Manifest Destiny,
Progressivism, War, and the
Roaring Twenties
- few men made enough money:
“Millionaire”: John Jacob Astor: fur
trading.
- The rise of big business in the United
States produced giant companies in the
making of steel and the refining of oil
and sugar.
- farming became mechanized with the
invention of the McCormick reaper.
- Telephone:
Alexander Graham Bell in 1876;
- Electric lightbulb:
Thomas Edison in 1879;
- the linotype machine by
Ottmar Mergentheber in 1886
- railroads (1820s) now stretched across
the continent
- 1900: railroad track connecting urban
centers with remote towns
- Alfred D. Chandler Jr.:
this expanded railroad system required
professional managers
- a new class of managerial professionals
had arisen - obsessed with maximizing
their profits
- John D. Rockefeller and Andrew
Carnegie, earned so much money that
they set up foundations to give it away.
- Without an income tax, many of them
became billionaires.
- United States became more conscious of
its increased power in the world.
- Isolationism- provide many people with
a sense of security by simply following
a policy of neutrality first enunciated by
President George Washington.
- “experiment in freedom,” attractive to
other nations and imitated.
- from monarchy to democracy
- Americans had a desire to see their
“experiment” take root across the globe
and, to assist it themselves by direct or
indirect action.
- United States continued its westward
expansion with the:
* purchase of the Louisiana Territory in
1803,
* acquisition of Florida in 1821,
* acquisition of Texas in 1845,
* the seizure of territories from Mexico
following the Mexican War in1848,
* Gadsden Purchase in 1853: United
States paid “conscience money” of $10
million for a strip of land south of the
Gila River in Arizona and New Mexico.
- 1867, William Seward,
secretary of state under Presidents
Lincoln and Johnson
- He negotiated with Russia by which
Alaska was acquired for $7.2 million
- opposition: Federalists denounced the
Louisiana Purchase as
unconstitutional
- Jackson was denounced for his seizure
of Florida
- Whigs fulminated against war with
Mexico
- Seward suffered personal abuse for the
outrageous cost of Alaska.
- “Seward’s Folly-”
- the acquisition of Alaska
- discovery of gold and later oil and gas
more than justified the purchase of
Alaska
- annexation of the Hawaiian Islands in
 July 1898
- Queen Liliuokalani, in 1893 and erected
a government that lasted until Congress,
- McKinley administration1898:
 passed a joint resolution annexing
the islands
 lucrative market and a source of
exotic fruits, such as the pineapple
 refueling bases and naval facilities
for the United States
- Two years later Congress granted
Hawaii territorial status.
- end of the nineteenth century: United
States success in industrial society
- renewed its belief in its mission to
spread freedom and democracy around
the globe
- Manifest Destiny revisited.
- idea was first enunciated in 1845 by
John L. O’Sullivan, editor of the
Democratic Review:
- “that “Providence” had chosen this
country “by the right of our manifest
destiny”
- “to overspread and possess” become a
global mission: to disseminating the
blessings of liberty and democracy.
- The nation forgot the warning of
John Quincy Adams:
it must not go “abroad in search of
monsters to destroy.”
- United States spotted “monster to
destroy”: Spain.
- Rebels in Cuba had initiated an
insurrection against Spanish rule on the
island in an effort to obtain their
independence.
- Spain’s brutal response in crushing the
rebellion evoked protest from the United
States.
- American journalists: “yellow
journalistic” newspapers such as
William Randolph Hearst’s New York
Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York
World: Spanish depredations committed
against Cuban nationals.
- Congress favored recognition of Cuban
belligerency.
- February 15, 1898:
USS Maine, on a visit to Havana, was
sunk by an explosion
- The finger of guilt was pointed directly
at Spanish officials.
- it is prepared for war, if war becomes
necessary.”
- April 1898: Congress passed
Cuban independence and demanding
the immediate withdrawal of Spanish
authority from Cuba.
- Teller Amendment: stated that the
United States had no intention of
annexing Cuba but would “leave the
government and control of the island to
its own people” once peace had been
established.
- McKinley signed the resolution on April
20.
