Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History The 1920s 20240714

That would be good. The jazz age is the period from 1919 to 1929, reminds me of the opening lines of a tale of two cities by charles dickens. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It wasnt exactly the best of times, but for many people it certainly was good times. It was the great age of literature, the golden age of sports, music, jazz. The 19th amendment to the constitution, which allowed women to vote in National Elections for the first time. Radio was becoming popular. It was the early days of hollywood, and certainly the age of the automobile, the model t. And automobiles were for almost every budget. Those are the good times, which we will discuss. And it wasnt exactly the worst of times, although there were some very bad times. And it the failures of that decade led to the worldwide depression in the 1930s and helped the rise of fascism in europe. So lets begin with talking about the politics of the era. It was a republican decade. Three republican president s, harding, coolidge and hoover, and the republicans controlled the presidency from 1921 until 1933, and congress from 1918 or from the 1918 election until 1930. Domestically it was an era of laissezfaire. An era of laissezfaire. In other words, give business a free hand. That might be surprising to you because we had discussed the progressive era when there were a great many there was the federal trade commission, there were other commissions who controlled business. But in the 1920s, those commissions were manned by people from the industry, so they werent doing much controlling. Internationally we cut our commitments abroad. Beginning with the failure of the senate to ratify the league of nations, Wilsons League of nations. And these two policies taken together, laissezfaire and our reluctance to take our place in the world, although we were had emerged from world war i as the most powerful nation, would prove disastrous to the United States and to the world in the 1930s. So let me say a few words about each of the presidencies beginning with warren harding. I think the best thing you can say about warren harding, he looked president ial. That was pretty much it. He looks president ial. It was the most corrupt administration that we had until that time and maybe in all of our history. He escaped a lot of the blame because he died in office. But before that, the teapot dome, the most scandalous of all the scandals was revealed when it turned out the interior secretary had accepted bribes from private Oil Companies to lease public lands, public naval oil reserves. When harding came from ohio, he brought his pals with him, the ohio gang, and they had a very good time. They drank a lot, even though it was during prohibition. There were wine, women and song. They really enjoyed national politics. Anyway, then he died rather suddenly, and the person who took his place, his Vice President , calvin coolidge, was probably as different from harding as two humans can be. Harding, what can you say, he did not do much. He did not even talk. I mean, he knew how to talk, but he didnt talk. He was the taciturn new englander. He came from vermont, but he had made his name by being governor of massachusetts when there was a police strike. And he took a very hard line against the police. And that made him known nationally. As president he worked very little. He brought his rocking chair with him, and he would put it out on the porch facing pennsylvania avenue, and he would rock away. This is the person that said the business of america was business. And he did not interfere much with business. Meanwhile the stock market kept going up and up and up. And for not for very good reasons or for any reasons. And there were warnings about this, that the economy could really bust. There were warnings from the Federal Reserve board and others in his government, but he simply did nothing about it. There are lots of funny stories about silent cal, as he was called. One was when a woman was invited to the white house to have lunch with him and some other people and she was very chatty, she turned to him, and she said, mr. President , i have a bet with my friends i can make you say more than two words tonight. And he said you lose. That was his conversation for the entire meal. And then he could have easily run for president because the country was quite prosperous. But in fact he decided not to run. He did not tell anybody for a long time. He did not tell his wife, he didnt tell his campaign manager, but at one point he called reporters together, and he handed each of them a slip of paper. The slip of paper had 10 words on it. The 10 words were, let me see if i am counting right, i do not choose to run for president in 1928. And then he walked away. And the reporters were running after him saying, tell us more, why arent you running, and he refused to say anything. He stepped down in 1928. The person who did get the nomination, the republican nomination for president was a very different kind and a very interesting person. And that was the mining engineer Herbert Hoover. And Herbert Hoover probably spent less time in the United States than any president before or since. He was always involved in Great Projects