Chapter 4 - Political and social tensions, 1919-1929 Flashcards
What was the main social clash in the 1920s?
Old-time America - white Protestants - farming.
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New urban/industrial USA, immigrants - Catholic Irish, Italians, Polish, Jews from Austria-Hungary and Russia.
What was The Monkey Trial?
1925 social clash between Old and New Americans.
Science teacher Scopes - teaching Darwinian theory in biology - opposed creationism/Bible.
Criminal offence - fined $500.
Bryan argued for God.
Atheist lawyer Darrow argued against (defended Scopes).
Scopes fined $100 as he WAS teaching it.
Showed clashes between religion and evolution.
What was the Protestant attitude towards alcohol?
Many saw saloons with 80% proof strength spirits - badges of shame.
Powerful anti-alcohol lobby groups e.g. The Prohibition Party.
Saloon closures/limit traffic liquor.
Drunken violence/poverty - a man’s wages - better spent on family than selfish self destruction.
Kansas - dry in 1880 - impossible to get a drink.
How was alcohol associated with immigrants?
Poorer immigrants - Irish.
Supposedly feckless behavior.
Businessmen required sobriety in the workplace.
1917 - 18 states had adopted prohibition
1920 - 33 - when the Volstead Act became nation-wide.
Many brewers - German in origin.
1919 - the necessary 36 states had ratified the amendment - constitutional to enforce prohibition.
Wilson tried vetoing the Volstead Act- but 2/3 majority Congress overrode the veto.
Was the alcohol ban popular?
An alliance of feminists, tee-totalling protestants, preachers, patriots and businessmen had practically made the USA dry.
Protests were surprisingly muted.
Only a mass meeting in NY.
Baltimore parade and few protests in bigger cities.
Keenest supporters - Mississippi - self-employed/attended Baptist churches.
Opponents - cities/Roman Catholics.
What was the problem with alcohol prohibition? 7
- Congress willing to pass, but not fund.
Lack of enforcement agents - 3,000 were meant to cover the entire country; poor pay - $2,500 per agent. - Bootlegging between Canada and Detroit - worth $215m per year.
- Speakeasies.
- Methyl alcohol produced by accident caused blindness/death - 30 died in NY - ‘moonshine’: (illegal distilleries were in many homes).
- Tasted foul - had to mix - cocktails.
- High prices - highball drink 3 dollars in 1920 from 15 cents in 1914.
- ‘Turf wars’ between rivals.
How many speakeasies were there?
Washington DC - 300 bars before - 700 after.
Massachuesetts - 1,000 before - 80,000 speakeasies after.
4,000 in Boston alone.
Even West could easily obtain alcohol - Kansas City was famous for its nightlife.
What was the most famous ‘turf war’ incident?
St Valentine’s Day massacre - 1929.
6 people gunned down (Irish Moran gang) by Italian Capone gang.
Al Capone - annual income $60m by 1927.
Rival gangs struggled to control the supply of alcohol in an area and exclude rivals.
Corruption of police/officials through bribery e.g. William Thompson, Mayor of Chicago.
How did prohibition stimulate organised crime?
Enhanced organisational skills.
Vast sums made by booze - drugs, gambling and prostitution.
Mainly from Irish, Italian and Jewish communities.
Chicago: 1927-1930 - 227 gang murders, but no successful convictions.
‘Tommy gun’ and the Cadillac was popular.
What was the general rural view on alcohol?
Supported it.
Small-town America - consumption decrease - sustained in 1933 when prohibition ended.
Only 50% breweries re-opened when allowed to do so.
Clear shift between drinking hard liquor to wine/beer.
Who was most likely to enter the speakeasies?
How did speakeasies promote equality?
Young and middle-class men.
Women entered them with their partners - saloons had never encouraged this before.
Famous for Black jazz musicians.
How was the prohibition a good thing?
- Drop in road accidents.
- Black jazz - equality.
- Money went to consumer goods - cinema.
- HOWEVER it did NOT stop drinking -
How was the 1928 presidential election related to alcohol?
Democrat Smith was against prohibition - said it only handed the money over to criminals.
Republican Hoover was for prohibition - won by a landslide.
What were the main immigrants in the USA between 1880-1914?
2.3 million Jews from Russia and Poland.
2 million Catholic Poles.
4 million Catholic Italians.
What did the ‘nativist’ protests include?
1849 ‘Know Nothing’ Party - attacked new Irish immigrant wave - Irish potato famine in 1846-1847.
Chinese worker flood into California after the Civil War - Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
What was the feeling towards immigration before the FWW?
1907 - Congress commission established to study immigration.
Literacy tests to limit the number of ‘inferior’ races - eugenics (controlled breeding).
Emphasised the inferiority of the new immigrants compared to the ‘old’ Nordic stock.
What did the 1917 Immigration Act do?
16+ had to undergo rigorous health checks/literacy tests.
Failure - entry refusal/sent back.
Vetoed by Wilson.
However 2/3 majority Congress overrode this.
How did the FWW affect immigration?
‘Hyphenated Americans’ - referred to German-Americans Stimulated nationalism/Americanism - loyalty fears.
Suspicion of ‘aliens’ - Germans and Austro-Hungarians.
Wilson - expressed the need for 100% Americans.
1917 - established Committee on Public Information to circulate/distribute anti-German and pro-Allied propaganda.
Bureau of Investigation - disrupted German American work, trade unions, and leftist organisations through raids, arrests, agents and legal prosecution.
Roosevelt - ‘America for Americans’.