- Spain broke off diplomatic relations with
the United States, and on April 24
declared war, whereupon Congress
responded with its own declaration on
April 25.
- Americans felt a sense of honor and
national pride, with a desire to share the
blessings of liberty and democracy.
- “a splendid little war”
- Spanish-American War provided the
United States: a series of victories in
 Cuba, Philippine Islands.
- In May, George Dewey entered Manila
Bay, destroyed what little Spanish navy
was present to guard the islands.
- In Cuba, Rough Riders participated in
the invasion.
- Spain suffered one humiliating military
disaster.
- Spain sued for peace in July, and a
preliminary treaty was signed in
Washington on August 12.
- Final peace treaty was negotiated in
Paris on December 10, 1898.
- Spain recognized Cuba’s independence
and ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to
the United States as a war indemnity.
- surrendered the Philippine Islands in
return for $20 million.
- McKinley “that we could not give them
back to Spain—that would be cowardly
and dishonorable . . . that we could not
leave them to themselves—they were
unfit for self-government . . . that there
was nothing left for us to do but to take
them all, and to educate the Filipinos,
and uplift and civilize and Christianize
them, and by God’s grace do the very
best we could by them.”
- Bring them the blessings of
Americanized freedom and democracy
so that some day Filipinos would
become wealthy and powerful.
- Americans actually believed it was their
moral duty to bring an “enlightened
society” to the benighted Filipinos.
- While certain business interests lusted
after expanding trade with Asian
countries as they looked westward to
develop new markets.
- United States had foolishly and
needlessly embarked on an imperialistic
course that not only divided the nation
politically but set into motion forces that
would later provoke a bloody war.
- December 7, 1941: at Pearl Harbor.
- under the leadership of Emilio
Aguinaldo, they were prepared to fight
American troops put down the
insurrection, an action that contradicted
everything this nation professed about
liberty and democracy.
- William Howard Taft, a federal circuit
court judge—to establish a government
in the Philippines.
- 1916: Jones Act provided self
government for the islands and
promised early independence.
- But it took several more de cades before
that independence was granted.
- 1917: United States purchased the
Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25
million.
20TH Century Momentous Events:
- March 14,
the Currency or Gold Standard Act,
by which gold—and only gold—became
the standard unit of currency, was
passed.
- November: the nation reelected
McKinley as President, along with
Theodore Roosevelt as Vice President, a
selection that Marcus Hanna, the skillful
manager of the 1896 campaign, strongly
opposed because of Roo sevelt’s reform
record as governor of New York.
- The Democrats nominated William
Jennings Bryan and
Adlai E. Stevenson on a platform of
anti-imperialism, antitrust, and free
 silver.
- A Socialist Party nominated
Eugene V. Debs of Indiana and
Job Harriman of California.
- September 6, 1901: McKinley was shot
by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, at the
Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York.
- The new President,
Theodore Roosevelt, known to
champion such progressive causes as
child labor laws, food and drug
regulation, conservation, railroad reform,
and trust busting.
- Populists and all manner of social
reformers from the East and West joined
Roosevelt.
- Progressivism, a movement formed to
further popular government and
progressive legislation.
- They insisted that the nation needed
labor laws regarding women and
children, legislation regulating wages
and hours, and statutes that defined
safety and health conditions in factories.
- “bully pulpit,” Roosevelt sought
popular approval of his crusade against
trusts.
- The formation of the U.S. Steel
Company, the first billion-dollar
corporation in the country.
- Northern Securities Company, a railroad
holding company, inaugurated
Roosevelt’s drive to bring an end to
industrial abuses.
- Expedition Act on February 11, 1903:
giving these suits precedence in circuit
court proceedings.
- February 14, 1903, the
Department of Labor and Commerce
was established which included a Bureau
of Corporations that had authority to
investigate and subpoena testimony on
activities by corporations involved in
interstate commerce.
- The Elkins Act of February 19, 1903:
sought to eliminate rebates on freight
charges and regulate shipping by
railroads.
- 1906 the Hepburn Act:
reinforced the Interstate Commerce Act
by granting it the authority to set
maximum railroad rates.
- Roosevelt pressured Congress to pass
the Newlands Act: which directed the
proceeds from the sale of arid and
semiarid lands in the West to be used for
the construction of dams, irrigation,
and other reclamation projects.