in the world. He was orphaned at the age of nine, but was sent from iowa, but was sent to live with an uncle in california. And the uncle sent him to stanford university. And he really became a selfmade millionaire. He was in his 20s when he was a millionaire. He had no political history except for one. He ran for treasurer as a College Student from stanford university, but he was secretary of commerce, and he had done a president th president wilson had sent him to europe when world war i began, and his job was to get the american tourists out of europe. He did that, then he helped the belgians. Belgium was overrun and he was responsible for belgium relief. When he came back to the United States, during the war, he was the food administrator. His job was to see that the military got fed, the home front got fed as well. And he did all of that and he did it very well. Now think of the timing of this. He wasnt a democrat, he wasnt a republican. Both parties were interested in him running for president in 1920. Had he run for president in 1920, he would have been president from 1921 to the beginning of 1929, during prosperous times. And we would not, as we will be doing next week, be talking about hoover bills and president hoover taking responsibility for the depression, but in fact that did not happen. He ran for president in 1928 against al smith, the new yorker, and he defeated al smith, who was the first catholic to run for president. During the terms of these three president s, the country was disillusioned by the war. Remember this was the war to save democracy. This was the war to end all wars. And but people, many people vented their frustration and their anger on antisocial acts and legislation. It was a time when traditional values were shattered, but new standards had not yet emerged. A case in point for example was the scopes trial, john scopes, when he faced William Jennings bryan, and the issue was scopes teaching evolution in a tennessee public school. It was actually against the law. And William Jennings bryan defended a literal interpretation of the bible against evolution. And actually, William Jennings bryan won that, and john scopes had in fact violated the law by teaching evolution. The decade began with the red scare of 1919, 1920. It was a response to a series of strikes in the United States. The bestknown one was the one that crippled seattle for five days. There was a strike there. And it was also a time when the bolsheviks were in power in russia and had created the comintern. The comintern is the communists international, and it led to the palmer raids in the United States. Palmer, a progressive quaker who was the attorney general of the United States. It resulted in the arrest of 4000 people, immigrants mostly, most of them hardworking, just workers who did not speak english. They certainly werent going to start a revolution here. But many of them were beaten up. People were denied representation. And there was really no most of them had nothing to do with radicalism. But there were bombings. There were a series of bombings in this country including the home of a. Mitchell palmer. There was a bombing on wall street, and you can still go down to wall street by the way and see the bullets, where the bullet holes were. Anyway, it led to some people without representation being sent back to russia, and it was a time in the United States that perhaps, had it been better known, we would not have had a second red scare. The second of the 1950s, the mccarthy era in this country, in this country, that one lasted much longer than the 1919, 1920 one, and damaged the lives of thousands of americans, writers, professors, people from hollywood who were wrongly identified as being enemies of the United States. Xenophobia was very common, a fear of foreigners. And the popularity of eugenics. Eugenics is the, i guess i can say, pseudoscience of improving the human species by a kind of selective breeding. Both were very popular in the 1920s. I will let that era pretty much speak for itself. One author, a zoologist lawyer whose name was madison grant, wrote a book published in 1916 called the passing of the great race. The passing of the great race. His thesis was that nordics were responsible for human development. By the way, in the 1930s, adolf hitler wrote a fan letter to madison grant, calling the book my bible. Another writer, a popular writer he wrote for the saturday evening post, and millions of americans got the saturday evening post once a week, he urged immigration laws because he said, and this is an exact quote, immigrants would result in a hybrid race of people as worthless and futile as the good for nothing mongrels of Central America and south Eastern Europe. Mongrels, a word we use for animals, right, for dogs. And then there was henry ford, whose virulent antisemitism was spread in the newspaper, the dearborn independent, beginning in 1920. By the way, henry ford is the only american named by hitler in mein kampf. The results of what these people believed and what other people believed was very restrictive legislation for immigration in this country. Despite the fact that the lady with the lamp was in new york harbor, and you know the words, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses learning