The First New Deal

I)              First 100 Days – this has often been treated by historians as the implementation of the Roosevelt “plan;” however, Roosevelt operated during this time period without any plan, and often under conflicting advice from his advisers.  Most of the actions taken during these 100 days were forced upon the administration by events.

A)    March 1933 Bank Holiday – the first action that Roosevelt took during his administration was to order all banks closed to prevent a “run.”  Banks were allowed to reopen when they were able to prove that they were solvent.  While this sounds like a very drastic measure, it should be pointed out that 36 states had already closed the banks they chartered (and at this time there were only 48 states). This caused some temporary hardships, but as banks reopened they did so with the assurance that they were solvent—and thanks to the insistence of Michigan Republican Arthur H. Vandenberg, the federal government now protected bank deposits up to $2,500 through the predecessor of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

B)     Fireside Chats – FDR became the first president to regularly use the radio to communicate with the American people.  FDR used a friendly, conversational tone on the radio, and many people came to look upon the president as a personal friend, someone who was interested in their welfare.  Because he also came to embody the government, many people came to see the government as directly interested in their welfare, as well.

C)     “Alphabet Agencies” – these agencies were populated with young Jewish and Catholic intellectuals, who were largely unwelcome in the Protestant-dominated business world.

1)      Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) – the agency charged with providing funds for the unemployed.  Although the agency did hand out direct relief, much of the relief that people received they had to work for.

2)      Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) – largely served young adult males; moved city boys into the country (away from those corrupting influences) to work on conservation projects.

3)      Civil Works Administration (CWA) – small scale public works projects, mainly road-building.

4)      Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) – implemented a whole series of laws and policies to assist farmers; restored “parity”; government made payments to farmers for NOT planting crops, which acted to decrease the supply and force prices upward.  The timing of the implementation of this piece of legislation meant that many farmers had to destroy crops that were already planted as well as livestock.

(a)    Who benefited? – most of the benefit of these policies went to larger and corporate farmers, who could take more land out of cultivation

(i)      Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union – formed to protest this development; it was a bi-racial group, which of course was threatening to those in power in the South, and therefore was swiftly and violently put down (evictions, and attacks on road side camps)

5)      Public Works Administration (PWA) – funded larger building projects, like University Hall and the Glass Bowl, as well as much of the expansion of the Toledo Zoo, and eventually a new public library.

6)      Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) – provided flood control for the Tennessee Valley (the Tennessee River flows northward from Alabama, through Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio River); the dams for this flood control also brought cheap electricity, which attracted industrial development in the area as well.

7)      National Recovery Agency (NRA) – perhaps the most famous of the alphabet agencies was the NRA. What the NRA proposed to do was to foment the development of cartels in the USeconomy—that is, to encourage the formation of monopolies. It was thought at the time that this would help stifle cut-throat competition, because companies would be allowed to collude together to fix prices and divide the market between themselves.

(a)    Section 7a – in return for being allowed to form cartels, businesses were to allow employees to join unions “of their own choosing.” This section was ambiguous on the point of whether these had to be independent unions, or whether they could be company unions. United Mine Workers president, however, sent organizers into the field with the message that “The President wants you to join the union.”

(b)    The NRA was overturned by the Supreme Court, and was the impetus for Roosevelt’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court (which had to this point blocked much of the New Deal legislation).

(c)    The NRA, headed by the mercurial (and possibly unstable) Gen. Hugh Johnson, had largely failed before it was killed by the Supreme Court. Compliance to the NRA codes was largely voluntary, and therefore businesses often failed to comply. Additionally, the union provision proved unsatisfactory to both businesses (who were, for the most part, extremely reluctant to work with labor unions) and labor (who were disappointed that Section 7a allowed the creation of company unions to compete with them).

II) Three Strikes

A) San Francisco Longshoremen’s Strike

1) Grievances

(a) The shape-up – longshoremen at this time were hired like day-laborers; they showed up at dock gates in a port, and the hiring boss chose those he was disposed to choose. If workers provided him with a reason to choose them (connections, bribes, kickbacks on the wages they were to receive that day), they were, of course, more likely to be chosen. The most important battle as far as the workers were concerned was to gain control of hiring practices (known as the hiring hall) so that they could control who would be sent to what job.