- new opportunities should be explored to
enhance the reputation, wealth, and
prestige of this country.
- One way to do that was to achieve
something, the building of canal that
would link the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans.
- Roosevelt encouraged Panama, then a
province of the nation of Colombia, to
seek its freedom in order to allow the
building of a canal across the Isthmus
of Panama.
- November 1903, American troops were
used to block Colombia’s effort to crush
the rebellion,
- Roosevelt was quick to recognize the
independence of the new Panamanian
republic.
- Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, on
November 10, 1903: granted the United
States control of a ten-mile zone across
the isthmus.
- Panama: it obtained the right to
intervene at any time to protect the
sovereignty of this new Republic, and it
agreed to pay $10 million and an annual
fee of $250,000 to operate a canal after it
had been built.
- Army engineers under Colonel William
C. Gorgas set to work on the canal.
- January 7, 1914, the first ship passed
through it.
- Roosevelt would boast, “I took the Canal
Zone.”
- The canal aided world trade, provided a
vital means by which the United States
could move its fleet to protect its Pacific
and Asian possessions.
- President Jimmy Carter in 1977,
treaties were negotiated by which the
United States would continue to operate
the canal until the year 2000, after it
would be turned over to Panama.
- Once Roosevelt won election as
President in 1904 against the Democrat
Alton B. Parker, the Socialist Eugene
Debs, the Prohibitionist Silas C.
Swallow, and the Populist Thomas E.
Watson, he felt more comfortable about
urging additional social and economic
reforms.
- child labor, slum clearance, and the
strengthening of investigative agencies.
- Most important legislation of his
administration:
* Pure Food and Drug Act, passed on
June 30, 1906: forbade the
manufacture, sale, and distribution of
adulterated drugs and food in interstate
commerce, and it prohibited fraudulent
labeling of these products.
- Meat Inspection Act:
The law required sanitary conditions
and federal inspection of meatpacking
facilities in any operation involved.
- But it took the publication of
Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle
to expose the filthy conditions in
meatpacking houses and neutralize
opposition to its passage.
- end to the abuses of greedy corporations
and machine politics
- Wisconsin, enacted railroad legislation
and an income tax during the
governorship of Robert M. La
Follette.
- referendum to allow voters a greater
voice in deciding legislation
Magazines:
Cosmopolitan, McClure’s, and the
American, published their reports, and
these stories became more and more
sensational: Standard Oil Company, the
beef trust, and the Chicago stockyards,
as well as corruption in city
governments.
- “muckrakers,” comparing in John
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,
who never sees what is around him
because he is forever looking down at
the filth he is raking.
- Progressive Movement
- legislation that would allow the
electorate to have a voice in initiating
legislature that would benefit them;
- it urged legislation that would permit
the public to approve or disapprove
 measures passed by state legislatures;
- Americans have a poor record of
exercising their voting rights.
- political parties: Democratic,
Republican, Populist, Socialist, Socialist
- Taft: a platform that called for stricter
enforcement of the antitrust laws and
further tariff protection, defeated
William Jennings Bryan.
- June 18, 1909: Mann-Elkins Act:
added telephone, telegraph, and cable
companies to the jurisdiction of the
Interstate Commerce Commission
(ICC) and permitted it to suspend rate
increases or to reduce rates if
necessary, subject to judicial review.
- Republicans:
Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909:
which raised duties to an average forty
percent ad valorum, “the best tariff bill
the Republican party ever passed.”
- January 21, 1911: these Insurgents
formed the National Progressive
Republican League in Washington,
under the direction of Senator Robert M.
La Follette, and
 demanded that the Republican Party
directly support progressive
legislation, such as the direct
election of senators;
 the initiative, referendum, and recall
reforms by the states;
 direct election of delegates to the
national nominating convention;
 direct primaries for the
nomination of elective officers.
- faulted Taft for failing to support and
defend the conservationist views of his
predecessor.
- Roosevelt broke with Taft, who he felt
had betrayed his policies,
“new nationalism,”: which supported
an income tax, workmen’s
compensation, labor laws, regulation of
corporations.
