Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History and today we’re going to learn

about one the best eras ever, the 1920s. The 20s gave us Jazz, movies, radio, making

out in cars, illegal liquor. And the 20s also gave us prosperity, although

not for everybody and gangsters and a consumer culture based on credit and lots of prejudice

against immigrants and eventually the worst economic crisis the U.S. has seen.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, but what about Gatsby? Yeah, Me from the Past, it’s true that Gatsby

turned alright in the end, but what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust trailed in the wake

of his dreams did temporarily close out my interest in the aborted sorrows and short-winded

elations of men. intro

So there’s a stereotypical view of the 1920s as the “Roaring 20s,” a decade of exciting

change and new cultural touchstones, as well as increased personal freedom and dancing.

And it really was a time of increased wealth. For some people.

The quote of the decade has to go to our famously taciturn president from Massachusetts, Calvin

Coolidge, who said, “the chief business of the American people is business.”

Jay-Z would later update this for the 21st century noting, “I'm not a businessman,

I'm a business, man.” But anyway during the 1920s the government

helped business grow like gangbusters, largely by not regulating it much at all. This is

known as “laissez-faire” capitalism. Or “laissez-faire” capitalism if you’re

good at speaking French. The Republican Party dominated politics in

the 1920s, with all the presidents elected in the decade being staunch conservative Republicans.

The federal government hewed to the policies favored by business lobbyists, including lower

taxes on personal income and business profits, and efforts to weaken the power of unions.

Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover stocked the boards of the Federal Reserve and the

Federal Trade Commission with men who shared their pro-business views, shifting the country

away from the economic regulation that had been favored by Progressives.

And that was very good for the American economy. At least in the short run. The 1920s were

also marked by quite a bit of government corruption, most of which can be pinned to the administration

of Warren G. Harding. Now, Harding himself wasn’t terribly corrupt, but he picked terrible

friends. They included attorney general Harry Daughtery,

who accepted money to not prosecute criminals, and Interior Secretary Albert Fall, who took

half a million dollars from private business in exchange for leases to government oil reserves

at Teapot Dome. Fall later became the first cabinet member

ever to be convicted of a felony. But on the other hand: Business, man!

Productivity rose dramatically, largely because older industries adopted Henry Ford’s assembly

line techniques, and newer industries like aviation, chemicals, and electronics grew

up to provide Americans with new products and new jobs.

During the 1920s annual production of cars tripled to 4.8 million and automobile companies

were gradually consolidated into the big three that we know today: Ford, Chrysler, and Harley

Davidson. What? General Motors. By 1929 half of all American families owned

a car. And thus began the American love affair with the automobile, which is also where love

affairs were often consummated. Which is why, in the 1920, cars came to be

known as “skoodilypooping chariots.” What’s that? They were called “Brothels on Wheels”?

And the economy also grew because American corporations were extending their reach overseas

and American foreign investment was greater than that of any other country.

The dollar replaced the pound as the most important currency for trade and by the end

of the decade America was producing 85% of the world’s cars and 40% of its overall

manufactured goods. Stan, can I get a Libertage? Libertage

And companies churned out all kinds of labor saving devices like vacuum cleaners, toasters,

refrigerators. And not having to spend all day washing your

clothes or turning over your own toast like some kind of commoner meant that Americans

had more time for leisure. And this was provided by radios, and baseball

games, boxing matches, vacations, dance crazes. I mean before Gangnam Style, there was the

the Lindy and the Charleston. But probably the most significant leisure

product was movies. And I’m not just saying that because I’m staring into a camera.

The American film industry moved out to Hollywood before World War I because land was cheap

and plentiful, all that sunshine meant that you could shoot outside all year round. And

it was close to everything: desert, mountains, ocean, plastic surgeons.

And by 1925 the American film industry had eclipsed all of its competitors and become

the greatest in the world, especially if you count by volume and not quality.

And more and more people had money to go see those movies thanks to consumer debt.

