Chapter 19 and 20 Reading Flashcards
end of war
end of wartime; economic opportunities for women and African Americans; postwar adjustments
farmers
farming agricultural prices; difficult to pay debts; suffered under growing debt while crop prices were falling
inflation
rising prices
workers
struck for higher wages and shorter workdays
violence of some strikes attributed to the presence of
radicals among the strike leaders
emergence of the Soviet Union
communist nation; compounded fear of radicals and communists
communist ideology
international workers revolution
communist revolts in Europe
central and eastern; made it seem like the worldwide revolution was starting
red scare
widespread fear of suspected communists and radicals thought to be plotting revolution
A Mitchell Palmer
attorney general; mounted a series of raids; Palmer Raids
palmer raids
series of raids where thousands were arrested; some radicals and immigrants from southern or Eastern Europe; seemed to attack the liberties Americans held most dear
Warren G Harding
campaigned for president calling for a return of normalcy; won in a landslide; preferred a laissez faire approach to business; worked with Andrew Mellon to reduce regulations on businesses and to raise protective tariff rates making it easier for US producers too sell goods at home; admitted he liked playing golf more than governing and trusted his friends with important government positions; favored less restriction on businesses
US 1920
richest, most industrialized country in the world; largest creditor nation in the world
creditor nation
other countries owed you more than you owed them
result of WW1; Americas economy and political standing
in the world changed
mass production
enabled Americans to produce more goods in less time; economy boomed
automobile industry
played major role in boom
Henry Ford
introduced new methods and ideas that changed the way manufactured goods were made; hired scientific management experts to improve his assembly line; raised wages cut workdays; gave workers Saturday and Sundays off
model t
after assembly line made faster it became affordable for most Americans; automobile ownership boomed
automobile production stimulated
other industries; steel, gas, asphalt, wood, gasoline, insurance, and road construction
growth of industries led to
new, better paying jobs; spur national prosperity; flood of new, affordable goods became available to the public creating a consumer revolution
installment buying
enabled customers to buy goods by making a small downpayment on a product and paying the rest in monthly installments
Americans buying
stock on credit
stock prices soared in bull markets
people began buying on margin paying as little as 10% of the stock price upfront to a broker
price of the stock rose
buyer could pay off the broker and still make profit
price of the stock fell
buyer still owed the broker the full price of the stock
economic boom felt more
in cities where jobs were plentiful
cities grew
people moved out to the suburbs and drove cars into the city for work
America’s wealth
unevenly distributed
europeans raised tariffs
making US goods more expensive there
Herbert Hoover
secretary of commerce; asked business leaders to voluntarily make advancements
Andrew Mellon
secretary of treasury; banker; worked with Harding to reduce regulations on businesses and raise protective tariff
Charles Forbes
waste millions of dollars while running the Veteran’s Bureau
Albert Fall
secretary of the interior; created the biggest scandal of Harding’s administration
teapot dome scandal
Fall took bribes to transfer control of oil reserves from the US navy to provide oilmen; later forced to return the oil and sentenced to a year in jail
Calvin Coolidge
new president; quiet and honest; put his administration in the hands of men who held to the simple virtues of an older generation; mistrusted the use of legislation to achieve social change; favored big businesses; reduced the national debt and lowered taxes to give incentives to businesses ; said and did nothing about the country’s main problems
country’s problems
low prices for farm crops, racial discrimination, and low wages
foreign policy pushed european governments
Coolidge; to repay war debts to the US
Dawes plan
arranged to help Germany, France, and Great Britain repay war debts
kellogg Briand pact
62 nations signed; treaty that outlawed war
urban Americans
enjoyed a rising standard of living and embraced a modern view of the world
city dwellers
tended to value education and to be activates for science and social change
rural Americans
formal education considered less important than keeping the farm going; tended to be conservative about political and social issues preferring to keep things the way they were
scopes trial
Tennessee passed a law making it illegal to teach the theory of evolution in the state’s public school; John Scopes arrested for teaching evolution; guilty and fined $100
Clarence Darrow
most celebrated defense attorney in the country; defended John Scopes for teaching evolution
wave of immigration inspired
nativist politicians to pass laws forming immigrants to pass a literacy test and create a quota system
quota system
sets limits on the number of new immigrants allowed into the US
KKK
reorganized in Georgia; violent group; Grand Dragon and Imperial Wizard; promoted hatred of African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants
prohibition
states ratified the 19th amendment; passed volstead act to enforce the amendment; police turned blind eye to illegal drinking establishments; led to growth of organized crime
shorter workweeks for city dwellers
had free time and money to spend on entertainment
movies
one of the most popular forms of entertainment
the jazz singer
became the first movie to include sound matching the action on the screen; talkies
entertainment at home
phonographs and radios
Babe Ruth
the home run king
Charles Lindenburg
first to fly solo and non stop around the Atlantic Ocean
flappers
women who wore short skirts and bobbed hair
Sigmund Frued
theory that human behavior is driven by unconscious desires rather than by rational thought
writers
F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway; wrote about the meaning of life and war; examined subconscious desires and the dark side of the American dream
African Americans in north
found well paying jobs; middle class of African American professionals; growing political voice in New York, Chicago, and Detroit
Harlem in NYC
became haven for African Americans from the south and black immigrants from the Caribbean
Marcus Garvey
immigrant; Jamaican who traveled widely; after seeing black treated poorly started a back to Africa movement urging black unity and separation of the races
F Scott Fitzgerald
called the 1920s a jazz age
African Americans
gave the age its jazz
jazz
emerged in the south as a combination of African American and European musical styles
Louis Armstrong
trumpet player; took jazz to the world
Bessie Smith
singer; nicknamed the empress of the blues; highest paid African American entertainer of the 1920s
Harlem renaissance
outpouring of art and literature that explored the African American experience
Claude McKay
writer; novels and poems were militant calls for action
Langston Hughes
celebrated African American culture
Zora Neale Hurston
wrote about women’s desire for independence
Great Depression
ended the Harlem renaissance
laissez faire
type of economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism
