America 1917-1929:

The First World War

There died a myriad,

And of the best, among them,

For an old bitch gone in the teeth,

For a botched civilization.

-- Ezra Pound, 1920

The Great War

USA entered war late in 1917 and reluctantly

Its motives uncertain

originally pursued a policy of isolationism, avoiding conflict while trying to broker a

peace.

in 1915 German U-boats sank the British ocean liner Lusitania with 128 Americans
aboard.

In 1917 Germany proclaimed that unrestricted submarine warfare would be

resumed (5 American vessels had been sunk)

A hasty expansion of the armed forces was launched

Woodrow Wilson: The world must be made safe for democracy (echo of the British
notion that it was a war to end all wars)

There was also the economic reason

Contribution

USA shifted the balance of power

Determined both the outcome of the war and the terms of peace (the Treaty of
Versailles)

Many Americans including several writers (Ernest Hemingway was wounded)

took part in the war

drafted four million men and by summer of 1918 over 1,750,000 soldiers were in
France.

Even the US had substantial losses

US Military Casualties in World War I: around 300.000 (Total dead: 120,144)

Wilson's Fourteen Points

During the bloody battles of the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson began to
explain his plans for the peace following the war.

Most widely known was his message of a "peace without victory" most completely
explained in his "Fourteen Points" speech before Congress on 8 January 1918.

The first 5 points consisted mainly the idea of an "open" world after the war.

The next 8 points focused mainly upon the idea of granting "self-determination" to
national minorities in Europe.

Most significant was point number 14 which stressed a "general association of

nations" to ensure "political independence and territorial integrity to great and small
states alike."

Fourteen Points signaled a generous, non-punitive postwar settlement.

The 14th point

the most controversial and yet most important to Wilson: the League of Nations

The theory behind the League was collective security

Congress was wary of losing its sole power to declare war to the League

The US wished to be under no obligation to enter into another foreign war

In order to get his proposal for the League passed, Wilson compromised on the issue
of German reparations, allowing them to exist in the peace settlement. This
compromise undermined the spirit of the Fourteen Points and lost Wilson the
support of the League advocates

The League was voted in (though not given powers) by the rest of the Allies, yet it
was never approved by the United States. The US finally voted on the Versailles
Treaty, without the League articles, in 1921.

The Aftermath

Lost faith in progress, in man and in rationality as the shaping force of the human
psyche and human society (all dominant 19th century ideas)
Europe: emerged from the war decimated by losses, economically exhausted, debt-
ridden, struggling with inflation and in some countries with political unrest

USA: in the years after the WWI there came an economic boom America was
becoming the economic power of the world

Stimulated by a wartime economy, growth in productivity exploded after the WWI

The US achieved the highest standard of living in the world!

The Jazz Age - America in the 1920s

In 1920's America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring
Twenties - everybody seemed to have money.

The 1920s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. The Great War had
destroyed old social conventions and new ones developed. Changes The
Flapper

The young set themselves free, especially the young women. They shocked the
older generation with their new hair style (a short bob) and the clothes they wore
were much shorter than before and tended to expose their legs and knees. The
wearing of what were considered skimpy beach wear in public could get the
Flappers, as they were known, arrested for indecent exposure. They wore silk
stockings rolled just above the knee and they got their hair cut at male barbers.

The Flappers also went out without a man to look after them, went to all-night
parties, drove motor cars, smoked in public, used make-up (which they might well
apply in public) and held mens hands without wearing gloves. Mothers formed the
Anti-Flirt League to protest against the acts of their daughters.

they embodied the modern spirit of the Jazz Age

Louise Brooks, Anita Loos, Dixie Dugan

Anita Loos (1893 - 1981)

Books: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), and the sequel But Gentlemen Marry
Brunettes (1928) (written as the "diaries" of a flapper who travels to Europe, meets
"everyone" and returns to America to marry a millionaire)

Jazz

Linked to the growth of an alternate generation, was the growth in jazz.

This lead to new dances being created which further angered the older generation.
The Charleston, One Step and Black Bottom were only for the young and the last
one angered the establishment by name alone.
The most famous jazzmen were Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Benny Goodman.

The combination of the new music, new dances and new fashions outraged many

the crazies

people would do crazy things for fun, such as sitting on top of a flag pole for as long
as possible; marathon dances that went on until everybody had dropped and wing
flying when you stood strapped onto the wing of a flying plane until it landed.

This was also the era of great sports champions, such as Babe Ruth the baseball
player and Bobby Jones "the greatest amateur golfer of all time."

Hollywood

The 1920s made Hollywood. 100 million people a week went to the movies.

For many films, the star was more important than the film itself and they could earn
a fortune.

Slapstick comedy was dominated by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and
Hardy.

The leading women were Greta Garbo, Clara Bow and Mary Pickford and the leading
male star was Rudolf Valentino. When he died in 1926 aged just 31 people queued
for miles to see his embalmed body and riots broke out.

