Now in my last lecture and in our debate on monday, which i think went pretty well, you might have been left with a question in your minds, what was the legacy of world war i for American Society . Now the politics of the United States definitely veered to the right during the 1920s. Republican president s fairly conservative ones were electedly landslides, 1920, 1924, and 1928. Congress was under the control of the republicans throughout the 1920s. With support of congress, republican president s signed bills which rolled back the income tax increases that were passed during world war i. And the leading social movements on the left, labor unions and the socialist party, both lost members during the war. In fact, the socialist party was never really a factor in american politics again after the 1920 election. And people on the left, whether people we consider to be liberals, former progressives or radicals were all on the offensive during the 1920s. The most popular president in the 1920s, Calvin Coolidge who took office in 1923, when harding died of a heart attack and then was reelected by a landslide in 1924 famously said in the mid1920s, the business of america is business. It was a prosperous time for a lot of americans, though certainly not all. Stock prices were fairly high. Wages were either stable or going up, depending on what occupation you were in. Farmers are not doing as well as theyve done during world war i when farm prices went really high as they often do in wars but nevertheless, in many places in the country they were not doing so badly. There was one piece of legislation passed in 1924, one of actually a number of pieces of legislation on the issue of immigration. Which gave a sense both of the power of what you might call the old stock americans, americans from mostly western european backgrounds, white in every case. But also gave a sense i think of the vulnerability that those people felt, because so many catholics and eastern orthodox and jewish people had moved into the United States beginning in the 1880s and 1890s. So many africanamericans had moved to the north and big cities and big cities in the south, as well during the war. As you know. This bill was passed 1924. Its called the johnson reed act named after two of the people who were the key senator and key congressman who put their names to the legislation and got it through congress. What this bill did is it restricted immigration in the United States after that point to 2 of the number of people from any foreign nation who had been in the United States according to the 1890 census. This sounds a little abstract. What it basically means is that the percentage of immigrants allowed to come in the country was dependent on the percentage of immigrants from that country, from that particular country in 1890. 1890 was just at the beginning of the socalled new immigration, just the beginning of the influx of people from places like italy, greece, russia, poland, hungary, syria, other places in eastern and southern europe. And the 1924 law completely excluded immigrants from east asia, except for filipinos who came from an american colony. So basically, the quotas and they were called quotas set down from 1924 on to 1965, this law lasted roughly more than 40 years. It was much easier to come to the country if you were from ireland, if you were from new england, if you were from norway, for example, because the number of those people in the United States was pretty high in 1890, much harder if you were from russia, poland, or finland. Impossible if you are from japan, china, or korea. So the United States was supposed to remain an anglosaxon and predominantly protestant nation forever on ward. That was the idea, that was the hope of the people who passed this bill. The republican majority in congress and some southern democrats voted for it, as well. The only votes against this law really were from people from the ethnic cities, from new york and from chicago and from philadelphia. Places like that. Many of them catholic and jewish. But they didnt have enough votes in congress to stop the bill from being passed and certainly not enough political clout to stop president Calvin Coolidge from signing it. As i said, this law was a sign of a certain fear and weakness i among the white anglosaxon majority, as well. And the weakness can be glimpsed in what was going on in American Culture in the 1920s. Which is the main topic of the lecture today. The 20s saw a number you have fierce conflicts between supporters of an older white, mostly protestant and very deeply religious and mostly rural order. The majority, but a majority that was felt itself in peril. And the other side, those both immigrant and native born who had a more tolerant or at least a looser sense of personal morality and who lived mostly in modern cosmopolitan cities with a mix of church goers and secularists. You can see echoes of the split in our own time in arguments between those who support gay marriage and those who support, those who think it Sex Education in schools is great and those who dont think it is all, between those who think teaching evolution in science classes is part of science and those who is think that creationism or intelligent design should it be taught the along with teaching evolution, this is not an accident. Cultural clashes and conflicts have a way of lasting a long time and even when the specific issues that are were fought over in the 20s dont necessarily last as long, legacy of those battles does last a long time. In many ways if youre in some parts of the country today, these culture clashes dont seem quite so much in the past at all. What i want to do today is discuss in specifics is three sites of this conflict. First the battles of over prohibition which was the law in the 1920s. Second, clashes over the content of movies, Motion Pictures which became in the 1920s the most