops and the bank foreclosure of thousands of farms as a result. Some companies began to engage in welfare capitalism during the 20’s, which provided pensions, job security, and medical insurance; at the same time, unions lost almost 2 million workers, and began to fall off severely. The Women's party promoted the equal rights amendment, which sought to eliminate all inequality on the basis of sex. Unsurprisingly this was not favored by most other womens’ organizations because it threatened to remove too many protections such as limited hours and mothers’ pensions. In what ways did the government promote business interests in the 1920’s? By applying more conservative ideas to labor and business, and retreating from the progfressive era, the government promoted the growth of big businesses. Writers like Walter Lipman and thinkers like Sigmund Freud were critical in moving public opinion away from strong government (progressivism). The republican government of the era was extremely business oriented, and experienced some of the worst corruption to date. Secretary Albert Fall would be convicted of a felony for accepting 500,000 to lease government oil land to a private businessman. Coleridge would beat out Rober La Follete in the 1924 elections, again demonstrating the shift away from progressivism. Private companies, with no governmental restriction, took hold all over the world, with the red line agreement dividing rich oil lands in the middle east among the major powers. Why did the protection of civil liberties gain importance in the 1920’s? It was only because many civil liberties became tightened during and following WWI that their protection grew in importance. The film industry experienced rigorous censorship during the era, and even went as far as to impose the Hays code -another rigorous set of rules regarding nudity, smoking etc.- to prevent government censorship. Inevitably some artists and filmmakers left for Europe to pursue more freedom of expression. Supreme court cases like Schenk vs. U.S and Eugene vs Debs provoked movements to protect constitutional rights like the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU would aid most monumental supreme court cases regarding constitutional rights for the next century. What were the major flash points between fundamentalism and pluralism in the 1920’s? The points of contentions were all centered around the idea of individualistic expression, whether in the form of free speech or being an ethnically diverse immigrant. Fundamentalists supported the prohibition, which many Americans still believed violated individual freedoms. The scopes trial put into question religiosity vs freedom of expression when a teacher violated state law by teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. Ultimately Scope won after the case got overturned by the Tennessee supreme court (yay science). The second coming of the KKK was born out of the rejection of a culturally and ethnically diverse America, claiming more than 5 million members by the mid-1920’s. The 1920’s saw several immigration restrictions be put in place, and for the first time definened an “illegal alien” and put in place border patrol. Most pluralists like Horace Kallen openly supported immigration and diversity, coining the term “cultural diversity”. Meanwhile immigrant groups took matters into their own hands and fought for ethnic tolerance as the essence of American freedom. This self-efficacy was witnessed among black Americans too in the Harlem renaissance, a period where black creativity and culture shined especially bright. What were the causes of the great depression, and how effective were the government's responses by 1932? The great depression was the product of a long stagnation in infrastructure-building, and governmental responses to it failed horrifically. The stock market crash of 1929, which saw a loss of 10 billion in market value, is mainly cited as the cause of the depression. Of course, the growing number of failed businesses and foreclosed real estate foreshadowed those developments, and contributed significantly to the poor circumstances of the depression. Hoover, despite claiming himself a progressive, took a hands-free approach to the crisis, putting his faith in businessmen to correct the situation (like that was ever going to work). Hoover's public opinion fell dramatically during the depression, and his failed Tariff bill only worsened the situation and decreased international trade. He did course correct though, and provided the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and a Federal home Loan Bank System to help businesses and homeowners faced with foreclosure.