(b) Master agreement – workers demanded that all shipping firms agree to the same terms of contract, so that all workers on the west coast would be treated the same, and so that workers in other ports could not be used to whittle away the gains others might make.

2) International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) – the ILA was the nominal union on the west coast, although its influence was flagging during this time; its real source of power was its control of the ports on the east coast, and on the Gulf coast. The ILA was led by a man named Joe Ryan, one of the most spectacularly corrupt union officials in history; as the strike on the West Coast dragged on, he flew in and attempted to make a separate peace in each port, rather than the master agreement that was one of the demands of the workers; only the longshoremen of Seattle gave in to this ploy, however.

(a) Harry Bridges – the leader of the San Francisco local was named Harry Bridges. Originally from Australia, Bridges was a brilliant organizer. Although he was probably a member of the Communist Party, he unfailingly put the interests of his members first (although this did not stop efforts by the US government to try and deport Bridges for much of the next forty years as an undesirable alien).

3) Battle of Rincon Hill – on July 5, San Francisco police attempted to put an end to the city’s portion of the longshoremen’s strike by attacking pickets at Rincon Hill, killing two and injuring 109 others. This blatant favoritism by the police led to workers in the city to call for a general strike, which took place for the following two days. Workers took over many city functions during that time period—directing traffic, etc. The international office of the AFL, however, demanded that the San Francisco CLU end its support for the general strike, which they almost immediately did and the strike quickly ended.

4) Settlement –the longshoremen’s strike went on for another three weeks after this, however, ending on July 31, after 11 weeks, with an agreement to arbitration on the outstanding issues. Through vigorous job  actions over the next year or so, however, longshore workers were able to gain most of their demands.

B) Minneapolis Teamster’s strike

1) Citizen’s Alliance – an alliance of business citizens, that is. This group of business leaders was determined to keep Minneapolis a bastion of the open shop.

2) Teamster’s Local 574 – led by a group of militant truck drivers who had been expelled by the Communist Party in 1928—namely the three Dunne Brothers (Vincent, Grant, and Miles) and Karl Skoglund—who were determined to organize truck drivers in the city.

(a) February 1934 Coal Driver’s Strike – the first blow to the Citizen’s Alliance leadership in the city was this strike; obviously, a great number of Minneapolis residents needed coal in the middle of February. The quick success of this strike made the organization of other truck drivers and warehouse workers much easier; by the middle of May the local boasted of over 5,000 members.

(b) May 1934 strike – called after employers refused to bargain with the union; many members of the Citizen’s Alliance were deputized. The Teamster local’s Woman’s Auxiliary was also involved in the strike; when this group was attacked by the police and five members were sent to the hospital, 35,000 building trades members declared a sympathy strike, with the city’s CLU supporting the decision. After several bloody battles, the employer’s group agreed to bargain with union.

(c) July 1934 strike – the union distrusted the employer’s association, and began almost immediately to prepare the membership for another strike, which came July 16. The crux of disagreement was jurisdiction over so-called “inside” workers (inside the warehouse, that is). Teamster’s Local 574 wanted to transcend craft unionism and move toward industrial unionism, which the employer’s association opposed—as did the union own international president, Dan Tobin.

(i) “Bloody Friday” – small group of “flying pickets”  were ambushed by the Minneapolis police (as an investigation by Minnesota governor Floyd Olson proved), with the result that two of the pickets died. Some 40,000 workers marched in the funeral procession for their two stricken comrades.

(ii) Government arbitration – the arbitrators sent in by the government were distrusted by Local 574, and  proved to be ineffective.

(d) Settlement – on August 22, the employers association agreed to union representation of inside workers, and all other union demands.

C) Toledo

1) February 1934 – strike effecting Spicer Manufacturing, Bingham Stamping, Logan Gear, and Electric Auto-Lite was called by Local 18384, a Federal Union, a sort of temporary union created by the Toledo Central Labor Union to begin organizing Toledo autoworkers.

(a) Little initial support at Auto-Lite – only 15 workers at the Auto-Lite plant joined the picket lines in February; only the solidarity of the workers at the other plants, and their refusal to go back to work without their fellow union members at the plant, got the Auto-Lite management to agree to take back the strikers and “bargain” with the union.

(b) Section 7a – (read the clause from page 15 of Korth book); “guaranteed” workers to choose a union, and to bargain collectively (the NIRA code gave manufacturers the right to set prices and production quotas amongst themselves, in return). Management attempted to meet this requirement by encouraging company unions; workers resisted this push, and attempted to establish unions under their control. In all three strikes, the main push for the workers was simply that management recognize the union as their bargaining agent.

2) Auto-Lite bargaining tactics – essentially, to stonewall the union in the hope that it would eventually fade away. Instead of bargaining in good faith, as the company had indicated that it would, they instead hired more workers, in order to expand the pool of trained strikebreakers, in the anticipation that another strike would follow in the immediate future.

(a) C.O. Miniger – owner and manager of the company since the company had moved to Toledo from Indiana to supply headlamps for Willys automobiles. Sat on the board of directors of the Commerce Guardian Bank; when this bank failed in 1933, he used an advanced warning to pull out the money of his company and his own personal accounts, while thousands of ordinary Toledoans lost their savings in the failure of the bank.

(b) Tear gas – the company also bought a large quantity of tear gas, in anticipation of trouble that would follow

3) Congress for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) – later known as the American Workers Party (AWP), which still later became the Workers Party. This group was led at this time by A.J. Muste, a (then) former Dutch Reformed Church minister; this organization was peopled with believers in Leon Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” (as contrary to Josef Stalin’s “revolution in one country”), left-wing socialists who believed that the economic distress of the country gave them a ripe opportunity to overthrow the capitalist system of the country (a belief which many capitalists shared).

(a) Lucas County Unemployed League – formed in late 1933 to begin organizing the unemployed in the county (mainly in the city of Toledo). They accomplished this by using such tactics as a “death march,” where a group of unemployed marched slowly around the county courthouse, pulling a wagon with a bell sounding the death knell; and by taking groups of unemployed into restaurants and insisting the owner send the bill to the Lucas County commissioners.

4) Second Auto-Lite Strike – concentrated upon the Auto-Lite and two affiliated plants; Bingham Stamping, and Logan Gear, both of which were partially owned by Miniger as well.

(a) April 13 – pickets set up after the membership of the local voted to strike the night before; approximately 400 workers from the plant walked the picket line, while about the same number of workers crossed the picket line initially. Picket line numbers were increased by the participation of other union members, and by the participation by members of the LCUL.

(b) Injunction – strikebreakers were being roughed up, verbally abused, and intimidated (followed, sometimes up the steps of their homes). On May 3, company lawyers asked for, and received from Circuit Court judge Roy R. Stuart, a sweeping injunction, limiting the number of pickets to twenty-five, and preventing the participation by anyone who had not been an employee of the Auto-Lite. The immediate result of this was that the number of strikebreakers who reported for work greatly increased, allowing the company to run full production, and essentially defeating the strike.

(c) Violation of the injunction – at the suggestion of Louis Budenz (later a member of the Communist Party, and later still a born-again Catholic and FBI informer), the members of the LCUL announced, in an open letter sent May 5 to Judge Stuart, that they were going to violate the injunction—which they began the next day. The members (rather small at this early time) were promptly arrested, and brought before Judge Stuart, where they were admonished not do that anymore, and released—whereupon they promptly left the courtroom and marched back to the plant to begin picketing once again. This action encouraged other members of the LCUL to join in. They would get arrested, raise hell at the courthouse, and be released, only to head back to the picket line. This “street theater” began to attract large crowds in front of the factory—and more importantly, began to diminish the number of strikebreakers to cross the picket line.

(d) Community uprising – by May 23, more than 10,000 people, men and women, were on the picket line surrounding the factory. Deputized plant security was on the roof with tear gas. A female picket was struck on the head with an object thrown from the upper floors of the factory; workers responded with a barrage of bricks that continued through the night. At midnight, the Ohio National Guard was mobilized; by the end of the six-day disturbance, this would be the largest peacetime mobilization in Guard history. The disturbance only ends when Ohio governor White promises not to use the Guard to re-open the factory; with the factory finally closed, Auto-Lite management agreed to negotiate with the union.