popular art in america. And lastly, the conflict over whether the darwinian theory of evolution should be taught in Public Schools. Because laws were being passed in certain states in the 1920s to actually forbid the teaching of evolution in Public Schools. And as well see, the rationale for that in part was that the parents in Many School Districts didnt want evolution taught in their kids schools. So youve got an issue of free speech and the claims of science versus the claims of democracy if you will. But first prohibition, which youve heard something about already. But not since its been law. Whoops. This is a glimpse here of revenue agents busting a still somewhere in one of the cities in the northeast. Together with these mason jars you see here that were about to be filled by this bootleg liquor. The 18th amendment to the constitution goes into effect january 1920. It was ratified by enough states in 1919. By the way, Congress Passed it over the vito of president woodrow wilson. So you can see how popular it was. Printed the sale and manufacture but not the consumption of alcohol. Thats interesting, by the way, to note. The 18th amendment did not stop individuals who actually had liquor in their hands from drinking it. The idea was to stop the business of alcohol. The manufacture of it. The sale of it. The commerce in alcohol, the traffic, as it was known. The thought was that if you stop people from being able to manufacture it and distribute it and an sell it, eventually people will stop drinking it, as well. But congress didnt want to pillory an individual who might have gotten liquor. In fact, before the amendment was ratified, people would stock up as much liquor as they could if they could afford to so theyd be able to drink it legally after the amendment was ratified. Contrary to conventional wisdom, prohibition, even though at the it did institute a regime of a lot of lawlessness, a lot of people broke the law, especially in big cities, did actually reduce drinking overall in america. Places where prohibition was popular and there are many of them, drinking did go down. There was a sort of a informal prohibition, if you will. Neighbors would enforce it against other neighbors, for example. So in Rural America in, small town america, in the south, for example, parts of the west, drinking did go down and quite dramatically. But it went up in big cities. The act that was passed of along with the prohibition amendment when it was ratified to enforce the act was called the volstead act. It was named after a minnesota congressman who authored it from granite falls, minnesota. On one hand, it was a tremendous increase in the power of government. Government, after all, was given the power to go in and bust up any place where liquor was sold anywhere in the country. And also to have Border Agents across the border to canada, especially, and the coast guard was empowered to stop boats from coming in to florida and other places where it could offload liquor. But on the other hand, the congress did not appropriate enough funds to hire enough people to do all that the volstead act was supposed to be doing. Only 1600 agents were hired. In a country of over 100 million people, it was probably not enough. Yet, as i said, it was informally enforced by many protestant americans. And they continued to support prohibition. Not just because they thought it was a good idea for people not to drink, not because they believed that the liquor business ways an sinful enterprise driving people to do terrible things, but also because they thought of it as a symbolic stand against the supposedly hedonistic libertarian values of the modern cities against the alien custom of catholic and eastern orthodox immigrants, many of whom took drinking as just part of their culture. There were older arguments given, which continued to have a lot of salience during the time prohibition was law. One of the arguments youve heard about before was that a drunken man was an abusive human being, that he would beat up his wife, that he would neglect his children, that he would be a terrible worker. This is one of the more popular illustrations of this attitude. Also, added to it was the antiimmigrant side of it. Here you see two of men surreptitiously unloading liquor from europe, from russia, going across the border from canada to the u. S. This was an immigrant invasion, an alien invasion not of individuals so much but of immigrant alien commerce. Yes . [inaudible question] yeah. Good point. Tongs from china, exactly. Tongs were supposedly gangs of chinese who terrorized the chinese immigrant population, also employed chinese gangsters. Ill talk a little bit more about how the fear of gangsters becomes part of this. So, you had an urban immigrant split. You had older arguments about protecting women and children. You had a sense of the fear of immigrants being married with the fear of prohibition, with the fear of prohibition not being enforced the way it should be enforced. Youve got a combustible mix here. Now, of course, what made this combustible mix so much apparent to Many Americans was the fact that in the bigger cities, in the more cosmopolitan places among the very wealthy people, where there are immigrants and the elite sort of mixing, you had bars, now we think of it as speakeasies which operated almost openly in many of these places, places like new york and chicago, where the prohibition law was pretty much a dead letter. One example of this was a place called the 300 club in manhattan, which was run by this woman, texas gyneen her name was. Who was a former silent movie star. Her club was one of the more famous clubs in america. Everyone would have heard of the 300 club. It was famous for being able to sell liquor at very high prices, for having a troupe of scantily clad fan dancers and she was a hip, charming charismatic woman, too. And people wanted to drink at her