Greta Garbo,Clara Bow & Mary Pickford

The decade saw the first "talkie" - "The Jazz Singer" (1927) starring Al Jolson. Many
silent screen stars lost their jobs as their voices sounded too strange or their
accents were difficult to understand.

The stars lived lavish lifestyles - Beverley Hills was the place to live and they
cultivated in peoples minds the belief that you could succeed in America regardless
of who you were.

Many writers (Faulkner, Hammett, Fitzgerald) moved to Hollywood and became

scriptwriters, earning enormous sums of money.

Rudolph Valentino,Charlie Chaplin,Al Capone

Prohibition, gangsters, etc.

In 1919, Prohibition had been introduced into America. This law banned the sale,
transportation and manufacture of alcohol. Ironically, drinking began to be
associated with sophistication, and the number of illegal saloons, speak-easies,
increased. There was a ready market for alcohol throughout the 1920's and the
gangsters provided it. Capone's earnings at their peak stood at $60 million a year
from alcohol sales alone with $45 million from other illegal ventures.

Notorious in Chicago, Capone achieved national celebrity status when he appeared

on the front of the celebrated "Time" magazine.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)

The one writer most identified with the roaring 20's is F. Scott Fitzgerald. A
handsome and gregarious man, Fitzgerald became famous with the publication of
his first novel This Side of Paradise (1920). The author was among the first writers
to draw attention to the new post-WW I sophistication, particularly such phenomena
as petting parties and youthful love affairs. Fitzgerald's books were such a success
that he became a kind of king to American youth; his queen was his beautiful, witty
(and emotionally unstable) wife Zelda.

One famous incident involved them splashing in a public fountain. They also rode on
the hoods of taxis, disrupted plays by laughing at the sad parts and weeping over
jokes, and entertained lavishly (during Prohibition) at drunken parties. To foot the
bill for their extravagant lifestyle, Fitzgerald wrote dozens of short stories for the
leading magazines of the day. Both his stories and his novels record - and partly
served to create - the period.

Fitzgerald's novels include The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and The Great
Gatsby (1925). His best known short story is certainly "Bernice Bobs Her Hair,"
which is included in Flappers and Philosophers (1920).

little magazine movement

Margaret Andersons The Little Review

Harriet Monroes Poetry

The Seven Arts

The Masses

New publishing firms

Alfred A. Knopf, Harcourt, Brace, The Viking Press

Violations of Civil Liberties

Red Scare (1919)

Palmer Raids (1920) attempts by the US to arrest and deport left-wing radicals,
especially anarchists. The raids and arrests occurred under the leadership of
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. More than 500 foreign citizens were deported,
including a number of leftist leaders.

Sacco and Vanzetti trials (Italian immigrants who were accused and convicted of
murdering 2 men during a 1920 armed robbery in Massachusetts. After a
controversial trial and a series of appeals, the men were executed in 1927)

National Origins Act (1924) halted immigration from the Orient + restricted
immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe

All this caused hostility towards foreigners (xenophobia)

Between 1920 & 1925 KKK membership rose form 5 thousand to 5 million

Concerned Americans created the American Civil Liberties Union (1920)

In this decade, America became the wealthiest country in the world with no obvious
rival. Yet by 1930 she had hit a depression that was to have world-wide
consequences.

One of the reasons for this was the introduction of hire-purchase whereby you put a
deposit on an item that you wanted and paid installments on that item, with
interest, so that you paid back more than the price for the item but did not have to
make one payment in one go. Hire-purchase was easy to get and people got into
debt without any real planning for the future. In the 1920s it just seemed to be the
case that if you wanted something then you got it.

But simply buying something had a major economic impact. Somebody had to make
what was bought. The person who made that product would get paid and he (as it
usually was in the 1920s) would not save all that money. He, too, would spend
some of it and someone somewhere else would have to make that and so he would
get paid. And so the cycle continued. This was the money flow belief of John
Maynard Keynes. If people were spending, then people had to be employed to make
things. They got paid, spent their money and so the cycle continued.

Ford Model -T

This was a car for the people. It was cheap; mass production had dropped its price
to just $295 in 1928. The same car had cost $1200 in 1909. By 1928, just about
20% of all Americans had cars. The impact of Ford meant that others had to
produce their own cheap car to compete. The benefits went to the consumer. Hire-
purchase made cars such as these very affordable.

To cope with the new cars new roads were built which employed a lot of people. But
not everybody was happy with cars. Critics referred to cars as "prostitution on
wheels" as young couples courted in them and gangsters started to use the more
powerful models as getaway cars after robberies. But cars were definitely here to
stay.

Not only were cars popular. Radios (10 million sold by 1929), hoovers, fridges and
telephones sold in huge numbers

Majority of Am. writers rejected materialism of the Jazz Age and sailed for Europe
(Ernest Hemingway)

Sherwood Andersons breakdown

The "Lost Generation"

In October 1929, the Wall Street Crash occurred. Its impact was felt worldwide