Chapter 23- From New Era to Great Depression, 1920-1932 (American’s History) – Flashcards
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By how much did per capita income rise for Americans during the 1920s?
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33 percent During the 1920s, per capita income increased by a third, which is even better if we consider that the cost of living stayed the same and unemployment remained low.
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What did an expert panel in 1931 conclude the prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcohol in the nation had accomplished?
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The panel found that prohibition had fueled crime and corruption. The experts on the panel concurred that prohibition had fueled criminal activity, corrupted the police, demoralized the judiciary, and caused ordinary citizens to disrespect to the law.
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In the early 1920s, a number of southern states had passed legislative bans on
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the teaching of evolution. In the 1920s, several southern states passed legislation against the teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the public schools. This led to a confrontation between scientists and civil liberties organizations on the one hand and traditionalists and creationists on the other.
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How did investors respond when the stock market hesitated in the fall of 1929?
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Investors panicked and began selling their overvalued stocks. Although many investors had held to their belief that the stock market would continue to rise despite the nation's faltering economy, they started to sell their stocks following a market hesitation in the autumn of 1929. This caused the dip in the market to turn into a panic, with brokers jamming the stock exchange in a desperate effort to get rid of their holdings.
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Where could starving unemployed people get assistance to feed their families?
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Charities or state and local agencies People who were unemployed and unable to feed their families had only local charities and a few state and local agencies to help them in their dire economic circumstances. These public and private agencies were quickly depleted. Many cities that had funds for unemployed relief quickly ran out of money; other cities appropriated no money at all for the indigent.
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What philosophy guided American foreign policy during the 1920s?
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Rejection of Wilsonian internationalism with continued involvement with the world economically and politically Although the United States rejected Wilsonian internationalism and the League of Nations, the nation's economic involvement in the world and the ongoing chaos in Europe made isolationism impossible. In matters of foreign policy, however, Republican administrations preferred private-sector diplomacy to state action.
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Which factor contributed to the dilution of women's political influence in the 1920s?
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Women came from all walks of society and held a wide range of political views. Before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, most Americans expected that women would vote as a bloc and exercise considerable influence over the country's political life. In reality, feminists divided over the issues of protective legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment. Furthermore, women did not form a coherent social group, but were diverse according to race, class, ethnicity, geographical location, and other factors. Women did not constitute the unified voting bloc that Americans had long anticipated.
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What changed for Native Americans as a result of federal legislation in 1924?
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Native Americans became citizens of the United States. In its Indian Citizenship Act, Congress in 1924 extended suffrage and citizenship to all American Indians.
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What became of Herbert Hoover's belief in the principles of self-reliance, industrial self-management, and limited federal government once he occupied the White House?
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Hoover's beliefs severely handicapped his ability to respond to the nation's economic problems during his term as president. Hoover's adherence to the principles of individual self-reliance and industrial self-management were apparent strengths during the prosperous 1920s. But those principles, along with his unwillingness to use the federal government to solve social problems, proved to be enormous liabilities once the nation's economy plunged into crisis in 1929.
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How did the Great Depression affect the American family in the 1930s?
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It created resentment among men, who lost their jobs more often than women did. The depression created resentment and a loss of self-esteem among men, who lost their jobs much more frequently than lower-paid women did. Many men felt as if unemployment reduced their masculinity and threatened their place as the head of the family.
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Why did more and more Americans in the 1920s feel like they had no role to play in civic affairs?
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The rise of a mass consumer culture seemed to make the individual less important. The expansion of mass production and the rise of mass consumer culture gave many the impression that they could not possibly play an effective role in civic affairs.
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Women who worked outside of the home in the 1920s
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had more but still limited opportunities. Women enjoyed greater opportunity in the 1920s, with approximately one in four women working for pay by the end of the decade. Many worked as secretaries, typists, file clerks, and salesclerks, and they were the majority of librarians, nurses, elementary school teachers, and telephone operators. Nonetheless, many factory jobs and most management positions were still closed to women.
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What did the outcome of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial suggest about the United States in the 1920s?
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Antiforeign hysteria was rampant in many areas of American life. The Sacco and Vanzetti trial, in which two Italian anarchists were sentenced to death for robbery and murder by a judge who openly referred to them as "anarchist bastards," revealed that many levels of American society were influenced by antiforeign hysteria. Even the blue-ribbon review committee, which questioned that the fairness of the verdict, refused to recommend a motion for a retrial. The trial provoked international outrage, and 50,000 American mourners also protested the verdict by following the men's caskets in the rain, but anti-immigrant attitudes dominated American culture and society in this period.
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How did President Herbert Hoover try to address the deepening economic depression?
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By doubling federal public works expenditures In 1930, Congress authorized $420 million for public works projects to give the unemployed jobs and create more purchasing power. Over the course of three years, the Hoover administration nearly doubled federal public works expenditures.
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How did white women who worked in service-sector industries fare during the Great Depression?
