Isolationism

The United States, 1921-1939

The End of Reform

The 1920 presidential election demonstrated that the public had become tired of reform movements. The Democratic candidates, James B. Cox and his running mate Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaigned for the U.S. joining League of Nations. But the Republican candidate, Warren Harding, running on the slogan “Back to Normalcy,” opposed the League. He won an overwhelming victory.

U.S. Regrets Role in War

In 1920, American voters elected Warren Harding as President. Because Harding had opposed the Treaty of Versailles, this vote was taken as a rejection of America’s role in the Great War. By the mid-1920s, U.S. history books called American entry in the war “a mistake.”

He said it was time to return to “normalcy.”

“Normalcy” Returns Election of Harding in 1920 opened an era

of U.S. withdrawal from most world affairs. Americans were angry that most European

nations were not repaying their war debts. U.S. politics was dominated by prohibition

and and rising power of Wall Street. Farmers had a very hard time, because

the wartime prices of grain and cotton fell as Europe recovered in 1921-22.

The Business of America – is business

Harding, a small town businessman, took a pro-business view toward his role, and thus did not favor support of unions or regulation of corporations. But friends and advisors plunged his administration into scandal. Attorney General Harry Daugherty (right) of Hardin’s “Ohio Gang,” narrowly missed being convicted for accepting bribes and was forced to resign; other scandals erupted in the Veterans’ Bureau.

Prohibition

After a nationwide campaign by the Women’s Christian Temperance Unions and other anti-liquor groups, the 18th amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1920, prohibited the sale of any alcoholic beverages in the U.S. The Volsted Act enforced it (people could make a limited amount of “home brew” beer of 3.2% or less alcohol content).

Prohibition was poorly received by much of America, and criminal gangs quickly expanded to supply the booze buyers wanted.

Racism Revival

As had happened after previous eras of reform, the 1920s saw a revival of racism and anti-foreignism. The Ku Klux Klan grew up again, in the South, but also in many cities.

In Congress, a National Origins Act altered the immigration rules to reduce the number of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.

The New Prosperity

Postwar prosperity in urban America helped make the early 1920s – with new advertising through the radio and magazines, and with profits from overseas trade. Rural America did not obtain much of this “easy money” but still wanted the comforts advertised in publications like the Sears Catalog.

The Jazz Age The prosperity characterized the “Roaring Twenties,” where “flappers” smoked in public, youth enjoyed their own status as a “market,” movies with titles like “Flaming Youth” suggested an end to “old fashioned” morals, and writers like Fitzgerald and Lewis deride the old ways of life.

But the prosperity rested on shaky ground – people did not make enough money to buy all that was being manufactured. By 1927, many industries were reducing staff and cutting wages. All that was required was a shock to create a financial panic.

The bubble burst in 1929.

Low taxes, small budgets

Coolidge promised to keep Federal taxes low and the Federal budget balanced. As this newspaper cartoon suggests, Coolidge and his Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, trimmed Federal expenses by closing down some of the Progressive era regulatory agencies that had fought against child labor, while supporting factory safety, and other pro-worker actions. This helped increased the prosperity of the decade.

Consumers and Producers

Registration of vehicles rose in the ’20s from 9.2 million to 26.7 million. General Motors dominated cars by 1930. Unlike Ford, which concentrated on the "no-frills" inexpensive "Model T," GM executives each year introduced a variety of models that made earlier ones obsolete. With many models and many “luxuries,” they increased their sales each year.

The “Silver Screen”

The “movies” added to a “national culture” by teaching young men and women how to dress, look, and behave. Rudolph Valentino’s most famous film, The Sheik, left women swooning and men copying his Latin "machismo" hair style. When he died in 1925 of complications following an ulcer attack, his funeral became one of the public events of the decade. NEWSREELS COVERED LITTLE OVESEAS NEWS.

Restoring World Trade

Balkans

An Assurance of Peace?

In the late 1920s, U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg joined the French foreign minister in persuading world leaders to sign a pact promising to “settle all differences without resorting to war.” Every major nation signed it – and then ignored it.

Prosperity on shaky ground

• Despite the rising stock market, American (and world) prosperity rested on very little more than public confidence; this declined as dictatorships took hold in Europe and Asia

• World trade declined as many nations imposed high tariffs (taxes on imported foreign goods)

• The world’s gold supply was not stabilizing prices• Unemployment was slowly growing, as fewer

people could afford modern luxury goods• As sales of cars, radios, and other “durable goods”

(refrigerators, washing machines, etc.) slowed down, American factories laid off workers.