- He then accepted the nomination of the
Progressive Party in the election of 1912,
“Bull Moose.”
- Governor Woodrow Wilson of New
Jersey: a former president of Princeton
University, supporting political and
economic reform.
- Wilson himself: “New Freedom:”
called for a reduced tariff, a reform of
banking and currency, the
strengthening of the Sherman Anti-Trust
Act, and the end of special privileges for
business that had been granted by the
federal government.
- The election ended with the total
triumph of the Democrats.
- For the first time in American history,
African-Americans voted in large
numbers for Wilson because he had
promised them fair treatment and
greater police protection.
- DuBois, who had founded the
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) in 1909: to aid black people
in their quest for economic and social
equality.
- Progressive movement:
- Sixteenth: by which the
income tax was legalized
- -Seventeenth: provided for the
popular election of senators
- Wilson did lowering of the tariff.
- Underwood-Simmons Tariff,
October13, 1913: which reduced rates
on nearly 1,000 items
- Federal Reserve Act:
December 23, 1913
- established twelve regional banks,
each owned by private member banks
and authorized to issue federal reserve
notes to member banks;
-the act also authorized the board to
raise or lower the discount rate of
member banks, thereby enabling the
board to command the availability of
credit throughout the nation.
- Federal Reserve Board
- seven members, appointed by the
President with the consent of the Senate.
- Clayton Antitrust Act,
passed on October 15, 1914
which strengthened the Sherman
Antitrust Act by including practices not
covered by the original legislation.
- Federal Trade Commission Act,
enacted on September 26, 1914
which struck at business practices that
were deemed to be unfair or in restraint
of trade.
- Wilson signed the
Federal Farm Loan Act
divided the country into twelve districts,
each having a Farm Loan bank that
would provide farmers with long-term,
low-interest credit.
- Keating- Owen Child Labor Act in
September 1916:
which forbade the sale in interstate
commerce of any product made by
children under the age of sixteen.
EUROPEAN WAR: SUMMER OF 1914
- The attention of the nation was abruptly
turned to it when a
German submarine torpedoed the
RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915.
- National Defense Act,
passed on June 3, 1916:
which expanded the regular army;
It also established the Reserve Officers’
Training Corps at colleges and
universities.
- Democrats were able to reelect Champ
Clark as Speaker.
- 1918 did both houses of Congress agree
to a resolution providing women’s
suffrage
- Rankin was also a dedicated pacifist
and strongly opposed United States in
the ongoing war in Eu
- Submarines would sink all ships, both
neutral and hostile, without warning.
- Wilson broke off diplomatic relations
with Germany on February 3, 1917, to
arm merchant vessels.
- telegram intercepted by the British,
written by Arthur Zimmermann, to
the German minister in Mexico in which
it promised to return Texas, New
Mexico, and Arizona to Mexico in the
event of war between the United States
and Germany—that is, if Mexico
 declared war against the United States.
- United States entered World War I:
* Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917-
which called for the
registration for military service of all men
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.
* Espionage and Sedition Acts in 1917 and
1918- establishing fines and imprisonment
for those convicted of aiding the enemy or
committing other disloyal acts.
The war effort developed two stages:
* the first: from the outset of war to the end
of 1917, relied principally on volunteer
efforts;
* the second, from 1918 to the end of the
conflict, brought the administration into
exercising full control.
- Wilson mobilized farmers and
housewives through the Food
Administration program, headed by
- Herbert Hoover: widely recognized as an
expert because of his success in directing
the Belgium Relief Commission.
- Bernard Baruch :
War Industries Board, which hastened
the steady supply of equipment
necessary to conduct the war.
- Meanwhile the Germans signed a peace
treaty with Soviet Union.
- On June 3, several American divisions
joined the French in turning back a
German drive at Château- Thierry.
- Battle of the Marne, during the last two
weeks of July, the German offensive
was brought to an end.
- Wilson: “Fourteen Points” that he
hoped would be the basis for a just and
lasting peace, once Germany had been
defeated.
