chapter 30 // BOLDED Flashcards
Bolshevik Revolution (1917)
The second stage of the Russian Revolution in November 1917 when Vladamir Lenin and his Bolshevik party seized power and established a communist state. The first stage had occurred the previous February when more moderate revolutionaries overthrew the Russian czar.
red scare (1919-1920)
A period of intense anticommunism. The “Palmer raids” of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer resulted in about six thousand deportations of people suspected of “subversive” activities.
criminal syndicalism laws (1919-1920)
Passed by many states during the red scare these nefarious laws outlawed the mere advocacy of violence to secure social change. Stump speakers for the International Workers of the World, or IWW, were special targets.
American plan
A business-oriented approach to worker relations popular among firms in the 1920s to defeat unionization. Managers sought to strengthen their communication with workers and to offer benefits like pensions and insurance. They insisted on an “open shop” in contrast to the mandatory union membership through the “closed shop” that many labor activists had demanded in the strike wave after World War I.
Immigration Act of 1924
Also known as the “National Origins Act,” this law established quotas for immigration to the United States. Immigration from southern and eastern Europe was sharply curtailed, while immigrants from Asia were shut out altogether.
Eighteenth Amendment (1919)
This constitutional amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages, ushering in the era known as prohibition.
Volstead Act (1919)
A federal act enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
racketeers
People who obtain money illegally by fraud, bootlegging, gambling, or threats of violence. Racketeers invaded the ranks of labor during the 1920s, a decade when gambling and gangsterism were prevalent in American life.
Bible Belt
The region of the American South, extending roughly from North Carolina west to Oklahoma and Texas, where Protestant Fundamentalism and belief in literal interpretation of the Bible were traditionally strongest.
Fundamentalism
A Protestant Christian movement emphasizing the literal truths of the Bible and opposing religious modernism, which sought to reconcile religion and science. It was especially strong in the Baptist Church and the Church of Christ, first organized in 1906.
Scientific Management
A system of industrial management created and promoted in the early twentieth century by Frederick W. Taylor, emphasizing stopwatch efficiency to improve factory performance. The system gained immense popularity across the United States and Europe.
Fordism
A system of assembly-line manufacturing and mass production named after Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company and developer of the Model T Car.
United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
A black nationalist organization founded in 1914 by the Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey in order to promote resettlement of African Americans to their “African homeland” and to stimulate a vigorous separate black economy within the United States.
modernism
In response to the demanding conditions of modern life, this artistic and cultural movement revolted against comfortable Victorian standards and accepted chance, change, contingency, uncertainty, and fragmentation. Originating among the avant-garde artists and intellectuals around the turn of the twentieth century, modernism blossomed into a full-fledged cultural movement in art, music, literature, and architecture.
“Lost Generation”
A creative circle of expatriate American artists and writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein, who found shelter and inspiration in post-World War I Europe.