D) Southern Textile Workers strike – although valiantly fought by southern workers, the dispersed nature of textile workers communities meant that they received little help in their strike, which led to its failure.

E) Labor successes – the three successful strikes of 1934 succeeded because the workers conducting the strike were able to rely upon other workers in the community—something the textile workers in the South, because of their isolation, were not able to do. Although workers were certainly inspired by section 7a, and by FDR’s apparent positive response to labor, they did not rely upon the government to help them win their battles against employers – a lesson that the CIO did not learn.

Written Assignment 7

“The Roaring ‘20s” are remembered as the “Jazz Age,” a time of bootleg gin, speakeasies, and organized crime. But at the same time, it was a decade of immigration restrictions, fundamentalist religion, and the decade that the Ku Klux Klan had its greatest influence. How can these seemingly contradictory impulses be reconciled? What role did the transition to consumer-driven capitalism play? These questions should be addressed in a 2-3 page paper, double-spaced, with conventional 1 inch margins. This assignment is due at the beginning of class next Wednesday, February 29.

The Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression

I) Economic problems of the 1920s

A) Farm Crisis – farmers were plagued with overproduction, falling farm prices, and declining income throughout the 1920s.

1) Over expansion and debt – high prices during the war had encouraged farmers to increase their level of debt; when prices fell in the recession of 1920-21, they had great difficulty in repaying this debt. Because there were no government subsidies, most farmers in the decade of the 1920s continued in this condition (or worse) for the next ten years or so.

2) Non-Partisan League – called for government intervention (the government ownership of the grain elevators and slaughterhouses, easier credit, and tax exemptions for farm improvements). This group was strongest in the upper Midwest (the Dakotas and Minnesota); it remained a force into the 1940s, particularly in Minnesota where it was transformed into the Farm-Labor Party.

3) McNary-Haugen Bill – passed twice by Congress (1926 and again in 1927), but was vetoed both times by Calvin Coolidge. This bill introduced the concept of farm parity (which was a guarantee that farmers could sell their crop at a higher price than it cost them to produce it). A similar law was not passed until the New Deal.

4) Rationalization of the family farm – more and more families were in fat being pushed off the family farm by the worsening economic conditions; this farmland was then bought up by corporations, who in turn then hired labor (often, the family who had been forced to sell their farm) to work on these farms.

5) Dustbowl – on the Great Plains, the economic hardships were worsened for farmers by the onset of drought; this area had never received a great deal of rain (settlement had only been made possible by the techniques of “dry farming”), and the extended drought coupled with poor soil conservation practices produced the most famous images of the Great Depression.

B) Decline of Organized Labor – the reaction against radical politics in general had a definite negative effect on organized labor; with the decline of organized labor also came a decline in the share of profits that workers got from the workplace.

1) “American Plan” (its evil opposite would, of course, be the “un-American Plan) – the description of the corporate drive for the open (anti-union) shop; the closed (or union) shop imposed upon the “individual liberties” of the American worker.

(a) Employer Welfare Plans – insurance, company athletic teams, and other company sponsored cultural and social events were all intended to fight the impression that workers labored for a coldly impersonal corporation that would throw them out into the streets as soon as an economic downturn occurred (which, of course, was the reality of the situation).

(b) Company unions – gave the appearance of employee representation; in reality, company unions were a way of sidetracking employee complaints about working conditions and wages. Corporations were able to push out or eliminate unions that were affiliated with the AFL, and replace them with unions that the companies could control.

2) Decline of mature industries – with the decline of mature industries, in particular the coal industry, labor lost many members in these industries which it had already organized, while more workers were finding employment in newer manufacturing industries (like automobiles), that the AFL had never been able to successfully organize in the first place
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3) Death of Samuel Gompers – Gompers died in 1924, while in office. William Green, who had formerly been an official with the United Mine Workers, replaced him. Green was not a dynamic leader, which the labor movement probably needed at this point desperately to battle against the tide of events.

4) Continuing labor racism

(a) Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters – led by A. Philip Randolph, by 1926 this union had several thousand members; the AFL, however, refused to charter the union, mainly because it had a largely black membership, and was led by an African American.

C) The Business Cycle – the so-called “boom and bust” cycle was an ongoing phenomenon for which we really have no good explanation. However, depression had happened in the past (1837-38, 1857-1861, 1873-1877, 1885-86, 1893-1897, 1907, 1920-1921), but had largely been self-adjusting (that is, they were waited out without government intervention).

1) “New prosperity” – according to economist Thorstein Veblen in 1921, this so-called new prosperity was based upon an “inordinately productive form of mechanical activity.” Machinery was able to produce more goods faster with fewer workers; but ultimately this also provided fewer customers to buy these goods.

2) Wall Street speculation – buying stocks “on margin” (that is, with money that was borrowed, in the expectation that the market would continue its upward trend. When the market crashed, these investors had to pay back these loans, which often wiped out most of the gains (and then some) that they had made previously.

3) Unemployment – increased from fewer than 500,000 to more than 4,000,000 between October and December 1929.

4) Federal Reserve Board – had fueled Wall Street speculation by keeping interest rates low through most of the 1920s; after the crash, the Fed reacted by raising interest rates at exactly the wrong time.

5) Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930) – raised import duties to the highest levels in US history; this helped increase the downward spiral of the economy, as other countries responded by raising their tariffs, as well. Many European countries went off the gold standard; Germany ended paying reparations because it was not receiving promised loans from the US, and France and Great Britain also ended payments on wartime loans they had received from the US.

D) International economic crisis – we tend to forget that this was a worldwide depression, not only localized in the US. In fact, because other countries were less hesitant to intervene through political means in their own economies, the depression was less severe and lasted a shorter time period than in the US.

E) Hard Times – bread lines and soup kitchens became common sites in major US cities, and are our most common images of the Great Depression.

1) Joblessness – in many of the manufacturing cities in the Midwest and East, unemployment levels ranged between 25% to 50% of the workforce (Toledo was at the high end of those figures). Women, particularly married women, were forced out of the workforce, since they were there to earn “pin” money anyway, and were taking money out of the pocket of a male breadwinner.

2) “Sharing the misery” – even those workers still employed were working greatly reduced hours; sometimes only 1-3 days a week, and often for six hours or less a day. This allowed many more workers to remain on the job than would otherwise be the case; however, this method could only be used in larger manufacturing concerns, smaller ones could not afford to do this.

3) Return migration – many southern whites returned to the South during this time, since it would be easier to eke out an existence back on the family farm among relatives and friends. Not all internal migrants, however, chose to return to their former homes, or returned voluntarily.

(a) Mexican nationals – many Mexican nationals had moved north to manufacturing jobs; with the onset of hard times local government officials and other workers often used intimidation to force these people to vacate their northern homes.

(b) African Americans – remained in the North, preferring life there, as hard as it was, to returning to the South. In part, this was probably caused by the increase in physical violence against blacks in the South; lynchings increased in the 1930s for the first time in a decade.

(i) Scottsboro Boys – nine young black men were found sharing a boxcar with two white women early in the Depression, so naturally they were charged with rape, even though no evidence was ever presented verifying that any kind of sexual intercourse had been taken part of. The Communist Party gained the trust of a large portion of the African American population during this trial and the endless rounds of appeals for their role in the trial.

F) Government response

1) Crisis in confidence – consumer and business confidence in the expansion of the economy had created the extended economic boom; as the depression worsened and lengthened, this confidence evaporated.

2) Hoover’s response – Hoover was in many ways the personification of progressive politics; a technocrat, an able administrator, who believed that politics could be made apolitical, and that rational decisions could be made after one was able to gather sufficient information.

(a) Reconstruction Finance Corporation – a plan which loaned $700 million to failing banks and businesses; but the government also raised taxes to pay for this, which largely undercut its economic effectiveness.

(b) Bonus marchers – victims of an overzealous cavalry charge led by Gen. Douglas Macarthur, who ordered the shanties torched after removing the occupants at bayonet point.

(c) “Hoovervilles” – shantytowns that were thrown up using discarded scrap were referred to as a “Hooverville,” in a black humor poke at the man most people blamed for their abject condition.

G) Poor People’s Campaigns

1) Communist Party and Unemployed Councils – local agitation for rent relief and other kinds of assistance were often led by members of the Communist Party, or by those sympathetic to the immediate aims of the party in the affiliated Unemployed Councils.

(a) Sharecroppers’ Union – active among black sharecroppers in Alabama

(b) Ford Hunger March – the march on the River Rouge plant in 1932, demanding work; 4 marchers were killed, and more than 60 others were injured by the Ford Service Department (led by Harry Bennett and peopled by thugs) and the Dearborn Police (kind of an extension of the Ford Service Department). More than 20,000 people in Detroit marched in the funeral procession, while thousands more watched in respectful silence.

II) 1932 Presidential Election

A) Hoover’s popularity – Hoover, of course, was hugely unpopular; most of the blame and frustration with the economic woes most people were facing were placed upon him.

B) Franklin Delano Roosevelt – promised to balance the federal budget (Hoover was running the largest peace-time budget deficit in the country’s history at this time) and trim the federal payroll; his stand on religion and drink were completely unexamined during the campaign (much to his benefit). Roosevelt campaigned on the slogan “A New Deal for the American People.”

1) Background – patrician (meaning he came from old money, as did his cousin TR). In many ways, he tried to model his political career with that of his cousin’s—he served as New York assemblyman, secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic Party’s choice to run as Vice-President in 1920. In 1921 he was stricken with polio, and was never able to walk without some kind of assistance after that. That he was able to make a political comeback from this disease was due in large part to the assistance of his wife, his second cousin Eleanor.

2) The New Deal--for Roosevelt, the "new deal" was simply a campaign slogan, rather than a well-thought out plan to implement socialism, or to provide a social "safety net" for some Americans. Roosevelt was willing to try just about any program, as long as he was convinced that it might work. As we will see, Roosevelt was very unwilling to overthrow the capitalist system; rather, he was convinced that the system had to be saved (although he did prove more willing to campaign against some groups of people). In 1932, the only thing Roosevelt really promised to do was to balance the federal budget.

3) FDR won 57% of the popular vote (against an immensely unpopular Republican candidate); the only state that he lost outside of New England was Pennsylvania.

a) The interim period--the interim months between Roosevelt's election in November 1932 and his inauguration in March 1933 saw conditions in the country worsen, as the country entered the depths of the Great Depression. Despite an offer from Hoover to collaborate on policies to stem the suffering, Roosevelt chose to remain at his home in New York, and let Hoover and the lame duck Congress deal with the consequences (and take the blame for what was happening)

Politics and Culture in the Jazz Age

I. Politics and Culture in the Jazz Age

A. Minimize federal government intervention in the economy

1. Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon – persuaded Congress to halve the income tax for the top bracket of taxpayers, and drastically lower the inheritance tax (1926)

2. Federal government and railroads – in 1920, the federal government returned control of the railroads to private hands

II. Presidential politics in the 1920s

A. Warren G. Harding – last, and least, of the Ohio presidents; former newspaper editor from Marion, filled appointments with cronies from Ohio, known as the “Ohio Gang,” who looked to line their own pockets

1. “Normalcy” – (demonstrates the Bush is not our first English-challenged President; Harding in fact made up this word) Harding’s term for returning the country to normal—conditions back to some idyllic period before the class and race strife brought on by the unprecedented US involvement in a foreign war.

2. Teapot Dome Scandal – Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall, allowed private companies to drill at an oil reserve called Teapot Dome in Wyoming, secretly, after receiving “loans” from oil company executives.

3. Harding dies in office – after contracting food poisoning on the west coast. He had a hero’s funeral, but almost immediately afterward the stench of scandal from his administration lingered on over much of the next decade.

B. Calvin Coolidge – the solidity of Coolidge, and his personal lack of color, allowed him to distance himself from the scandals of the Harding administration, which he was part of.