club. There are many clubs they could drink at, but her club was one of the more popular ones. She was arrested several times for serving alcohol and providing entertainment. She always claimed, and successfully so, that her patrons had brought the liquor in with them, she hadnt sold it to them. Bringing liquor in with you was not illegal. And it was pretty hard to prove that they had actually bought it there. There were no receipts. The club was pretty small. It served an elite clientele. She said, well the girls werent really touching the customers on purpose. It was so small, they had to dance close to the customers because otherwise there was no space. She claimed to the ends of her life sheep had never sold an alcoholic drink in her life. Her club was the hangout for some of the citys wealthy elite and also for many of the most important entertainment celebrities in the country. The great composer George Gershwin used to go there a lot and play his piano there impromptu. Some of the guests were the biggest film stars friends of guinenans from her film days, people like gloria swanson, rudolph valentino, and al jolson. Wealthy guests with names like vanderbilt and chrysler who used to come to the club. She made a very good living one way or another, whether legally or illegally. When she died, it turned out she had earned 700,000 in one year in 1926. And lesser amounts in other years. Even though her clubs were routinely raided by the police. Her famous greeting to people who came to the club was hello, suckers. But she was obviously no sucker. Now this kind of behavior repelled a good Many Americans, those who supported probation and thought it should be enforced as strictly as possible. They thought people who didnt enforce probation were evil, immoral people. The most popular probationists in the 1920s was not a Government Official or certainly not a Treasury Department agent trying to enforce the law, it was the most popular protestant eadvantagestist in the country, in the United States, until billy graham later in the 1950s. Billy graham is still alive today but no longer preaching a lot. Name of this evangelist was billy sunday. That was his real name, by the way. Heres billy sunday, a very aggressive, fit guy. Whoops. Got ahead of myself here. Billy sunday was a former Major League Baseball player for the pittsburgh pirates, not very gad not very good, but at least he was good enough to play Major League Baseball for a while. He lectured on many different issues. He was a fundamentalist. He believed all the bible was written by people who understood the will of god, if not, god himself. But his leading cause in the 1920s was prohibition. And he took direct aim at people. He called them the diamond wearing bunch, the big automobile gang, the silk gowned. He condemned the low down whiskey soaked, beer guzzling, bull necked, foul mouth hypocrite who beat his wife and neglected his work. Sunday was a very physical of evangelist. He would bound around the stage, he would get down on his knees. He would jump up, like mick jagger or something except, of course, he would have hated mick jaggers style of life. Nevertheless, this was an entertaining evangelist. But he was very much in ernest when he talked about of prohibition or any subject he lectured on. His most famous talk was what he called the blues booze sermon. This is where he urged people before prohibition became law and very much after it became law to get rid of liquor in their lives. He compared liquor to a rattlesnake and a voracious mongoose. He described in very graphic detail what alcohol does to the flesh, the face, and the liver. Most of all, he challenged men in his audience and most of his audience was male, to do what he said was their moral duty. You have a chance to show your manhood, by abolishing the curse of your wife and the poor innocent children that climb up on your lap and put their arms around your neck. Tens of thousands heard his sermon and swore an oath to vote for and then enforce prohibition. With a supporter like sunday and there were smaller sundays all over the country and a very powerful lobby behind them too, there was a group called the Antisaloon League which had begun in the 190s but really comes into its own in the 1920s, where ministers all over the country, mostly from evangelical churches, methodists, especially, are encouraging their parishioners to make sure that they not just dont purchase liquor or drink liquor themselves, but that they put the onus on anybody they know who is breaking the law. So this was a Big Government program with a lot of people supporting it behind it, yet a lot at the same time, a lot of people who believed that this was ridiculous, that people could drink without destroying their lives, without beating their wives, and of course, not surprisingly, the rhetoric of the Antisaloon League, the rhetoric of billy sunday was very much antiimmigrant, sometimes also anticatholic. So catholics, immigrants in general, took it almost as their duty to disobey the law and certainly to lobby against it. And throughout the 20s, there was a big attempt to actually repeal the prohibition amendment which actually did happen in 1933. But even during this time, texas guinans club was just one sign of the weakness of prohibition in the big cities. In San Francisco, for example, there were just nine agents to enforce the volstead act, nine agents in a city of about 300,000 people. The mayor of San Francisco, a man named sunny jim rolf, was seen drinking at speakeasies. This is the republican mayor of one of the major cities in the country. So you can see what a dead letter the vos that act the volstead act was in the cities. So the laut proved difficult to enforce. But and the enforcement of it was left more to citizens themselves. And a new social movement sprang up in part to help enforce it. And also to preserve the supremacy of white protestant native born citizens which of course, was always one of the aims. If implicitly of most prohibitionists. And this new social movement was one that took the name of an older social movement, the ku klux klan. The klan was revived in 1915 by an entrepreneur from the south named William Simmons who got people to sign up for the klan and then took a proportion of their membership fees. He made a lot of money doing it. And one of the reasons he was able to revive the klan, even though the klan from the reconstruction years had been suppressed by the u. S. Army, its memory had lived on in Popular Culture in the south and elsewhere, as well, but as ive mentioned before, it came back in a big way when this film was released in 1915. Birth of a nation. This is the actual poster of what was at the time the most popular film in america. 100 years ago, a little less than 100 years ago. On the strength of this heroic portrait of the klan defending the morality of white women especially in the south, several million members were signed up by the klan. But more and more, by the 1920s, journalists, social scientists noticed that the klan was growing much more in the north than it was in the south, its headquarters were in atlanta, the south, where it been formed in the early 1870s, but more and more people there were very few africanamericans would join the klan, places like indiana and oregon, rural michigan, Orange County in southern california. There, the main impetus for joining the klan was people who wanted to push back against catholic immigrants, push back against jewish immigrants, defend what they saw as an assault on the Public Schools by parochial schools. Public schools at the time in america in heavily protestant areas especially tended to really be in many ways protestant schools. The king james bible, the protestant bible was taught openly in these schools. The history of the world was taught as a story of protestant supremacy in the world. And protestants as a more moral group than catholics, jews or other religions. So the klan was very much supportive of Public Schools. Wanted no funding for Catholic Schools of any kind, for example. The klan by the mid1920s at its height, the second klan as its known, had as many as 5 million members. And it had as many women members as it did male members. Of course, the better tailored uniforms probably. And again, even though we think of the klan today as a very reactionary organization, which in terms of civil rights of course, and ethnic pluralism it certainly was, religious pluralism certainly was, but if you think about it as some ways a continuation of some of the progressive impulses from the early 20th century just a few years before the 20s, there was some continuity. For example, the klan generally was in favor of womens suffrage. And Public Schools and Public Schools getting more funding. It wasnt necessarily against a cut in income taxes. Because it wanted to make sure that the government could have enough money to enforce the prohibition law. And its key issue was enforcing the prohibition law. You have to remember this was the law. So the klan we think of as a lawless, vigilante violent organization was violent in many ways, but it was violent in the cause of enforcing the law. And, of course, thats how clansmen and clans women saw it. One proklan organization excuse me, magazine in indiana put it this way. The writing of the 18th amendment was the crystalzation of nationwide christian sentiment. The enemy liquor gang angry, vindictive, unpatriotic is seeking the overthrow of the highest authority in the land. They can count on the hoodlums, the crooks, the advice joints, the whiskey loving aliens and the indifferent citizen to help them win. Can they count on you . Here was a larger purpose of the klan as stated by hiram evans who was the grand wizard of the klan through the mid1920s. And you can see the racial exclusivity of the klan in this quotation, but you can also i think see what you might call a populist edge to the klan. The klan grew large. It was enlisting people mostly in the working class and lower middle class of white protestant society. It wasnt getting richer people, and it wasnt getting the poorest white people either. It was getting people who were, as it says, farmers, artisans, people who really felt that they had gained something but not very much in American Society and those gains were under attack by these new groups coming into the country. Native white protestant supremacy. Traditional moral standards went by the boards and so forth. This was a restorationist organization. And it was easily the largest social movement in america in the mid1920s. Well, it didnt have a long life in the limelight. There were scandals, the leader of the klan in indiana where the klan basically controlled the government for several years, was found raping and other ways abusing women. Hiram stephenson was thrown into jail. As leader of the klan in indiana. The whole klan was thrown into disrepute by this and people started to leave. More and more newspapers, even states where the klan was strong, more politicians began to denounce the klan. It seemed to be going too far, especially as prohibition seemed to be more and more unpopular. The idea of this bully organization, Vigilante Organization at this time, enforcing the law became more and more unpopular. So the second klan continues until world war ii but its numbers december. 