Chapter 31 Flashcards
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.
Underworld
Those who live outside society’s laws, by vice or crime
Credit
In business, the arrangement of purchasing goods or services immediately but making the payment at a later date
Repression
In psychology, the forcing on instincts or ideas painful to the conscious mind into the unconscious, where they continue toe exercise influence
Surtax
A special tax, usually involving a raised percentage increase on an already existing tax
A. Mitchell Palmer
Attorney General; “saw red” too easily; earned the nickname “Fighting Quaker” because of his excess of zeal in rounding up suspected communists; bomb exploded outside his Washington home in 1919; dubbed the “Quaking Fighter” after bomb
John T. Scopes
A likable high school biology teacher from Dayton Tennessee, who, in 1925, challenged a rule outlawing the teaching of evolution in classrooms; defended by nationally-known defense attorney, Clarence Darrow; found guilty and fined $100, but fine was set aside on a technicality
Henry Ford
Developed the infant automotive industry; creator of the Model T, also known as a “Tin Lizzie”, a cheap, rugged, reliable car; erected an immense personal empire on the cornerstone of his mechanical genius; famed Rogue River plant produced a car every 10 seconds
Sigmund Freud
Writings justified new sexual frankness; argued that sexual frankness was responsible for a variety of nervous and emotional ills
Al Capone
A grasping and murderous booze distributor; began a six year gang war in 1925 that netted him millions of blood spattered dollars; rode around Chicago in a armor-plated car with bullet proof windows; “Public Enemy Number One”; not convicted of the Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929; served an 11-year sentence in federal prison for income-tax evasion, emerging a syphilitic wreck
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.