to be free, there was a temporary act in 1921 that restricted immigration. But then there was another one in 1924, the National Origins act. And what the National Origins act did was to have a quota based on the population in 1890. The purpose of it was to freeze the country ethnically, to freeze it ethnically, to say whoever was here already, we want we will allow in a percentage of those people to enter the country. By the way, not very many. 150,000 a year. And asians were excluded. Now what that meant in practice was that the people who were allowed in were not necessarily the people who wanted to come. They came from northern europe. They came from western europe. The people who wanted to come were mostly catholics, jews from Eastern Europe and southern europe, from italy, from greece, from poland, from russia. But there were severe restrictions on those people because there were not a great many of them counted in the 1890 election. This attitude towards immigrants led to many injustices. And the bestknown one was the execution of two italian anarchists in 1927 for a crime they did not commit. And these are the cases of the two men. When i say they were anarchists, these were mild anarchists. They were not bomb throwing anarchists. And it really divided the country. Do you execute these men or not . And by the way, they did not commit the crime that they were convicted of having done. And it was the murders in south braintree, massachusetts of two people. S passoslist john do wrote a novel in which he talked of the division of the country on these two people and the attempts to execute them, and they were executed. The night they were facing execution, all over the world, people at american embassies were protesting the killings by the government of these two people. John dos passos wrote a poem to mark the event. He said they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger, they are rich they hire and fire the politicians, the newspaper editors, the old judges, the small men with reputations the College President s, the war dealers listen, businessmen, College President s, judges america will not forget her betrayers. All right, you have won. You will kill the brave men, our friends tonight. All right. We are two nations. Madison grant was also responsible or active in the movement to prevent intermarriage between whites and africanamericans, which leads us to another subject. And that is the second ku klux klan. You remember the first ku klux klan was right after the civil war . Well, this was the second one, and in some ways it was the same and in some ways it was very different from the first one. It actually was a rather small it didnt amount to much until it was taken over by two professional fundraisers, edward clark and elizabeth tyler. And by the way, they made their money, they saw an opportunity here by selling sheets, sheets in childrens sizes, in adult sizes, and the second kkk actually had 5 million cardcarrying members. 5 million. This was not a fringe organization. And it was very powerful in the midwest. Indiana was the leading klan state with 350,000 members. Their targets like the first klan, africanamericans. But mostly catholics and jews, but they also went after bootleggers. Remember this was during prohibition. And also there was a kind of auxiliary that was very powerful, and that was the wkkk, the womens ku klux klan. There were no women in the first ku klux klan. And they acted quietly, but they did a lot of damage. They would talk as they were hanging up their clothes behind their homes, and they would talk about the italian butcher, saying he was roman catholic, or the jewish shoemaker, and all of a sudden the italian butcher and the jewish shoemaker would not have any customers. They didnt know why. People who had been their customers for years suddenly were not their customers anymore. And they would have to move away because they didnt have any businesses. It was mostly important in small towns, and the small town americans, many of them, believed they were losing out to urban americans. And by the way, in the 1920 for the first time in 1920, urban americans, there were more urban americans than rural. The klan was brutal. There were murders, church burnings, brandings, and then it ended very suddenly. And it ended when the grand dragon, as he called himself, of the ku klux klan in indiana was convicted of the kidnap, rape and murder of a young woman. And since the clan prided itself on protecting young women, especially young protestant women, a lot of people gave up their membership at that time. But it did stay alive, and it had a little more people became a little more interested in the kkk in the 1928 election when al smith, a catholic, a roman catholic, ran for president. The 1920s was the time of prohibition. The 18th amendment to the constitution went into effect in 1919. It is the only part of the constitution that was ever repealed. It was repealed in 1933 in the 21st amendment to the constitution. It was not just an experiment that failed. It turned out that most americans did not want to be told that they could not buy alcohol. It led to the rise of, of course, speakeasies, who did you know, liquor being imported into the country, much of it from canada over the great lakes, but it did not begin organized crime, but organized crime was very small until prohibition. But this is the era of al capone, chicago, and also a great disrespect for the law and gang wars. And then when prohibition ended, it did not end organized crime. By then they moved into other fields, prostitution, protection and so forth. It took well into the 1960s, actually when Bobby Kennedy was attorney general, for much of that, not all of it, but for much of it to end. Well, enough about the bad times. Lets Say Something about the good times. Ok. Charles lindberg, 1927, the boy wonder, he was 25 years old when he left Roosevelt Field on long island to go to paris. 