4 million members in the 1920s only has about 30,000 members. A third klan was rereorganized in the 1950s to battle the civil rights movement, but thats a later story. The klan was right about one thing, however. Some hoodlums were making a fine living defined the volstead act. The most famous of them a name still wellknown today, if you ever watch the hbo show boardwalk empire, anybody watch that show . You see hes one of the stars, actor playing him is one of the stars of that show and this, of course, is al capone. This is actually after he was arrested. So he looked better before these days. Al capone, and the gangsters in general, whose Main Business was to supply illegal alcohol became important cultural figures in the 1920s. They were hated and feared by a lot of the americans. They were very violent. Gangs they organized fought with other gangs. Blood ran in the streets of chicago, detroit, new york, philadelphia, pittsburgh, other major cities across the east and the midwest. But at the same time, people like capone were also secretly admired by some, and thats important to realize i think. You wouldnt have had movies starring james cagney and Humphrey Bogart playing gangsters as rather tough but romantic figures if there wasnt certain admiration americans had for them. James cagney would have not have become a good actor, and Good Box Office actor if the gangsters he played were seen as totally reprehensible. Talk about al capone as the most famous example of gangsters from the 20s. First of all, to give you some idea why he was admired by many people. First of all, he was a selfmade man. Americans like selfmade men, right . We respect them. We admire them. Now selfmade women. He rose from obscurity, poverty, to tremendous wealth. Tremendous power, and of course, tremendous fame. Capone was born in an immigrant slum in brooklyn. He then moved to italian immigrant parents. He dropped out of school to help his family, went to work, not illegally at first. In the early 20s, he moved to chicago. The rose through ranks of the mob fairly quickly because of his courage, his intelligence, and his skill. And also his willingness to kill anybody who stood stood in his way. He organized the rackets in chicago and he made them efficient. He was involved not just in alcohol, but also in gambling, in prostitution and also in extortion for businessmen who didnt follow his orders. Whoops. By 1925, when is he was only 26 years old, he headed a business that generated 60 Million Dollars annually, which is equivalent to about 400 million, 500 million today. His payroll included no less than 1,000 gunmen who killed at least 250 competitors of his in chicago. Including such colorful characters with great names like dean obanion, heidi weiss, and bugs moran, irish and jewish competitors and he was a complicated fellow. He was a family man, several children, faithful to his life wife at least that was what most people heard and believed. He hosted annual block parties where he lived in chicago. He was a consummate consumer. He wore 11 carat diamond rings. He liked to buy and consume rich wine and excellent food, not just excellent italian food, excellent french food, as well, and is also seemed like a good man who gave back to the community as we would say now. He was a philanthropist during the beginning of the great depression, when he was still out of jail, in 1930, 1931 when prohibition was still the law, he was making lots of money, he gave millions of dollars to soup kitchens in chicago. Here are some of the men eating, unemployed men who are eating on his dime or his quarter. And also, he became obviously a celebrity. Heres al capone with one of his sons. I think its the Chicago White sox, the south side of Chicago Baseball Team as some of you probably know. President obamas favorite team. Signing an autograph for al capone. My baseball knowledge is not good enough to know who this player is. Anybody know who that player is . Ill have to identify him later on. And this scores the fact that Chicago Tribune took a photo of this. It was on the sports page, right at the top of the sports page in the mid1920s. Shows that al capone was you know, not a good citizen exactly, but nevertheless, a celebrated one. He put chicago on the map in more ways than one. Now, of course, this couldnt last. 1929, when capone was on a trip to miami, his men executed a massacre of nine men from a rival gang in a garage on st. Valentines day. The famous st. Valentines day massacre. Theres a lot of shootings, drive by shootings, shootings in private. But this was, in a major garage in a major part of chicago, this was something that the government could not ignore and it was clear that capones men had done it. So public outrage at this forced the federal government finally to act against capone. They had to find some way of getting him. He was too smart to be found actually violating the volstead act. What they did was they got him on tax evasion. He hadnt really filled out his income tax accurately. Because obviously, he was hiding a lot of the money he made from alcohol. So he was convicted of tax evasion in 1931. And sent to alcatraz prison in San Francisco bay which was then a new prison, stateoftheart prison. He contacted syphilis, so he wasnt quite as faithful to his wife as people thought and he decide of syphilis in 1947 still in jail in alcatraz. Another indication of the new urban culture which Many Americans admired, but many other americans aboard, a beard appeared on screen. 1920s, movies as a said before, became the most popular form of entertainment in many america. Even more popular when you started to have talking films in 1927. Al jolson i mentioned before is one of the patrons at texas guinnans club was the star of the first full length Motion Picture called the jazz singer. And hollywood already, even before you had sound movies, was already a synonym, as it is today, for beautiful, talented people making lots of money living in thoroughly immoral ways. Charlie chaplin, the biggest film star of the 1920s was wellknown for having a series after teenage mistresses. When he finally got married, he married a woman 40 years younger than him. The second most popular comedian in the 20s on screen was fatty arbuckle, who was accused of raping and killing a young actress at a party he gave at his house. Arbuckle was acquitted in several trials, but his career was ruined by these accusations. As i mentioned before, gangsters were sometimes glorified in films. One of the things which made those who were unhappy with this new cultural kind of production particularly unhappy was there were a lot of sexual innuendo almost explicitly in these films. 1920s films were more sexually explicit than anything you would see until the 1970s. Ill talk about why that happened. One example of this was one of the most popular film stars of the 20s. A woman named said ibarra, who herself was actually from jewish immigrant parents. Her maiden name was thee doe show goodman. She was from cincinnati. She was one of the what they called the vamps short for vampire. That is women who appeared sort of cool, sensual, willing to have sex with men as long as they could control those men and ruin them, in fact. She made lots of films, some onereelers, some feature films in which the same basic plot rolled out. A good moral man is just brought to destruction because he just cant resist her. They didnt show sex on screen, but it was pretty clear why he was being ruined. But she was never ruined. She continued as vampires do to live on and on and on. Another example was this guy. Rudolph valentino. An italian boy from italian immigrant parents who made many films, but his most popular films were where he played a character known as the sheik, a supposedly arab chieftan who lures blonde european and american women to his tent and then seduces them and they of course, cant get enough of him like this woman here clinging to him where hes just about to push you off for somebody else. These films were very, very popular, vallentino himself was he was like the beatles of his day or like thats a reference that is very Old Fashioned today hard to think of any film star today who has this kind of appeal. When he died in the late 1920s, very early, prematurely, thousands of women dime his funeral tried to take pieces of the coffin, had a very hard time moving through the streets of los angeles, because it was such a sad day for so many people who loved him. His popularity was symbolizeded in many ways by the fact that the most popular brand of prophylactic that was sold in america in the 20s and after that for several decades was called the sheik. Im not sure those are still made today. All of this, of course, was tremendously shocking and devastating to a sense of older morality. And not just to protestant morality either. The catholic hierarchy in america, which was more and more powerful because there were more and more catholics in american, irish hungarians and polls, german catholics, latin american catholics, they decided that you know, figures like this, people like valentino, who is at least nominally a catholic, they were being imitated and seen by catholic boys and girls in the cities who were making them into heroes and this couldnt do. So the archbishops, the bishops of america decided they had to do something about this. So they went to hollywood and said look, were not against movies themselves. Theyre here to stay but wed like you to adopt certain morality. What was called the production code. Which would make sure that a couple is never shown in bed together, make sure that this kind of shot would not be shown again on screen. Make sure that all you see between a man and woman was a kiss, nothing more. And that as much as possible, gangster films would end with the gangster being killed in a bloody fashion, being discredited, and being made very clear that he was no model for young people. Production code in 1930 was actually drafted by a priest and a leading catholic layman. The Production Office was called the hayes office because it was run by will hayes who was a leading catholic layman himself. But it took awhile for it to be enforced. It wasnt enforced actually till 1934. So for a while, warner bros. , the leading film studio in america at the time, continued to make films with titles like the naughty flirt, miss behaving ladies, and hot aris. These are films you could see in theaters all over america. But in 1934, the Roman Catholic church decided to push harder. Roosevelts administration, liberal in many ways, was not liberal on issues like this. Most catholics were going to vote democratic, so the Catholic Church had more push, morgue more power to influence Franklin Roosevelts administration than they had henry hoover and Calvin Coolidges administrations. So the production code finally was enforced from the 1930s. From the 1930s until the late 60s, early 70s when the production code finally was done away with, you did not see a man and a woman in bed together. James cagney continued to make gangster films in the 30s, but the gangster films showed him basically giving up either being blown up and crazy, someone who you do not want to follow, or basically telling young people in angels with dirty faces, for example, one of his greatest gangster films that they should not do what he had done, giving them a little lesson in effect. So the films from the 30s to the 60s, a lot of great films, golden age of hollywood in some ways, but in terms of showing sexual content, a much more oppressive age than our age today. And finally, a major battleground in the 20s, as throughout u. S. History, was religion. One can never underestimate the importance, significance of religion in american history. America, of course, was founded in new england, american colonies by the puritans. It was founded in the southwest earlier. Partly by catholic missionaries, spanish missionaries going together with conquistadores, armed men who were defending the missions and also looking for gold. And america has always been one of the more church going countries in the world. And this was just as true in the 20s as it had been earlier. However, there was again a battle over religion in the 20s. On the one