THE CRASH

Over speculation in the stock market led to wild swings in stock prices. In October 1929, the overall market fell to less than 50% of its previous value. Hundreds of thousands loss their jobs and the financial depression began.

Bank Failures – 9000 banks holding $7 billion closed in 1 year (no deposit insurance existed)

One in four workers were unemployed by 1933

A BREAD LINE In NYC, 1930

Hunger in a food-rich nation

Herbert Hoover’s response

As the president in 1929, Herbert Hoover (left) was faced with the crisis. He had been elected in 1928 as a “problem solver” who had provided aid to Europe after the Great war and helped the South recover from the devastating 1927 flood.But Hoover refused to expand the Federal government’s debt in order to provide direct aid. He and the Congress created the National Recovery Administration (NRA) – which would lend money to corporations. He assured people that the NRA would “engineer” recovery “in the long run.” One economist replied, “People don’t eat in the long run, they eat every day. And they’re hungry now.”

The Bonus March – 1932

The hard times dragged on. In 1932, thousands of veterans from the Great War of 1917-18 went to Washington to ask Congress to advance them money from the bonus promised to them in 1945. Several economists argued that advance payments of the bonus would stimulate economic recovery.

Crushing the Bonus MarchCongress refused to advance the bonus payments, while Hoover, worried about rumors that the marchers were being influenced by communist agents, ordered the U.S. army to “guide” the marchers out of Washington. Army chief Douglas MacArthur (left) exceeded his orders, using cavalry and tanks to drive them out.When the veterans were gone, chased out by tear gas, MacArthur ordered the burning of their camp at the city’s edge. Many in the nation were outraged at this treatment of hungry former soldiers at a time when Federal funds were being spent to save large corporations from bankruptcy

Election of 1932 -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

“It’s time for the American people to get a new deal – FDR, 1932

Crippled by polio in the 1920s, Franklin Roosevelt had managed to disguise the fact that he spent most of his waking hours in a wheel chair. A master at public speaking, he also knew how to use radio more effectively than most politicians of the day.

New Deal

The New Deal stimulated the economy with Federal $ aimed at 3 goals:

Relief – jobs and assistanceRecovery – restoring full employmentReform – preventing banking collapses, stock market manipulations through regulation

The plan stirred controversy but was supported by most voters.

Overseas

Europe’s response to the world-wide economic depression varied. Many countries struggled with high unemployment, but the work issue was ‘solved’ in Germany and Italy where fascist governments controlled all production and banking, and Russia offered communism as another form of full employment.

War abroadIn reality, war became the method by which dictatorships solved their economic problems. Japan invaded China in 1931, Italy conquered Ethiopia in 1935, and German ‘annexed’ Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938. Russia used the threat of force to gain favorable trade concessions from Finland, Rumania, and the Baltic countries.

The League of Nations proved helpless, unable to prevent these violations of the Treaty of Versailles.

The American Nazi Movement

The American-German Bund (here at a 1938 rally) was quite small, but it had its admirers among the German-American populations of the upper Midwest. After a Minnesota Senator died in an air crash in 1940, it was discovered that he (or someone in his office) had permitted thousands of pro-Nazi pamphlets to be mailed out using his Federal postal privileges.

War, September 1939

German invasion of Poland ignited war in Europe as Britain and France honored it treaty with Poland.

Frames from film showing German army advancing into Poland. Nazi tanks (panzers) and aircraft were then superior to those of the Allies

Neutrality

Neutrality Laws in 1935-1936, written by Gerald Nye of North Dakota (below), restricted American business with nations at war and prevent American citizens from being endangered.

• As U.S. journalists begin covering the war in Europe their stories would have an impact on how Americans regard the war and its likely influence on American policies.

America is NeutralThis picture of downtown Moorhead, December 1939, shows citizens enjoying an unseasonably warm day as Christmas approaches. Americans hoped that “this time” they would not become involved in the war in Europe. The U.S. had also steered clear of the war between Japan and China, raging since 1937.

Public opinion polls showed that while about 3 of 4 Americans sympathized with China, Britain and France, 4 out of 5 wanted to remain neutral in the conflicts.