25 years old and he flew solo. He was probably the bestknown person in the world in the mid1920s. But he lost his luster because he accepted a medal from Hermann Goering in nazi germany. He was very taken with the german air force, and he was trying to make the point that we were not as well prepared as germany. Which was the case. It was a great age of literature. I know some of you read the great gatsby. The great gatsby more than any other book is the novel of the decade. F. Scott fitzgerald. A year later the sun also rises, Ernest Hemingways book, was published. It was a golden era for american literature, and it was also the age of the harlem renaissance. Most writers, musicians, artists who we know today from the harlem renaissance were not from new york. But harlem became the center of this renaissance. And the center of the center was the home of the daughter of madam cj walker. I wonder if you remember madam cj walker. She was the only woman millionaire, not to inherit her wealth in an earlier era . Not so much earlier, and she had a daughter. And the daughters brownstone on 136th street in harlem was the center of the center. When she died in 1931, the writer Langston Hughes said the arlem renaissance is over. I have a painting up there by my favorite artist of the harlem renaissance. You can take a closer look when you leave. And of course it was the age of jazz, cab calloway, uv blake, louis armstrong, Duke Ellington and so many, and so many others. It was a very rich period. And there was a sexual revolution in the 1920s. I think sometimes students think that is the 1960s. Yeah, that was another one. The 1920s. There were actually new words in the lexicon. Sexy, the word sexy dates from the 1920s. The expression sex appeal dates from the 1920s. And why . Well, part of it was liberation of women. A lot of women going to college for the first time in the United States, women gaining the right to vote, the age of jazz, the age of hollywood, Sigmund Freud. Sigmund freud. It wasnt so much that people read Sigmund Freud, but they had a sense of what Sigmund Freud was talking about when he talked about sex. And he came to the united tates. The dances, the charleston, the black bottom, and it was the age of the flapper. And the flapper were essentially liberated women. My favorite line, and you got to listen closely to this, from hat era, the word neck ceased to be a noun, abruptly became a verb, immediately lost all anatomical precision. Does that mean anything . Do you want to hear it again . You are going to hear it again. The word neck ceased to be a noun, abruptly became a verb, immediately lost all anatomical precision. Hollywood added a great deal to the sexual revolution. There were films like up in mables room. And compared to films we have today they will probably be, very, very mild. This person was the vamp in the 1920s. Clara bow was the it girl. Clara bow started in silent movies and then moved to talkies in 1927, and everyone knew what it was. And it was the golden age of sports, and baseball dominated ports. It was the age of babe ruth. Babe ruth was a bigger than life personality and very selfpromoting, by the way, started as a very poor boy in baltimore, stories are well known how he was a great pitcher for the Boston Red Sox who made the mistake, if you are a red sox fan, of selling him to the new york yankees. And then when Yankee Stadium was created in 1923, it became the house that ruth built. At the end of the era, babe ruth was making more money than president hoover. And when the writers stopped him and said do you think this is right you should be making more money than the president of the United States . He said i had a better year than the president of the united tates. And he it was by the way, baseball almost did not make it. That was because of the black sox scandal in 1919 when the Chicago White sox threw the series to the cincinnati reds. People did not know it at the time. They actually didnt know it until a couple of years later that, how dishonest it had been. Eight players had been involved. Probably the bestknown was shoeless joe jackson. And when he was going into court, he was stopped by a little boy who said say it aint so, joe. And joe jackson says, yes, son, i am afraid, im afraid it is so. And that could have done in baseball. All this came to light in 1921, but baseball hired judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. And Kenesaw Mountain Landis took a very hard line. He fired the eight white sox players involved in throwing the games. He even fired a player who did throw the games but knew about it, and he was