1. 1924 Election – Democratic party badly divided; Southern Democrats continued to support Prohibition, and refused to denounce the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish KKK, while the northern branch of the party wanted former NYC mayor, NY governor, and Catholic Al Smith; after a record 103 ballots, compromise candidate Wall Street lawyer John Davis selected.

a. “Fighting Bob” LaFollette and the Progressive Party – painted as a dangerous radical by Coolidge campaign.

b. Proclaimed the “Greatest issue is the control of government and industry by monopoly capital”

c. Nationalization of railroads and water power

d. Ban labor injunctions

e. Increase aid for farmers

f. Restructure tax system to benefit working people

g. LaFollette was able to poll one sixth of the popular vote

h. Coolidge as a reflection on dominant ideology

i. Bruce Barton and The Man Nobody Knows – ad-man Barton portrayed Jesus Christ as a successful business man (which he considered a compliment). This provided a way to reconcile new societal mores with America’s fundamentalist Protestant past.

j. New importance of consumption – the “first importance to his country is no longer that of a citizen but that of consumer. Consumption was a new necessity to maintain economic prosperity--but the ability to consume was unequally distributed.

k. Reaction – Sinclair Lewis, in his novel Babbitt, decried the standardization and routinization of everyday life; that nationally advertised brands became the standard of excellence merely because everybody had heard of it.

2. Coolidge era foreign policy – “in these days of competition . . . capital . . .and statecraft go hand and hand.”

a. Pax Americana – the creation of a new world order that would bring stability and allow for expansion of American capitalism.

3. Foreign policy “successes”

a. Negotiated end to the naval arms race; the UK and the US limited to 500,000 tons, Japan to 300,000—but Japan was only interested in maintaining a one-ocean navy).

b. Dawes Plan – reduced the reparations that Germany was required to pay; country at that time was suffering from runaway inflation.

4. Industrial foreign policy a. In 1929, eight US automobile manufacturers were running factories in foreign countries (including Ford in England; high tech companies of the time (GE, International Telephone and Telegraph, Western Electric) had created an international communications system.

5. Exploitation of under developed countries

a. Venezuelan oil

b. Chilean copper

c. Cuban Sugar

d. Central American fruit (Smedley Butler reminder)

C. Immigration policy – after years of anti-immigrant agitation, widespread restrictions on immigration are put in place.

1. 1924 Immigration (Johnson-Feed) Act – restricted total immigration to 165,000/year; also set quotas pegged to the 1890 federal census ethnic totals in a conscious attempt to exclude as many eastern and southern European peoples as possible (Italians had averaged over 200,000/year in 1900s, but were limited to less than 4,000 after 1924)

2. Barred immigration completely from people who were ineligible for citizenship (Asian Indians, Chinese, and Japanese) b. Did not restrict immigration from countries from the Western Hemisphere, so the migration of farm laborers (and industrial workers) fromMexico and laborers from French Canada continued unabated.

D.. Herbert Hoover – a competent administrator who became overwhelmed by circumstances, and who lacked the vision to overcome those circumstances.

1. 1928 Election a. Democratic Party – splits again over the Presidential candidate; this time the northern half of the country prevailed and Alfred Smith, the Catholic, was nominated (as was the former secretary of the Navy and governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt); his anti-Prohibition stance did not play well in Peoria, however—or anywhere else outside of the large metropolitan centers, and Smith suffered an overwhelming defeat; because of his stance on alcohol and this Catholicism, he could only carry the six Deep South States.

III.Mass Culture

A. Radio – for the first time, a mass audience could experience an event at the same time. Although this was used as a technique to keep alive ethnic cultures (polka stations, foreign language programs, etc.), it also allowed others outside that culture to experience it; business side led to mass entertainment to sell products—which in turn contributed to the homogenization of culture.

B. Phonograph records – a way to maintain ethnic ties as well; but once a record was distributed, there was no way to limit who would consume it, which meant that there was a great deal of interaction between cultures, which in turn created a new culture (Caruso, Sophie Tucker “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” the Austin High Gang of ethnics who frequented the jazz clubs of Chicago’s South Side and helped to create the swing music of the 1930s, particularly one Benny Goodman)

C. Movies – 1920s were a boom time of the downtown movie palaces, which were paeans to consumer culture; as the star system became more refined, these actors became more and more used to sell products (cigarettes, automobiles, etc.)

D. Automobiles – by 1929, 50% of American families owned an automobile, and the industry directly employed 375,000 people—with millions more indirectly employed because of it.