hand, organized religion was doing just fine. A majority of americans more prosperous, belonged to churches. They could give some money when the collection plate came around. Most churches had ambitious building programs because they could afford to. And most of those churches, the protestant churches, were ones where the official doctrine held that the bible was the word of god. No question about it. But under the surface, where everything seemed fine, everything seemed traditional, everything seemed to be going along as it had been, attendance at the churches was actually down. New churches were often half empty. And skepticism about the truth claims of the bible were growing. More than they ever had before. The 1920s, in other words, was a time of tremendous religious skepticism, tremendous religious conflict. As was true for prohibition, as was true for film. What are the reasons for this . Well, first of all, prohibition itself. Prohibition had been since the beginning of the Prohibition Movement in any serious way in the late 19th century with the Womens Christian Temperance Union weve talked about before, the Antisaloon League, prohibition was the evangelical protestant issue. Methodists, presbyterians, congregationalists, baptists, the largest protestant congregations in the country were all very much in favor of prohibition. Their ministers were ministers who were members of the Antisaloon League, the wctu was an evangelical protestant Womens Organization as you know and continued to be strong into the 1920s. Prohibition was more and more popular. If you were not one of the members of the churches, it was probably very difficult to enforce where it wasnt popular. Thats one reason. Second, women were more independent. And women had been the mainstay of the churches. The 20s was a period in which the period of socalled new woman, women who were able to could go out to work more easily, even if they were married. They would bob the hair. They would wear more alluring clothing. They would go to movies like this one. And so women who had been the mainstay of churches, they still could go to churches but find other things to do with their time, as well. The churches hurt the most by this were the more fundamentalist churches. Also, the prosperity of the 20s, consumer prosperity brought with it other kinds of entertainments, other kinds of associations, other kinds of things you could do with your life besides being a Faithful Church goer. College football became more popular in the 20s than it had ever been before. Professional baseball had larger and larger crowds in the 20s. People had radios in their houses. They could stay home on sundays and listen to a sermon if they wanted to. There were car clubs, movie fan clubs like the fan clubs that got behind and were so enthusiastic about rudolph valentino. Finally there was the growing acceptance of darwinian theory among those with a high school education, which was still a minority of americans. More and more, there was a sense that genesis might not be the whole truth about the way the world was formed. At least there might be other ways to understand it. And if genesis wasnt true, well, maybe the other parts of the bible might be thrown to a bit of doubt, as well. So the 20s is a time where not surprisingly, you see both the rise of fundamentalist in american churches, a defensiveness on the part of more traditional protestants especially, and some traditional catholics. On the other hand, a rise in more relativistic, modernistic science oriented ways to understand how the world was formed. And science in general becomes more and more legitimate as a source of ultimate truth in the 20s than it had been before. The leading journalist, walter lippman, one of the most famous columnists and widely read columnists in america wrote in 1929 this is the first age i think in the history of mankind when the circumstances of life have conspired with with intellectual habits of the time to render any fixed and authoritative belief incredible to large masses of men. Any fixed and authoritative belief incredible to large, masses of men. In other words, relativism and knowledge is okay. Relativism and knowledge is fundamental, to use that term, element of what it means to be modern. Of what modernism means. You can have a different point of view and be part of the same society. You can disagree about religion, about race, about politics without coming to blows. Politics, yes. That was always true before. Race was a fairly new idea that you could have a Multiracial Society and everybody could be equal. But religion was very threatening. The idea that maybe the bible wasnt true after all. Many protestants agreed with lippman, as well. He was himself sort of a secular jew. Many protestants believed that one could accept darwin and jesus. One could have two separate spheres, in effect. Science class and church. Didnt have to contradict one another. But fundamentalists believe this is just one big step toward atheism. Fundamentalists argued also that darwinism was a philosophy. They said we dont know all of the details and all of the evidence, were not sure about that, but one thing we do know is that darwinism equals social darwinism. It equals the rules of the fittest, the rules of those at the top, a brutal dog eat dog world, and we dont want the children to learn this kind of thing. Some fundamentalists argue that genesis, those that wanted to breed a better race of human beings, were evolutionists. And if you believe in evolution you would do things like make sure that people who werent very bright couldnt have children. You would force them to get sterilized. They even tried to get support, ironically, for immigrants who say well, you really want these highborn elite scientists to tell your kids what to believe about the bible . Crystallization of this battle between more liberal, more relativistic attitude