angry at him because he should have reported this probably to the fbi. And in addition to baseball, College Football attracted thousands and tens of thousands of people, the red grange of the galloping ghost of the university of illinois and knute ockne, coach knute rockne best bestknown for notre dame s backfield. In it for the giver. Gipper. That was made popular in a film by ronald reagan. It was pretty much a myth. It wasnt a myth someone had died many years earlier, george gip, but not when knute rockne was telling his players about t. Win it for the gipper. And then there were mostly wealthier people other sports, olf, bobby jones, tennis, bill tilden, helen moody, little miss poker face. They became popular in the 1920s. Gertrude everly from queens, the daughter of a butcher, in 1926, swam the english channel, the irst woman to do so. Anyway, we could go on and on about sports. You know, i am a great baseball fan, but i want to tell you hat. Now let me just go back to the best of times, the worst of times. It wasnt either the best of times, but it was pretty good, and it wasnt even the worst of times. For some it was an idealistic time. Do i have the catalog beyond Kellogg Briand pact . In 1927, kellogg, secretary of state, and briand, who was the foreign minister of france, wrote a treaty, and the treaty as to abolish war. That was only a few years after the end of the great war. Remember, no one is calling it the First World War because nobody thought the world would be foolish enough to have a econd world war. By the end of the year, almost every country in the world had signed on to the Kellogg Briand treaty. And what the Kellogg Briand treaty said was we will outlaw war. We will have differences, yes. There may be border differences or other differences, but we will outlaw war. We will not solve our problems by war. Well, you know it didnt work. And i think mostly it is not even taught. I happened to have a professor who thought it was important. And he thought it was important because he said if you put yourself back to 1927, most eople believed it. Most people believed that if a nation put its signature to this piece of paper, they would not go to war. And as a result of that, people went blissfully along as the world essentially was falling apart. So i at least want to mention that. Now people know the lines it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. What they often dont know is what follows. And what follows is the question i am going to ask you about. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. So talking about of course dickens was talking about the time before the french revolution. He wasnt here, he wasnt while he had been here, but he wasnt talking about the united dates. States. I would like to know what you think. Wisdom, foolishness, what wins out in the 1920s . Say your name, by the way. My name is greg. R. Markoe go ahead, greg. Referring back to your statement, wisdom and foolishness, i guess we were foolish as a country in an economic sense because the buildup of the Great Depression was a result of all of the credit that was being given out to people to buy stocks, so we were foolish in that sense because obviously that resulted in the Great Depression and stock market crash. So i would say it was a foolishness. Dr. Markoe people were buying stocks on margin, the prices were going up and up and up. Right . By the way, a few years ago, and please dont do this, but a group of students from new jersey were talking about what happened in the 1920s and the stock market crash in 1929, and they thought they would try it out. What they tried out was to call stockbrokers and assemble a portfolio. They did not have any money. Dont do it. It is against the law. But they were able to do it. That is the point. Despite the laws, and we are very careful about that, you can buy on margin but very small margins, they did that. They were held before a judge who took pity on them because they were College Students, but anyway, you are not allowed to do that, so dont try it. Dont jack test the law. Anyone else have something to say about the era . What wins out for you . The foolishness . Think it was mostly foolish . Would you have liked to have lived during the 1920s . No. Kind of . When it was positive. Sort of. I would want to be there when the positivity was up and up, like the stock market, the breakout of literature and then charles with going around the world alone, probably then but not where the stock market started to crash. No. Dr. Markoe which is only at the very last time, october 1929. That is why we call the jazz age 1919 to 1929. Ok. So there was a lot going on. It was fun, it was a fun era. Yes, yes. Very exuberant. Very lively. Ok. People had a very good time. Did they stop drinking . No. No. But in fact we know there was less drinking during prohibition than there was in the time before that or after that. How do we know . How can i say that . Hat would you look at . What kind of records would you look at to decide if there was more or less drinking or how much drinking . Maybe records of the organized crime . Dr. Markoe well you know what . Organized crime people dont keep records. That is the problem. That is a problem that historians face, they dont keep records. But who does keep records, and what do you associate with a lot of drinking . What do you associate . What kind of records can you look at . Eah . Maybe dance halls and stuff . I dont know. Dr. Markoe dance halls . I associate dancing. Dr. Markoe dancing and bars were connected to the dance halls. You read about dance halls. Yeah. I dont know how good their records are either. Maybe. Ok, we have another thought here. Say your name. I am mike. There could be arrest records like drunk and disorderly, stuff like that, and then also maybe hospital records. Dr. Markoe yes, hospital records. What are we looking for . Like alcohol poisoning or any injuries due to being dr. Markoe there was a lot of alcohol poisoning during the era. But there were fewer deaths connected with alcohol, right . You know, most people actually follow the law. It is 2 00 in the morning and you are driving, and there is nobody around, and there is a red light. Do you stop . You dont have to give away secrets on camera. Do you stop . Sure, most people stop. Right . Why . Why do they stop . Because it is the law. It is the law. You dont go past a red light in a car even though there is nobody around. Maybe you probably wont get a ticket. Right . Ok. During prohibition, most people didnt buy liquor. Most people didnt drink. What we recall are the speakeasies, right, people drinking, College Students drank. Right . Not all of them but a lot of them. But most people did not. It didnt mean they were happy about the law. They were not happy about the law. A lot of people were not happy about it, but that was the law. And most people are law abiding. If they werent lawabiding, we would be living in chaos. Right . K. I dont know if you had a chance to do what i ask you to do with every class which is look at the ews. Is there anything in the news today that reminds you of what happened 100 years ago . Nothing . Othing, nothing . Weight, wait, wait. Tell them your name. Will. Trump said we cant fit anymore people in the country, but we can. Dr. Markoe he said we cant right. Taking a very hard line, as you know, on immigration, and again threatening to split up families, right, children from their parents. That didnt happen during the 1920s. They did not split up children from their families. The country as a whole took a ery hard line, not only in limiting the numbers of people who could come in but very specifically saying these are the people we want, essentially, white protestants from northern and western europe, and these are the people we dont want, and that was american policy until 1968. John kennedy wrote a book called a nation of immigrants and helped to change the policy that was in the National Origins law of 1924. Anything else . Ok. And next hour, the Great Depression. And who has the article . Ok, begin that. Everybody read it. All right. We are going to discuss the 1930s. And i have a kind of a cheat sheet for you. And the reason for that is there are so many agencies, alphabet agencies, that came in under fdr that honestly it makes students a little crazy. So i put the most important ones down, and i will give you that sheet, and we will use that as our discussion in the 1930s. Ok, we will see you on hursday. This weekend on American Historytv on american artifacts a preview of the 19th amendment preview. Women in new jersey who were americas first voters beginning in 1776 when new jersey became a state, the new jersey state constitution made no mention of sex when discussing voting qualifications. It only had a property requirement. So women who own enough property, primarily widows and single women, so not all women in new jersey could and did vote in elections at the local state and national level. And at 8 00 p. M. , on the presidency, author john farrell talks about nixons early life and career. In 1947 and 1948 he campaigned for the Marshall Plan he went to every rotary club, every chamber of commerce, and American Legion hall. Every crowd that would take him he told him he owed them his best judgment, not his obedience. And he convinced them. When on the Party Primaries were held in california the summer of 1948, Richard Nixon did not just win the republican nomination, the won the democratic nomination he wagered everything and carried the day. He ran unpowed. Explore our nations past on merican history tv on cspan3. American historytv products are now available at the new cspan online store. Go to cspanstore. Org to see whats new for American Historytv and check out all of the cspan products. Next on American History tv, two historians on the history of Health Care Policy since world war i topics includes the roots on the modern health care system, the medical field transfered into a business. The National History Center Hosted this event. I think were going to try to start this event on time. My name is dane kennedy. Im director of the national istory center. I want to welcome to you all to this briefing of u. S. Health care, Health Care Policy. This is a briefing sponsored by the National History center, which is affiliated with the american historical association. And its part of a series of briefings we offer that provide historical perspectives to issues that are currently confronting congress. We will have another one at the and of next month, which will be