- These points included general
disarmament, freedom of the seas, open
covenants openly arrived at, restoration
of national boundaries, establishment
of an independent Poland with access to
the sea, League of Nations, removal of
artificial barriers to international trade,
an impartial settlement of colonial
claims, self-determination for Russia,
the restoration of Belgium, the return of
Alsace-Lorraine to France, and
autonomy for the subject people of the
Austrian-Hungarian empire.
- Fourteen Points: establish a new
world order, something impossible.
- Allies’ decision to intervene in the civil
war that had broken out in Russia
between the Bolsheviks and more
conservative Russians called Whites.
- Wilson’s leadership was seriously
undermined by the Republican
triumph.
- the European war ended abruptly
with the defeat of the German army
and the collapse of the German
government.
- November 11, the Kaiser, William II,
had abdicated and fled to Holland.
- In late December 1918, Wilson traveled
to Europe with a large body of experts to
attend the Versailles Peace Conference
and work for a just peace.
- An independent Poland with access to
the sea was established, Alsace-Lorraine
was returned to France, Belgium was
restored, the peoples of the Austrian-
 Hungarian empire won independence
and self-determination, and the Allies
agreed to the establishment of a League
of Nations.
- Russia’s** isolationist sentiment
throughout the United States.
- The American people were in no mood
to involve themselves any further in
European affairs
- Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts,
determined to block ratification of the
Versailles Treaty.
 the treaty jeopardized American
security and the nation’s
traditional foreign policy of
neutrality
 it did not exclude internal affairs
from the jurisdiction of the
League, and it contained no
recognition of the Monroe
Doctrine.
- Lodge offered fourteen reservations,
one of which rejected the obligation of
the United States to preserve the
independence and territorial integrity of
member nations.
- This obligation, said Wilson, was the
heart of the treaty, and he refused to
delete it.
- The Republicans, chose
Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio,
he managed to hide his numerous
extramarital affairs.
- Harding’s “back to normalcy” and
“America First” appeals.
- Not surprisingly, the election produced a
landslide for the Republicans.
- It signified not only the country’s
disengagement from active
participation in European conflicts but
a withdrawal into isolationism.
ROARING 20S
- the census of 1920 revealed that most
Americans now lived in or near cities
- They became city folk and worked in
factories and offices or ran local service
establishments.
- Their manner, clothing, and style of
living also reflected the many changes
that had taken place.
- The most important exception to the
generalization about the urbanization of
the country was the South, which
looked no “different than it had at the
end of Reconstruction in the 1870s.”
- Southerners suffered chronic
agricultural depression.
- poverty on African- Americans
because of racial bigotry and
discrimination
- New products were developed, new
machines were invented, new methods
were devised to increase productivity,
and new industries were founded, in turn
stimulating the nation’s economy.
- “horse less carriage.”
- Henry Ford applied the assembly-line
technique in producing his cars, and the
Model T Ford became the favored
means of transportation.
- Radio transmitters and receivers,
which had been invented prior to the
Great War, became another popular
commodity, resulting in a broadcasting
system that enveloped the nation.
- The motion picture camera had been
invented by Thomas Edison in 1896,
especially with the production of The
Birth of a Nation in 1915.
- growth of the airplane industry.
- It started at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina, on December 17, 1903, when
Wilbur and Orville Wright made the
first successful flight aboard a heavier-
than-air plane.
- During World War I, Aviation became
an integral part of the nation’s army
and navy, and soon airplanes carried
mail, passengers, and cargo around the
world.
- On May 21, 1927, in a solo flight,
Charles A. Lindbergh flew his
monoplane The Spirit of St. Louis from
New York to Paris in thirty-three hours
nonstop.
- The Volstead Act: January 16, 1920:
prohibited the manufacture, sale, and
transportation of intoxicating liquors.
- Americans had no intention of changing
their drinking habits.
- To obtain liquor, they relied on
bootleggers, or in their bathtubs.
- When Prohibition “first came in,”
declared Alice Roosevelt Longworth—
the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and
the wife of the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Nicholas Longworth—
- Because of the number of customers and
the profits involved in the illegal
transportation of liquor from foreign
countries, such as Canada, criminals
were drawn to the operation.
- The Mafia, an offshoot of a Sicilian
criminal organization, controlled not
only bootlegging but gambling and
prostitution in the major cities.
- In these dark, crowded places young
women, called flappers, could be seen
dancing the Charleston or listening to
jazz and the blues.
- Jazz began among black musicians in
New Orleans but quickly spread north
and reached Chicago just before World
War 1.
- In the 1920s it circled the globe and
attracted the attention of serious
composers.
- A number of popular musicians, such
as Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Irving
Berlin, and George Gershwin, provided
songs that became classics and were
sung worldwide.
- These songs marked the beginning of
an American musical tradition that
was innovative and unique and
extremely popular.
- In this jazz age flappers wore short
dresses, cut their hair short, and smoked
cigarettes.
- influenza epidemic of 1919–1920
- They had the vote and a sense of
freedom that encouraged a boldness
never expressed before.
- In American literature a number of
distinctive, talented voices were heard:
Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, and
Sherwood Anderson: of the naturalistic
school of literature.
- - In drama Eugene O’Neill virtually
single-handedly created the American
theater tradition.
- And such writers as T. S. Eliot, Ezra
Pound, e. e. cummings, Robinson Jeffers,
Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg added
outstanding and uniquely American
works of poetry.
- A celebration of black culture known as
the Harlem Renaissance, by such gifted
writers as Langston Hughes, W. E. B.
DuBois, James W. Johnson, Alain
Locke, and Claude McKay emphasized
both the joy and the pain of being
African-American.
- Painters like Georgia O’Keeffe
produced works that had a definite
American cast, and Frank Lloyd
Wright’s “prairie- style” architecture
was so distinctive that it drew
international attention.
The Roaring Twenties:
- generated an economy that seemed
unstoppable in its growth and strength.
- renewed growth of the Ku Klux Klan
throughout the South; then it migrated
northward and established itself in many
northern states.
- A “Red Scare,”
emanating from a fear of communism
and foreign influence in American life
and culture, not only increased
isolationism throughout the country but
resulted in the arrest of hundreds of
individuals suspected of subversive
activities.
- The Red Scare intensified after June 2,
1919, when an assassin attempted to kill
the U.S. attorney general, A. Mitchell
Palmer. Corruption became widespread.
- The most notorious of these scandals
occurred in 1921, when two naval oil
reserves, at Teapot Dome in Wisconsin
and Elk Hills in California, were
transferred from the Navy Department to
the Interior Department and
subsequently leased, without competitive
bidding, to private oil companies. ****
- The secretary of the interior,
Albert B. Fall, received hundreds of
thousands of dollars in bribes while the
lease was still being negotiated;
- first cabinet officer in American
history to be fined and imprisoned for
his crimes.
- First Immigration Quota Act, on May
19, 1921: limiting the number of
immigrants to be admitted to the
country.
- The Vice President, Calvin Coolidge,
was immediately sworn in. He pressured
Congress to amend the Immigration Act
so that certain nationalities that he
deemed unworthy of entering the United
States would be discriminated against.
Responding to the President’s request,
Congress agreed to another immigration
bill on May 26, 1924; this one lowered
the quota of each nationality to be
admitted to two percent, based on the
1890 census.
- But at least Native Americans were finally
granted citizenship.
- the Indian Citizenship Act was passed,
providing equality in American society to
the native population.
- These two laws—the Immigration Act and
the Indian Citizenship Act—stood in
marked contrast to each other: the one
restricted admission; the other extended
citizenship rights.
- Immigration Act: believed in some
quarters that within a generation or so the
foreign-born would cease to be a major
factor in American society.
- There was a large and eager market for
unskilled laborers, especially in the farming
industry.
- Fruit and vegetable growers in the
Southwest chose not to ask probing
questions of their workers about their legal
status.
- Congress also passed the
National Budget and Accounting Act on
June 10, 1921: created for the first time a
Budget Bureau in the Treasury
Department to regulate and supervise the
expenditures of the national government.
- During the Great Depression,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved
this bureau from the Treasury Department
to the White House in order to better
control and regulate the sources and
disbursement of funds.
- During the 1920s there was a considerable
effort to provide social and economic
improvements.