1. Fordism – Ford’s contribution to the automotive industry was his drive to reduce the cost of the automobile, so that it would become more widely accessible to the general public; Ford accomplished this by increasing the number of specialized machines used to create parts for the automobile. This had two advantages: it decreased his reliance upon skilled workers, who could demand higher wages; and it allowed him to set a specific pace of manufacturing, rather than letting the workers set their own pace

a. Model T – extremely limited choice (it came with no options, and in one color—black), but this allowed Ford to perfect its manufacture—which in turn allowed Ford to drop the price of the automobile from $950 when it was introduced in 1909 to $290 at the height of its popularity in 1924

b. $5 a Day – the famous $5/day wage, instituted in 1914, was approached by few workers, but it helped limit the turnover of 300%; the higher overall wage also allowed workers to purchase the product that they were manufacturing.

c. Increased mobility – ownership of an automobile allowed many more people to move to the suburbs (or “into the country’); also created a greater demand for recreation—along with more workers employed in routinized labor.

2. Sloanism – named after the President of the General Motors Corporation, Alfred P. Sloan. Sloanism is in many ways the perfection of Fordism; automobiles were provided in a variety of styles (kind of), and a variety of price ranges, with advertising aimed at creating a want (or “need”) for a new replacement at regular intervals.

a. Creation of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation – GMAC created in order to provide financing for potential automobile purchasers who could not pay cash for an automobile.

b. Triumph of Sloanism – by 1927, falling sales of the Model T forces Ford to shut down production, and re-tool for the production of the Model A. In 1924, Ford had commanded 55% of the new car market.

c. Increased importance of advertising – used to help people differentiate between largely undifferentiated products; advertising allowed companies to manufacture desires in their customers.

E. African American Culture and Political Development in the North – the vitality and creativeness of African American culture first gets widespread recognition as more African Americans move north, and more white northerners come into contact with it.

1. Jazz – first comes north in the early 1920s—moved up the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis, and then from St. Louis to Chicago; Louis Armstrong moved to Chicago from New Orleans, first with his Hot Five (which eventually grew into his Hot Seven).

2. Southside Chicago – the area around 43rd and State was the heart of the African American community in Chicago, the so-called Black Metropolis. It was here that a group of second generation ethnics from the west side Austin High School came to listen to the jazz bands that played the venues here, and by the late 1930s had transformed the sound into what we know as swing.

3. New York – NYC quickly became a Mecca for African American jazz players, who found gigs in the burgeoning African American neighborhood in the city known as Harlem

a. “Black and Tan Clubs” – clubs where “slumming” whites could come and listen to and dance to black combos, without having to be alarmed with having to mingle with too many African Americans, unless it was the wait staff or the musicians. The Cotton Club became the most famous of the clubs.

b. “Sweet” music and “hot” music – white dance bands toured the hinterlands playing “sweetened” versions of new “hot” jazz hits. Bands like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, who would hire a few “hot” players (most notably Bix Biederbecke), but played mainly toned down versions of jazz music.

4. Reaction to Mass Culture

a. Prohibition – outlawed the manufacture, and legal drinking; led to the flowering of organized crime. By outlawing what had been acceptable, it grouped this behavior with other behavior that was looked down upon as well (secular music, dance, homosexuality) that then became tolerated in this developing underground society—and then more laws were passed to outlaw this behavior.

b. Rise of Fundamentalist Religion – reaction to increased urbanization, increased social contact with Catholics and Jews in urban settings. White southerners moving north also contributed to this. Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson.

c. Rebirth of the KKK – became particularly active in northern cities (as well as much of the state government in Indiana; Catholics and Jews, and those who resisted enforcement of prohibition, became as much a target of intimidation in the North as African Americans during this time.

5. Scopes “Monkey Trial” – the so-called “Monkey Trial” personifies the tensions that were becoming apparent among white protestants in the country. In Dayton, TN, the ACLU convinced a teacher named John Scopes to violate recently passed creationist law; Clarence Darrow was the lawyer for the defense, and William Jennings Bryan was on prosecution team; Darrow called Bryan as an expert witness, and got him to admit to numerous embarrassing literal interpretations of the Bible—Bryan died soon afterward.