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diff --git a/smith/10_roaring_20s b/smith/10_roaring_20s new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6e7fa0 --- /dev/null +++ b/smith/10_roaring_20s @@ -0,0 +1,125 @@ +20s is a period of high cultural change between modernists and +traditionalists + +What were its cultural themes? +How did Republicans shape the national political culture? +What sociocultural changes lead to the rise of the "New Woman" and the +"Sexual Revolution" +How did the consumer culture create an unhealthy economy? + +F Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby/This Side of Paradise +- Worked feverishly because he desperately wanted to be a writer but his + parents, girlfriend believed he had no prospects in it. +- Almost autobiographical about love and greed + - Flapper = more independent young woman + - About post-war youths' carpe diem, gratification, mortality +1920s were modern: they developed consumerist (credit-based) attitudes. + - Advertising + - Personal pleasure were encouraged + - Disillusioned +Woodrow Wilson not reelected because sweeping reforms were disbelieved. + +Republican leadership panders to the everyman focused inward. (1920) + - "Likable mediocrity": Warren G Harding + - Limited abilities, anti-Woodrow Wilson, anti-internationalist. + "America First" + - But he's from a key state and "looks presidential." + - Terrible speechwriter; "first president to hire a full-time + speechwriter" + - Farmers, liberal intellectuals, religious fundamentals believed + they were discriminated by the war. + - Readily defeats Democrat alternative (16M to 9M) James Cox. + - Ignorant "plain fellow" + - Alcohol, hosted poker games, tobacco, adulterer + - Incredibly insecure about his inabilities despite his outward + appearance + "Should never have been here [in the Oval Office]" + - Andrew Mellon, 3rd richest man, develops Mellon Plan + Proposes huge tax rate reductions believing they forced the + wealthy to keep their money tied up. (top bracket at 73%) + - Unemployment falls + - Taxes dive + - Mired in scandal: Director of Veterans Bureau stole medical + hospital supplies. Other director let prohibition be flouted. + - Teapot Dome Scandal + - Albert Fall was deeply indebted, 8 years overdue on taxes + - Began selling oil to close friends (petroleum exec) + - Took $4M in bribes from an oil tycoon + - First official to serve time for his position. + - Warren G Harding dies of food poisoning. + - Succeeded by VP Calvin Coolidge + +Coolidge Administration +- Puritanical morals, focused on minimal regulation & capitalism. +- Greatest accomplishment was "minding my own business." +- 12 hours of sleep AND a nap. +- Limited regulation of business and industry +- Reelected in 1924 +- Surging economy taken as endorsement of deregulation + + +Henry Ford and the Age of the Automobile +- "Machine age" = modernity +- Exponential growth up to 8 million cars in America + - Henry Ford in 1903 built cars for the masses (democratization) + - Model-T only $4K in modern dollars + - Margins low, wages high + - 1920: America 2/3 of oil production + - 1930: 10% of Americans work with cars + - Assembly line made production very efficient +- Freed the American people: urban and rural areas became less disparate + +Sigmund Freud and the Sexual Revolution +- "Frank treatment of sex," especially at colleges +- Sigmund Freud wanted to legitimize psychological field + - Reckless, unethical scientist: manipulated data, false assertions + - Manipulated information to provide narrative about ego, super-ego, + id, repression, and sexuality. + - Anti-religious. Wanted psychological analysis to take its role + - Cocaine-addicted. + - Writes "Interpretations of Dreams" that calls subconscious a + roiling snakepit of repressed desires and urges. + - "True Confessions" magazine focuses on Freud-inspired narratives. + - Sensual freedom and feisty independence of women. + - Talk Therapy popularized to help young people realize their hidden + selves. + - Freud pushed narratives supporting sex + - Simplified versions claimed that all sexual activity was good + +Birth Control +- Christians viewed it as an affront to God's will +- Margaret Sanger, nurse and midwife, saw birth control as a solution to + large families' poverty, amateur abortions, etc. + - Socialist party member + - Promotes birth control instead of women's suffrage + - *The Woman Rebel* promotes contraception, women's rights, suffrage + - Arrested but released + - Opens world's first birth control clinic, shut down by police. + - Endorses sterilization for the mentally incompetent and people + with hereditary conditions + - 1937, SC allows physicians to distribute contraception + - Dies in 1966 at 87 +The New Woman +- Margaret Sanger is a symbol of the flapper +- Zelda, F Scott's girlfriend, is a flapper that Scott calls her + irresponsible and reckless + - Drank, does "crazy things" +- Women discouraged from attending coed colleges by doctors purporting + it would reduce blood to their ovaries + - Women returned somewhat to their old roles as homemakers + +- Household machines and supermarkets' year-round access to meats and + vegetables meant that advertisers targeted women for consumerism. + - Domestic woman was "born to shop" + - Belief that "buying products would make you feel good" +- Encouraged by advertisers to keep buying to keep factories going + - Postwar relaxation, frugality during war replaced by wastefulness + - "Buy now, pay later": credit, installment plans invented. + +*The Theory of the Leisure Class* (1898) by Thorstein Veblen + - Conspicuous Consumption + - Americans wanted to get rich, and do it with little effort + - Success and status measured in terms of material wealth + - Brings up consumer debt. 75% of new car purchases on installments. + +Less savings and more spending was damaging during the Great Depression. |