The Roaring 20__: Crash Course US History #32 episode transcript - U.S. History by Crash Course

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The Roaring 20__: Crash Course US History #32

From: U.S. History by Crash Course

In which John Green teaches you about the United States in the 1920s. They were known as the roaring 20s, but not because there were lions running around everywhere. In the 1920s, America's economy was booming, and all kinds of social changes were in progress. Hollywood, flappers, jazz, there was all kinds of stuff going on in the 20s. But as usual with Crash Course, things were about to take a turn for the worse. John will teach you about the_ Charleston, the many Republican presidents of the 1920s, laissez-faire capitalism, jazz, consumer credit, the resurgent Klan, and all kinds of other stuff.

Full Transcript

The Roaring 20s Crash Course US History 32

speaker01 00:00:00

Hi I'm John Green, this is Crash Course us history and today we're going learn about one of the best is ever, the 1000 and 920 s. The TS gave us jazz movies, radio making out in cars, illegal liquor and the TS also gave us prosper for everybody and gangsters and a consumer culture based on credit and lots of prejudice against immigrants. And eventually the worst economic crisis the US has ever seen. Green Mr Green, but what about Gatsby? Yeah, me from the past. It's true that Gatsby turned out I'll write 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 abortive sorrows and short winded elations of men.

speaker01 00:47:00

So there's a stereotypical view of the 1920s as the roaring 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 business man. I'm a businessman. But anyway, during the 1920s, the government helped business grow like gangbusters, largely by not regulating it much at all. This is known as laissez afair capitalism or laissez faire capitalism. If you're good at speaking French.

speaker01 01:24:00

The Republican Party dominated politics in the 1000 and 920 S, with 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 stalked the boards of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission with men who shared their Protobuf news. News shifting the country away from the economic regulation that had been favored by progressives. 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 GE Harding. Now, Harding himself wasn't terribly corrupt, but he picked terrible friends. They included Attorney General Harry Doherty, 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. Paul later became the first cabinet member ever to be convicted of a felony.

speaker01 02:21:00

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. 1920s S annual production of cars tripled to 4.8 million in automobile companies were gradually consolidated into the Big three that we know today. Ford Chrysler and Harley Davidson 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 19 19900 S cars came to be known as scootie pooping chariots. What's that they were called? Brothels 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. 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 stand can I get a libert toagel?

speaker01 03:29:00

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 provided by radios and baseball games, boxing matches, vacations, dance crazes. I mean, before Gangnam Style, there was 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 the American film industry. Moved out to Hollywood before World War One 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 them.

speaker01 04:22:00

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 American standard of living. And this was a huge change in attitude. These days, Don't even think of card, says debt, really, but they are, and that was a relatively new idea, as was another feature of American life in the TS That is so 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 Rudolf 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, Limburg wasn't a truly contemporary celebrity in the sense of being famous for being famous, but he was a business more than a businessman.

speaker01 05:13:00

High culture. Also, this was the age of the lost generation of American writers, many of whom lived in Europe, but America had its own version of Paris in New York, the decade of the 1000 and 920 S saw continued migration of African American people from the south to cities in the north and became the capital of Black America. And speaking of migration, let us now migrate to the chair for the mystery document.

speaker01 05:35:00

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. All right, let's see what we got here. If we must die, let it not be like hogs hunted and penned in an ingredient spot while round us bark the mad and hungry dogs making their mock at our accursed lot like men will face the murderous, cowardly pack pressed to the wall, dying but fight back.

speaker01 06:01:00

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 called If We Must Die. Oh, it's the only thing in the world I'm actually good. I know that from the imagery alone, especially to 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 that we will fight back.

speaker01 06:27:00

This was part of the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, which rejected stereotypes and prejudice and sought to celebrate African American experience.

speaker01 06:35:00

Meanwhile, things were changing for women as well as they found new ways to express autonomy. Flappers kept their hair and skirt short, smoked and drank illegally in public, and availed themselves of birth control, And marketers encouraged them to buy products like cigarettes, christened Torches of Freedom by Edward Bern's. Liberation had its limits, though most women were still expected to marry, have children, and find their freedom at home through the use of washing machines.

speaker01 06:58:00

But the picture of Prosper 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, it 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 1920 two-two and 1920 five-nines. 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 Americans share of national income exceeded that of the bottom 60%. An estimated 40% of Americans lived in poverty.

speaker01 07:37:00

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 small businesses disappeared. During the 19 9 20s, 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 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.

speaker01 08:17:00

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 1 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. Farmers incomes dropped steadily, and many saw banks foreclose upon their property. For the first time in American history, the number of farms declined during the 1000 and 920 s for farmers. The Great Depression began early thanks bubble, so in general, the federal government did little to nothing to help farmers or workers.

speaker01 08:55:00

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. 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 Hols called the marketplace of ideas in NAR versus Minnesota, the Supreme Court struck down censorship of newspapers, and by 1927, just as Brandeis was writing that 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 19 9 and 20s 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 1, the Klan denounced immigrants and Jews and Catholics as less than 100% American and by the mid twenty's, the Klan claimed more than 3 million members, and it was the largest private organization right here in my home state of Indiana and with more immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe who were often Catholic and Jewish white Protestants became more and more concerned about losing their dominant position in the social order.

speaker01 10:11:00

Spoiler alert, it turns out OK for you white Protestants, the first immigration restriction bill was passed in 1921, limiting the number of immigrants from Europe to 357000 in 1924, a new immigration law dropped that number to 150000 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 were 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 anarchists and pseudoscientific ideas about race. Whites were seen as scientifically superior to people of color, and, as President Coolidge himself declared when he signed the 1009 hundred twenty-fours law, America must be kept American. Tell me, Calvin Coolidge, about how American you are. Are you Cherokee or Cree or Lakota?

speaker01 11:11:00

The 19922 andies 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 Scope in 2000 and see, 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 freedom of speech. Scopes was prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan, whom you will remember as having recently resigned as Secretary of 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 argue that defense attorneys aren't all SC 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 Trio 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 1000 and 920 S.

speaker01 12:04:00

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, period, when tolerance became an important value, but at the same time, it saw a rise in lynching immigrants were necessary for the economic boom of the 19 TWS, but at the same time their numbers were restricted as they were seen as a threat to traditional American value question that we're still struggling with today. What are those values? I don't mean that rhetorically, let me know in comments, thanks for watching.

speaker01 12:35:00

I'll see you next week, Crash course is producing directed by Stan Muller, our script supervisor is Meredith Danko, the associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show written by my high school history teacher Raoul Maya rosiana Rojas, and myself, and our graphics team is Thought Cafe. I nailed that. Every week there's a new caption for the liberto, 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, you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure you've subscribed. And as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.