Did the 1920s roar for all? Flashcards
Describe the economic boom..
By 1923 the US population was 123 million.
More industry and commerce workers lived in towns and used wages to purchase goods. America had massive steel, coal, and oil industries, and chemicals was also growing. New technology such as cars and telephones, alongside the film industry, were leading the world. Products were sold in Europe, Latin America, and the Far East. In 1914 farmers were producing more than they could sell, but people were confident that agriculture and industry were going strength to strength.
How did America benefit from WWI?
Americans during the war sold arms and munitions to Britain and France and could benefit from exporting to European colonial powers. America outstripped Germany’s chemical industry and explosive production produced new by-products which became industries in their own right. When America entered war it had a blip but by 1922 the economy was growing again.
What were Republican policies which inspired growth?
Republican policies helped growth in the twenties; laissez-faire : not intervening with business; tariffs, in 1922 Harding issued the Fordney-McCumber tariff making imported food expensive; low taxation so more could be spent on products; trusts, super-corporations opposed by Democrats. Carnegie in steel and Rockefeller in oil dominated industry.
Describe the experience for Flappers and single workers?
- Rise of the jazz age and flapper women. Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F Scott Fitzgerald author - a symbol.
- Jazz, sexual experimentation, and consumption embraced in mainstream.
- 1920-30 1/4 of women in work. Single women in factories seen as unwomanly, but rise in clerical work. Ultimate goal still to find a husband. Clerical workers worked in separate rooms.
- 1929 five hundred women on walkout at South textiles strike with state intervention, filmed by media.
How did the 1920s change for married women?
- Rise in courtship with co-educational state universities. Sigmund Freud’s ideas entered the mainstream, promoting femininity. Homosexuals frowned upon.
- New sexuality for women.
- Anxiety for women to enter marriage.
- Athletes such as Helen Wills, tennis star, showed women could become masculine from sport, ending intercollegiate competition.
- First Miss America Beauty Pageant 1921, Atlantic City.
- New responsibility for housewives to attend PTA meetings, weigh babies, oversee music lessons.
Describe campaign changes.
- Red scares, race riots in Chicago, and 1924 National Origins Act stemmed immigration in East Europe and Asia.
- NAWSA turned to League of Women’s Voters and National Women’s Party campaigned for ERA in 1923. Female individualism. Alice Paul denied racism as feminist issue.
- Former suffragettes continued domestic reform such as Carrie Chapman Scott.
- Council for Interracial Cooperation, CIC, established women’s committee for white and black middle class women in South.
- Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, WILPF, aroused War Dept opposition 1922, being listed as suspicious. New coalition founded to focus on economy.
What was the debate over protective legislation?
Women were divided. Some women wanted protective legislation for women in the workplace, but other feminists wanted organising of women in unions. In 1920 a Women’s Bureau was set in the Department of Labor. However, the NWP and right both opposed protective legislation. Some felt the NWP were promoting their own cause but leaving behind working class women.
How did minority women experience the 1920s?
The KKK rose in Northern cities and African Americans were excluded from political rights in the South. Alongside this, there was job discrimination in the service sector. Mexicans migrated after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Mexicans were employed by companies such as the Great Western Sugar Company and worked as families with the man receiving the woman’s wages. However, in America Mexican women lost autonomy they had at home. 44.3% of Mexicans worked in domestic service in 1930, and 19.3% in low-skilled jobs such as sewing garments and pecan-shelling, with 21.2% in agriculture. Females showed leadership in the Texas pecan strike, 1927.