The widespread use of credit and layaway buying plans meant that it was acceptable to go into

debt to maintain what came to be seen as the American “standard of living” and this

was a huge change in attitude. These days we don’t even think of credit

cards as debt really, but they are. And that was a relatively new idea. As was

another feature of American life in the 20s that is still with us: celebrity.

Opera singer Enrico Caruso has often been called the first modern celebrity but now

he’s a lot less famous than Charlie Chaplin, or Rudolph Valentino, or Babe Ruth.

But probably the biggest celebrity of the decade was Charles Lindbergh, whose claim

to fame was flying across the Atlantic Ocean by himself without stopping. Although he did

use an airplane, which makes it slightly less impressive.

Now Lindbergh wasn’t a truly contemporary celebrity in the sense of being famous for

being famous, but he was a business more than a businessman.

High culture also flourished. This was the age of the “Lost Generation” of American

writers, many of whom lived and worked in Europe, but America had its own version of

Paris in New York. The decade of the 1920s saw continued migration

of African American people from the south to cities in the North, and Harlem became

the capital of Black America. And speaking of migration, let us now migrate

to the chair for the Mystery Document. The rules here are simple.

I guess the author of the Mystery Document. I’m either right or I get shocked with the

shock pen. Alright let’s see what we’ve got here.

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 …

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying but fight back.

Stan, thank you for the poetry. I appreciate that it’s not some obscure document from

18th century blah blah blah. It’s Claude McKay, Harlem Renaissance poet,

the poem is called “If We Must Die.” It’s the only thing in the world I’m actually

good at. Now I know this from the imagery alone, especially

the line about mad and hungry dogs that would figuratively and literally make up the mobs

at the lynchings, but the giveaway here is the ultimate sentiment that “we” will

fight back. This was part of the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, which rejected stereotypes

and prejudice and sought to celebrate African American experience.

Meanwhile, things were changing for women as well as they found ways to express autonomy.

Flappers kept their hair and skirts short, smoked and drank illegally in public and availed

themselves of birth control. And marketers encouraged them to buy products like cigarettes,

christened “torches of freedom” by Edward Bernays.

“Liberation” had its limits, though. Most women were still expected to marry, have children,

and find their freedom at home through the use of washing machines. But the picture of

prosperity is, as usual, more complicated than it at first appears. The fact that so

many Americans were going into debt in order to pursue the American dream meant that if

the economy faltered, and it did, there was going to be lots of trouble. Let’s go to

the Thought Bubble. Prosperity in the 1920s wasn’t equally distributed

through the population. Real industrial wages rose by a quarter between 1922 and 1929, but

corporate profits rose at twice that rate. By 1929, 1% of the nation’s banks controlled

50% of the nation’s financial resources and the wealthiest 5% of Americans’ share

of national income exceeded that of the bottom 60%. An estimated 40% of Americans lived in

poverty. Now, many Americans celebrated big business

and Wall Street was often seen as heroic, possibly because by 1920 about 1.5 million

Americans owned some kind of stock. But big business also meant that smaller businesses

disappeared.

During the 1920s the number of manufacturing workers declined by 5%, the first time this

class of workers had seen its numbers drop, but not the last.

Now, some of these jobs were made up for by new jobs in retail, finance, and education,

but as early as the 1920s New England was beginning to see unemployment and deindustrialization

as textile companies moved their operations to the South, where labor was cheaper.

And working class people still made up the majority of Americans and they often couldn’t

afford these newfangled devices. Like in 1930, 75% of American homes didn’t have a washing

machine, and only 40% of them had a radio. Farmers were even worse off. Many had prospered

during World War I when the government subsidized farm prices in order to keep farms producing

for the war effort. But, when the subsidies ended, production didn’t subside, largely

due to mechanization and increased use of fertilizer.

Farmers’ incomes dropped steadily and many saw banks foreclose upon their property. For

the first time in American history, the number of farms declined during the 1920s. For farmers,

the Great Depression began early. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So, organized labor

also took a big hit. Although some companies engaged in welfare capitalism, providing pensions,

medical insurance, and greater guarantees of workplace safety, many more continued to

oppose unions and their efforts to improve working conditions. They employed stri kebreakers

and continued to blacklist union organizers. And coupled with the market logic that led

companies to move their businesses to the low-wage south, organized labor lost more

than 2 million members in the 1920s. So, in general the federal government did

little to nothing to help farmers or workers. The Supreme Court was the only segment of

the government that kept any progressive ideas alive, as they began to craft a system of

ideas that we call the jurisprudence of civil liberties.

For instance, the courts stepped back from decisions like Schenk v. U.S. That was partly

down to the newly created ACLU, which through lawsuits brought new meaning to freedom of

speech and eventually the right to privacy. Now, the court still voted to uphold convictions

of left wing critics of the government, but gradually began to embrace the idea that people

had the right to express dissonant views in what Oliver Wendell Holmes called the “marketplace

of ideas.” In Near v. Minnesota the Supreme Court struck

down censorship of newspapers, and by 1927, Justice Brandeis was writing “that freedom

to think as you will and to speak as you think are indispensable to the discovery and spread

of political truth.” But despite increased free speech and torches

of liberty and flappers and the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s was in many ways a reactionary period

in American history. For instance, the decade saw the resurgence

of the Ku Klux Klan in a new and improved form and by improved I mean much more terrible.

Spurred on by the hyper-patriotism that was fostered during World War I, the Klan denounced

immigrants, and Jews, and Catholics as less than 100% American. And by the mid 20s the

Klan claimed more than 3 million members and was the largest private organization right

here in my home state of Indiana. And with more immigrants coming from Southern

and Eastern Europe – who were often Catholic and Jewish – White Protestants became more

and more concerned about losing their dominant position in the social order. Spoiler alert

– it turns out okay for you, white Protestants. The first immigration restriction bill was

passed in 1921 limiting the number of immigrants from Europe to 357,000. In 1924 a new immigration

law dropped that number to 150,000 and established quotas based on national origin.

The numbers of immigrants allowed from southern and eastern Europe were drastically reduced

and Asians (except for Filipinos) were totally forbidden.

The quota for Filipinos was set at 50 per year although they were still allowed to emigrate

to Hawaii because their labor was needed there. There were no restrictions however on immigration

from the Western Hemisphere because California’s large-scale farms were dependent upon seasonal

laborers from Mexico. These immigration restrictions were also influenced

by fear of radical anarchists and pseudo-scientific ideas about race. Whites were seen as scientifically

superior to people of color and as president Coolidge himself declared when he signed the

1924 immigration law, “America must be kept American.”

Tell me, Calvin Coolidge, about how American you are. Are you Cherokee? Or Cree? Or Lakota?

The 1920s also saw increased tension between science education in the United States and

religious beliefs. The best known example is, of course, the

trial of John Scopes in Tennessee in 1925. Scopes was tried for breaking the law against

teaching evolution, which he had been encouraged to do by the ACLU as a test case for the freedom

of speech. Scopes was prosecuted by William Jennings

Bryan, whom you will remember as having recently resigned as Secretary of State and who had

become a leader of the fundamentalist movement. And Scopes was defended by Clarence Darrow,

that famous defense attorney who contemporary defense attorneys always point to to argue

that defense attorneys aren’t all scum. Scopes and Darrow actually lost the trial

but the case drew national attention and ultimately led to evolution being taught in more American

schools. The Scopes trial is often seen as a victory

for free thinking, and science, and modernism, and I suppose it was, but for me it’s more

a symbol of the contradictions of the 1920s. This is the decade that gave us mass consumer

culture and celebrity worship, which are important and very complicated legacies.

And it also saw the birth of modern conceptions of civil liberties. It was a period when tolerance

became an important value, but at the same time it saw a rise in lynchings.

Immigrants were necessary for the economic boom of the 1920s, but at the same time their

numbers were restricted as they were seen as a threat to “traditional American values.”

And that raises a question that we’re still struggling with today: what are those values?