- They proposed child labor limitation,
lower railroad rates, farm relief, freedom
for the Philippines, excess profits taxes,
and limits on the power of injunctions
which were issued by the courts to halt
labor strikes.
- The xenophobia and isolationism were
reflected in the presidential election of
1924.
- Naturally, the Republicans nominated
Coolidge, but a number of Insurgent
Republicans formed a new Progressive
Party and nominated Senator Robert La
Follette. During the campaign they
attracted Socialists, Bull Moosers, and
Single Taxers.
- They proposed the nationalization of
the railroads, public development of
hydroelectric facilities, and the right of
Congress to override decisions of the
Supreme Court.
- At the Democratic convention northern
delegates who represented Jews,
Catholics, and the foreign-born
demanded the condemnation of the Ku
Klux Klan and repeal of the Eighteenth
Amendment, but southern delegates,
controlled to a large extent by the KKK
and representing religious
fundamentalists, objected.
- After a protracted struggle between
Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York,
a “wet” on Prohibition, a Catholic, and a
chieftain of New York City’s
Democratic stronghold, Tammany Hall,
and a former secretary of the treasury,
William G. McAdoo, who supported
 southern “drys,” the convention gave the
nod to John Davis, a New York lawyer
with strong ties to banking and
industrial interests.
- For the first time the conventions were
broadcast over the newest form of
communication, radio.
- Some politicians had a natural flare for
this new medium, such as Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
- Governor Smith: “the Happy Warrior
of the political battlefield,”
- establishment of the
Federal Radio Commission, with five
members appointed by the President to
issue; later changed to the
Federal Communications Commission
(FCC), and granted additional power
over television after its invention.
- Not unexpectedly, Coolidge and the
Republican Party enjoyed a stunning
victory. Coolidge himself garnered over
15 million votes, compared with 8
million for Davis and almost 5 million
for La Follette. Both houses of Congress
were also captured by the Republicans.
- The Roaring Twenties were rightly
named. And how they roared. American
songs, jazz, the shimmy (a dance), and
illegal drinking gave the 1920s a special
and uniquely American quality.
- The stock market soared; investors found
all sorts of ways to increase their wealth,
including buying on margin, that is,
putting down only a fraction of the cost
of a stock with the idea of selling when
the price rose and reaping a tidy profit.
- Only farmers were excluded from this
rich harvest. They continued to
experience economic depression.
- Farm prices went into a steady decline
following World War I, and conditions
on the farm became dire. This should
have been a warning of what might
happen to the rest of the country.
- Farmers appealed to the government for
help but received little. They formed a
farm bloc and demanded subsidies to
underwrite the unloading of farm
surpluses overseas. But what few bills
passed in Congress were quickly vetoed
by Coolidge on the ground that the
measures constituted price fixing for a
special interest. Still, the lingering farm
depression might easily spread to the
industrial and commercial sectors of the
country, and that could produce a major
catastrophe.
- In the presidential election of 1928 the
Republicans chose Herbert Hoover to
head their ticket, along with Charles
Curtis, while the Democrats fielded
Alfred E. Smith and Joseph T. Robinson,
a senator from Arkansas.
- Hoover promised to provide relief for
the despairing farmers, and this
promise undoubtedly helped him to
win the election overwhelmingly.
 - This election also brought the first
African-American from outside the
south to Congress.

- Because Washington was so racially

segregated, he was forced to dine in the
basement of the Capitol next to the
kitchen rather than in the all-white
dining room for congressmen on the first
floor.

- Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the

President signed it on June 17, 1930.
It was the highest tariff ever passed by
Congress and raised import duties on
agricultural items to forty-five percent,
with special protection awarded to
sugar, cotton, and citrus fruits.

- These increases were so excessive that

twenty-six foreign countries retaliated by
raising their rates, and American
exports took a nosedive.

- To aid the farmers even further,

Congress passed the
Agricultural Market Act in June 1929,
which established the Federal Farm
Board of eight members plus the
secretary of agriculture and created a
revolving fund of $500 million for low-
interest loans to cooperatives to build
ware houses and sell surplus crops.

- On October 23, 1929, the stock market

crashed, and thus began the worst
economic depression in the nation’s
history.