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Women were not hit as hard by unemployment as men in the steel and automobile industries. The depression hit the industrial sector harder than the service sector. White women working in low-paying service areas did not lose their jobs as often as men who worked in heavy industries like the steel and automobile industries.
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What was the purpose of welfare capitalism in the 1920s?
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To discourage industrial workers from forming traditional labor unions In an effort to avoid the labor conflicts that characterized the 1910s, many businesses developed programs for workers that came to be called welfare capitalism. These new efforts, which included improved safety and sanitation practices in factories, paid vacations, and pension plans, encouraged company loyalty and discouraged traditional labor unions. As a result, some workers came to see their companies as protectors rather than as adversaries.
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How did the image of the "new woman" influence American society in the 1920s?
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The image affected all women, even those who believed in traditional gender roles. Most women in the 1920s did not conform to the standards of the new woman, but the values of that ideal spread throughout American society and affected all women to one degree or another. Few women became flappers, but many changed their notions about women's roles, their proper appearance, and standards for their behavior.
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Which of the following factors proved to be Alfred Smith's greatest vulnerability as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928?
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His Catholic faith
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What did the Harlem Renaissance accomplish?
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The movement gave birth to new artistic talent and a powerful legacy for black Americans. The Harlem Renaissance produced a dazzling array of talent that created a distinctive African American culture that shaped the black community for generations.
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Which of these statements characterizes the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921?
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It was the high point of women's political influence in the 1920s. The Sheppard-Towner Act was the one major piece of legislation that progressive women activists managed to push through Congress in the 1920s. They had worked for measures to protect women in factories, win equal rights for women in all areas of society, end lynching, and increase federal aid to schools, among other causes. But the passage of this act, which provided aid for mothers and children, was the high point of women's political influence in the 1920s.
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How did most whites who patronized Harlem institutions in the 1920s describe the neighborhood?
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As a black ghetto with a lively nightlife White patrons were important sources of support for the Harlem Renaissance writers and artists, but the fashionable whites who went to Harlem in the 1920s experienced little of the neighborhood beyond its nightclubs, where they heard what they thought was "real" jazz in its "natural" surroundings.
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How did the writers of the Lost Generation describe the United States of the 1920s?
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As blighted by cultural vapidity and greed Lost Generation writers were highly critical of American society, which they felt was hopelessly repressed, anti-intellectual, crude, and materialistic. Many rejected the country entirely by relocating to France.
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President Coolidge's policy toward big business was to
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use the government to help businesses, not restrain them. President Coolidge wanted to reduce government intervention in business, which he believed would aid businesses' efficient and profitable operation by minimizing restraints. Coolidge's secretary of the treasury promoted tax cuts for businesses and wealthy individuals, and his secretary of commerce encouraged voluntary trade associations to keep businesses honest.
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What was the significance of reporter H. L. Mencken's 1925 obituary for William Jennings Bryan, which flayed him as a "charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without shame or dignity"?
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Mencken's attitude revealed the disdain urban people felt for country people and their values. H. L. Mencken was a reporter who followed the case and whose coverage painted Bryan as a "sweating anthropoid" and a "gaping primate." When Bryan died, just a week after his victory in the trial, Mencken's obituary flayed Bryan as a "charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without shame or dignity," motivated by "hatred of the city men who had laughed at him for so long." Mencken's assessment of Bryan revealed the divisions between city and country, intellectuals and the uneducated, and revealed the disdain city dwellers felt for country people and their values.
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What was a consequence of the increased availability of the automobile in the 1920s?
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New businesses such as fast-food restaurants and motels emerged. Automobiles altered the face of America in the 1920s by changing where people lived, worked, and spent their leisure time. The automobile industry became a keystone of the American economy, employing hundreds of thousands of workers and creating new industries such as fast-food restaurants, motels, filling stations, and garages. Urban streetcars began to vanish as well, as workers moved from cities to suburbs and commuted to work in their automobiles.
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How did the U.S. Supreme Court respond to the cutback in regulations by the Harding and Coolidge administrations?
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The Supreme Court served as their ally in overturning regulations. Coolidge found an ally in the Supreme Court, for example, when it ruled against closed shops and when it declared the minimum wage law for women in Washington, D.C., unconstitutional.
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The Five-Power Naval Treaty that emerged from the Washington Disarmament Conference earned President Harding acclaim for
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preserving the peace without forcing the United States to join the League of Nations. President Harding's goal in calling the conference was to establish a global balance of naval power by proportionally reducing the navies of Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States. The treaty that resulted from the conference earned the president praise for protecting the peace without the United States having to join the League of Nations.
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What characteristics defined the period Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover described as a "New Era" in 1920?
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A new, freewheeling economy and a heightened sense of individualism When Woodrow Wilson left the White House and Warren Harding entered it, energy flowed away from government activism and civic reform and toward private economic endeavor. This shift lessened government regulation of the economy and sparked a sense of energetic individualism that led Hoover to declare it a "New Era." Others called the 1920s , the Jazz Age, the Age of the Flapper, and other such terms.
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The scandals that plagued President Harding's administration
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touched the highest levels of government. Although President Harding was not corrupt, his willingness to appoint his friends to government posts, regardless of their qualifications, led to political and financial improprieties. Three of his appointees ended up in jail, and several others were indicted. For example, Harding's secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, was convicted of accepting $400,000 in bribes in exchange for leasing oil reserves on public land.
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Why did Henry Ford locate his company in Detroit?
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Detroit was close to the key materials needed for car production. Henry Ford shrewdly located his company in Detroit, knowing that key materials for his automobiles were manufactured in nearby states.
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Why did the Johnson-Reed Act allow immigration from the Western Hemisphere?
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Farmers in the Southwest demanded continued access to cheap labor. The Johnson-Reed Act left open immigration from the Western Hemisphere because farmers in the Southwest demanded continued access to cheap labor in the agricultural sector.
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Why did American financier Charles Dawes lead a diplomatic mission to Europe late in 1923?
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Charles Dawes and other American financiers wanted to address the failure of the German economy and the suspension of reparations payments. Germany had failed to make its annual payment in 1923, and French occupation of an industrial belt in Western Germany escalated into an international crisis and the impoverishment of Germany. Charles Dawes and a team of American financiers provided a plan that allowed Germany to continue reparations payments at half the original value and benefit from American loans.
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What accounted for the expansion of the Ku Klux Klan beyond the South in the post-World War I era?
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It extended its targets beyond black Americans to immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews. The Ku Klux Klan was reborn at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in 1915, but it did not expand its membership beyond the South until it extended its targets beyond black Americans. The new Klan promised to defend family, morality, and traditional American values against the threats posed by blacks, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews. Using this broad strategy, it attracted 3 to 4 million members and spread throughout the nation by the mid-1920s.
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What did the presidential election of 1924, in which Calvin Coolidge defeated John W. Davis and Robert La Follette, reveal about American voters' concerns?
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The voters rejected the principle that the state should lead in protecting the general welfare. Coolidge had two opponents in the 1924 election: Democrat John Davis, a conservative corporate lawyer, and Progressive Party candidate Robert La Follette, who championed labor unions, the regulation of business, and the protection of civil liberties. Coolidge won by a landslide and correctly declared that "This is a business country, and it wants a business government." The voters had turned their backs on the progressive reforms of the early twentieth century.
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Why did the Klan lose significance in American politics after 1924?
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Immigration restrictions eased concerns about foreigners. Immigration restrictions in the Johnson-Reed Act decreased the public's worry about invading foreigners. In addition, sensational wrongdoing by Klan leaders cost it the support of traditional moralists. For example, Grand Dragon David Stephenson of Indiana went to jail for the kidnapping and rape of a woman who subsequently committed suicide.
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What was the result of the changes on the assembly line and in manufacturing management in the 1920s?
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Much higher productivity and profits but only slightly higher wages During the 1920s, corporations established bureaucratic management structures and specialized divisions. Productivity in manufacturing increased 32 percent between 1922 and 1929, leading to greatly increased profits, but average wages increased only 8 percent.
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What did the Harding administration undertake to restore national prosperity in the United States?
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High tariffs to protect American businesses When Harding was elected in 1920, the unemployment rate was 20 percent and the bankruptcy rate was growing. In order to regain national prosperity, Harding pushed high tariffs to protect American businesses. His Fordney-McCumber tariff, enacted in 1922, raised import duties to unprecedented levels. It, combined with other measures, did boost the American economy.
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Supporters of the Johnson-Reed Act argued that the United States had become the world's
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garbage can and dumping ground. Backers of the Johnson-Reed Act declared that America had become "the garbage can and the dumping ground of the world." They therefore manipulated quotas to ensure entry only to "good" immigrants from western Europe.
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How did rural dwellers of the 1920s perceive America's growing cities?
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As a menace to traditional values Critics of cities—ignoring the large numbers of blacks in the South and of Mexican Americans and Asian Americans in the West—argued that rural America embodied a homogeneous Anglo-Saxon heritage. Rural Americans held themselves up as defenders of old-fashioned moral standards while contending that cities were controlled by immigrant urban dwellers who were tainted by radicalism and sexual vice.
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During the 1920s, American culture changed as old notions of frugality were transformed by
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advertising. Advertising undermined the old values of thrift and saving and replaced them with a buy-now, pay-later mentality. Advertising played on insecurity, telling people through newspapers, magazines, radios, and billboards that they had to purchase certain goods in order to be successful, and installment purchase plans allowed them to buy those goods before they had saved money for them.
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Why did Americans like Herbert Hoover as a presidential candidate in 1928?
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He represented morality, efficiency, and prosperity. To most voters, Herbert Hoover neatly combined with the images of morality, efficiency, service, and prosperity. As a result, he won the election by a landslide with nearly 58 percent of the vote and 444 electoral votes compared to Al Smith's 87.