toward science, especially towards the bible, and fundamentalist ideas of what should be cherished and hold dear to the heart of all americans, occurred during the famous scopes monkey trial of 1925 in the little town of dayton, tennessee. In this courthouse, this is not from 1925. This is a photo i took about five years ago when i went down to dayton. The scopes trial was called the trial of the century, even though the century was only 25 years old at the time. And in a funny way, its funny to call the trial of the century because it lacked any real drama. A law was passed in tennessee in early 1925 that said Public Schools in tennessee could not teach any class which basically denied that god had created man in his own image. Thats what the law said and it was pretty clear if anybody did that they were breaking the law. The man who was the defendant in the trial, this guy named john t. Scopes, young Science Teacher at the Public School, Dayton High School in tennessee, had broken the law unwittingly. He was substituting for the regular biology teacher. He wasnt a Science Teacher at all. He was hired to be the football coach at Dayton High School. But he was willing to be the defendant in this trial because he wanted to help his new town of dayton, tennessee. He was from kentucky. He wasnt from tennessee. The town was in decline economically. It had been a mining town and the mines were played out and so the town needed something to build up its coffers. Everyone knew when this was passed that some town in tennessee was going to be the location for a big test case of the law. So some of the city fathers of dayton looked around for somebody who had broken the law in effect, and scopes was left out at the drugstore in downtown dayton and he knew that he had taught biology, and so he wont get in that much trouble. He can leave even if he gets convicted, which they assume hed be convicted. Despite the drama that surrounded it and despite the culture clash of the 1920s was , despite how many people know about it today, was located in to save the local economy, which it did, because lots of people went to see the trial. The trial didnt have much drama in it, at least at first. Both sides in the trial, both the prosecution and the defense, basically agreed that the defendant was guilty as charged. And scopes didnt really suffer at all from being convicted, which he was. He was in the case for the rest of his life when he went to places where evolution was popular, he would get drinks bought, dinner bought and he became a Petroleum Engineer and got jobs all around the world. He had a pretty good life, but the trial, nevertheless, was a dramatic one. It drew over 100 reporters. It was one of the first trials to be broadcast on a National Radio hook up. And it became the touchstone for a debate that continues to rage today in america. The two principal lawyers in the trial were two very famous men. Clarence darrow, one of the most famous lawyers in america, a radical who defended various figures like eugene debs on the socialist party and others on the left, and with brian who as you know went in for president three different times of the democratic party. And was still seen as a progressive democrat and hero to many rural, small town protestant americans. Brian stated the stakes of the trial this way. He said at the end of the trial, which took eight days, he had a little case and little consequence of the case, but the world is interested because it raises an issue and that day issue will someday be settled right, whether it is settled on our side or the other side. And here was the issue. It wasnt just whether one could reconcile the bible with darwin. It also raised the question of democracy, whether a teacher in a Public School was free to teach the truth as he saw it or she saw it, or whether, quote, the people have the right to control the educational system which they created and which they taxed themselves to support, which was brians understanding of it. He said if you want to teach evolution in new york city, thats fine with me, but dont teach it in tennessee because the majority of people in tennessee dont want it taught here, and he was definitely right about that. The legislature had passed a bill overwhelmingly earlier in the year. Clarence darrow, the guy on the left, the great radical lawyer agreed to head the defense for scopes only after learning bryan was going to be on the Prosecution Team on the others. Darrow had once been a fan of brian. He campaigned for him in 1996 1896 and ran a Congressional Campaign in 1896 as a bryan democrat unsuccessfully, but now 30 years later, darrow reviled bryan as a foe of intellectual liberty, as a symbol of what he said was despair and bigotry. Financing the defense, paying darrows salary and that of other defendant lawyers, was the aclu, the American Civil Liberties union, which they saw as a defense of free speech. They said we dont care about science against christianity. We just believe teachers in Public Schools should be able to believe the truth about science. And darrow, even though he was agnostic and some would call an atheist, he didnt want to attack religion. That was not his aim. What he wanted to do was basically say the question of religion was not the primary question. The question is if people can teach science as it is understood. He said i know there are millions of people in the world who look at the bible as the divine book. I have not the slightest objection to it, but it is not a book of science, and if it was, it was never meant to be. So when using the bible to stop the teaching of biology, the Legislature According to darrow had violated the first amendment. Well, the first six days of the trial were taken up with long testimony from scientists who were describing the theory of evolution to people in the courtroom and people around the country who didnt know much about it