Prohibition and the 1920s

I. Prohibition Law:
A. 18th Amendment
(prohibiting manufacture, sale, transport)
B. Volstead Act
(making the 18th a “bone dry” amendment)
C. "Five and Ten Law"
(1929, 5 year, $10,000 penalty)

III. Prohibition Failure:
Why Not More of a Success?
A. Minimal Enforcement:
B. Unrealistic Expectations:
C. Corruption:
D. Policy without Authority:

III. Repeal:
A. 21st Amendment (Dec. 5, 1933)
B. The Constitution and Federal Intervention

IV. Progress and Decline in the 1920s:
A. 20s as Decade of Cultural/Economic Flowering:
1. Consumerism:

Lowest 40%=$725
190-housing
110-clothing
290-food
=135 left

Edward Bernays=father of modern pr


2. Movies:
Warner Bros. Pictures inc. in 1923
MGM formed in 1924
Fox Film Corporation founded in 1912
(became 20th Century Fox in 1935)
United Artists, formed in 1919
(by stars Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Charlie Chaplin, and director D.W. Griffith)



3. Harlem Renaissance

Claude McKay: If We Must Die (1919)

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Langston Hughes, I Too, Sing America

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.



4. “Lost Generation”



5. The “New Woman”


B. 1920s as a Decade of Suffering,
Ignorance, and Cultural Decay

1. Influenza
--killed 25-50 million worldwide
(700,000 in U.S.)
Historian Alfred Crosby:
The virus “killed more humans than any other disease in a period of similar duration in the history of the world.”


“I had a little bird, I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza. Its name was Enza.
I opened up the window, I opened up the window, And in flu enza, In flu enza.”
Children’s jump rope rhyme



2. World Economic Chaos:

 England=industrial problems: General Strike of 1926
--2 million unemployed by 1930
--3 million unemp. in 1933

 Depression
One billion per year in reparations
Hyperinflation in Germany:

1 dollar=9000 marks (Jan. of 1923)
1 dollar=4.2 trillion marks
(Nov. of 1923)

--one loaf of bread=580 billion marks

3. Urban Racial Unrest: Chicago, 1919
…48 recorded lynchings in 1917
…78 recorded lynchings in 1919

4. Nativism:
a. National Origins Act of 1924
b. Sacco and Vanzetti

5. The KKK




6. Scopes Monkey Trial

VII. Significance: