CHAPTER XXV Postwar Society and Culture: Change and Adjustment
CHAPTER XXV Postwar Society and Culture: Change and Adjustment
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There were, and had been, new cultural, economic and social forces in place. Despite the absurdity of the politician's Red Scare, xenophobia still reigned that resulted in Closing the Gates to America. E pluribus unum had gone too far! Emma Lazarus's "send us your huddled masses yearning to be free," had succeeded in bringing political "undesirables" into the USA. The undesirables were those who were a little darker, or Jewish, particularly Southern and Eastern Europeans. In 1921 America's white politicians established a quota system reducing immigration from each country to 3% of its USA population in 1910. This, at least, limited all immigration. But, white American politicians wanted to minimize the inflow of Southern and Eastern Europeans. In 1924 they reduced immigration to 2% and made the base year 1890, for there had been fewer Eastern and Southern Europeans in America in 1890. In 1929, they reduced all foreign immigration to 150,000. This was allotted to immigrants on the basis of the 1920 population of their supposed original immigrants, thus -- effectively reducing still further the percentages available for the most recent immigrants. Even in the 1990's the battle to limit undesirable immigrants continued, especially in California where Governor Wilson -- another white American politician, the Governor of California -- fought to keep out Mexicans. The 1929 National Origins Act reduced immigration beneath the quota. Immigrants from countries that were doing well, e.g. Great Britain, did not use up their relatively large quota, while people from countries that were poor over subscribed to their nation's smaller quotas. America's white racist lawyer-politicians reduced the energetic, achievement oriented foreign population from 13 percent in 1920, to 4.7% in 1970. From the 1920's to the 1990's racist Americans often expressed great dislike for immigrants who showed intellectual ability. In 1920 young Jewish immigrants thrived intellectually and white college presidents introduced unofficial quota systems to reduce Jewish enrollment. By the 1980's and the 1990's Asian immigrants began to achieve academic success. This caused anger among some racist Americans. In addition to the 1920's changes in the nature of immigration, there were also New Urban Social Patterns. The census of 1920 showed there were now more Americans living in urban rather than rural areas. Anyone in a community of more than 2,500 people was considered urban, suggesting that politicians who put together the census may have been looking for this result. In truth, only 25% of Americans lived in cities with populations of 100,000 or more, 15% lived in big cities of ½ million or more. But, it is a fact that the trend towards true urbanization was afoot. Less than 10% of married women worked, although 25% of America's women workers were married. Surprise! Wives in poor families tended to work more than wives in better off families. Garraty maintains his class thinking, referring to poorer families as "working class" the worker making more money is termed the "middle class."
The 1920's saw the rise of democratic families. Scientific child raising meant medical checkups, good nutrition and -- perhaps -- avoiding child indulgences that would spoil the child. "Children are made not born," said John B. Watson. A former president of the American Psychological Association and VP of J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. Watson wrote, in his Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928) "Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap." Benjamin B. Lindsey, a juvenile court judge, advocated, in The Companionate Marriage (1927), trial shack-ups, oops "marriages", for young couples to get used to each other, practicing contraception to avoid problems. The Younger Generation was referred to as "flaming youth," reveling in the Jazz Age. Historian Beth L. Bailey noted the change from young men "calling upon" women to "dating", without parental involvement. "Love and sex are the same thing," said A.A. Brill, the chief popularize of Freud' sexual theories, supported by British sexologist Havelock Ellis who noted sex "the central function of life ... (was therefore) ... simple and natural and pure and good." Paul S. Fass in The Damned and the Beautiful showed that youthful behavior acts of independence were actually highly ritualized adoptions of peer pressure rituals. Still, The "New" Woman had champions like Margaret Sanger who published birth control literature. She violated the Comstock Act of 1873, an anti obscenity act favored by older white American, male lawyer-politicians. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League. She favored responsible action before sex, unlike the newer women of the 1980's and 1990's who, knowing that many women were unable to be responsible before sex, favored after- the-act killing of fetuses — right up till the babies partial birth. Of course, white male politician- lawyers on the Supreme Court did not determine anyone's right to use contraceptives until 1960. Other protections for women gradually dissipated. In 1923, in the Supreme Court case of Adkins v. Children Hospital, a law restricting the minimum wage women could earn as nurses, was shot down. Still, the double stand ard did reign in sexual matters, and other areas. In the War that would come (WWII) women still maintained their status as the weaker sex and were not drafted. Even in the 1990's divorce courts still overwhelming treated women as having special status. Mary Anderson, head of the Department of Labor's Women Bureau in the 1920's, tried to get employers to raise wages for women to a more egalitarian level, Garraty says most white male business owners said men had families to support. When they were faced with women who had families to support, the white males said they had a "tacit" agreement with male workers to keep male wages higher. The male dominated American Federation of Labor did nothing. While more women graduated, Vassar College announced that such women were being educated to fulfil their proper roles as mothers and housewives. Initially, women like Carrie Chapman Catt were delighted with the 19th Amendment, until they found women would not vote as directed by women leaders. So, Alice Paul started a Women's Party, looking for an equal rights amendment. Few went to the party. The party was actually favored honest equal rights and were against laws showing favoritism to men OR women, which caused a break with the social feminists. It was not until the 1980's that women's organizations would arise that stood for the hypocrisy of equal rights AND female favoritism. The 1920's split did give rise to a serious women's movement that has endured, The League Of Woman Voters, which looked towards larger reforms, not limited to women's issues. Popular Culture: Movies and Radio began to give the public what they wanted. The 8 minute Great Train Robbery (1903) was sneered at by the elite, but loved by the working class. By 1912 there were 13,000 movie houses in the USA, with 500 in NYC alone. David W. Griffith released Birth of a Nation in 1915, sympathetically treating the Ku Klux Klan. By the mid-20's the Movie Business was the fourth largest industry in America. A talkie, the Jazz Singer appeared in 1927. Color films arrived a few years later. Garraty's opinion is that "many movies were still tasteless trash catering to the prejudices of the multitude. Sex, crime, war, romantic adventure, broad comedy and luxurious living were the main themes, endlessly repeated in predictable patterns." Thankfully, The American people were able to use the realities of a demand economy to see what they wanted, not what the elite felt was best. Lawyer-politicians could not force their racist, anti immigrant, war loving policies directly onto Americans, although they could influence what the entertainment industry would produce. Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney animations came into being. Radio prevailed, starting in 1920 when KDKA in Pittsburgh started producing commercial shows, paid for by advertisers. America developed 500 hundred stations by 1922 and the National Broadcasting System by 1926. Nations like Great Britain eschewed free advertiser shows and chose — instead — to politically dominate radio broadcasting, thus assuring then a second rate status in the development of the broadcasting media. Radio station proliferation was so great in the USA that Congress got into the act in 1937, limiting the number of stations and parceling out the wavelengths to prevent overlap. They also assured that America's politicians had one more way to raise money from American businesses. In 1934 The Federal Communications Commission was established to revoke the licenses of those stations who did not operate in the public interest, as determined by lawyer-politicians. Lawyer-politicians, of course, always know what is in the public interest. Garraty seems to bemoan that fact that "the FCC placed no effective controls on programming or advertising practices," without noting the effects of this type of control in other nations. This time period is often called the Golden Age of Sports, with George Herman (Babe) Ruth who beat Joe Baker's record 12 home runs with his own 29 in 1919; Olympian, baseball professional, college and professional football player Jim Thorpe; Tennis's Bill Tilden and Helen Willis; swimmer and English Channel crosser Gertrude Elderle, The Boxers, Manassas Mauler Jack Dempsey and Gentleman Gene Tunney; golfer, Robert B. (Bobby) Jones, and the Great God, college football, gave rise to the birth of new stadiums and unprecedented paying crowds.
The 1920's were great times for city dwellers. But there were poor folks on the farm and this gave rebirth to Urban Rural Conflicts: Fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism decried the evils of the city, especially among Baptists and Ministers opposed to Darwin's Theory of Evolution. They vented their anger on the only public institution they could easily control; the schools. Five Southern states stopped the heretical teaching of Darwin. William Jennings Bryan asked why public money should be spent teaching anti-bible, speculative Darwin theory. The American Civil Liberties Union is always ready to support the spending of American Christian's money to teach anti-Christian theories. It decided on a trial case in Governor Austin Peay's Tennessee, known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, because John T. Scopes, a young biology teacher, was talked into filing a suit against the legality of the law. The ACLU brought in Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes. Darrow opined that "Civilization was on trial" not scopes. Darrow felt all must be forced to believe the non-biblical and non scientifically proven Theory of Evolution. Ironically, he accused the other side of bigotry. Apparently, bigotry is in the eye of the beholder. To prevent the teaching of unproven scientific theories was bigotry. To force the unscientific theory to be shoved down the throats of Christians and Jews as "science" was apparently considered enlightened. American liberals seem to love the Darwinian idea that the White Race was the superior product of evolution. Scope had obviously broken the law, but was let off with hundred dollar fine. Once having been used and abused by the ACLU he left Tennessee. Judge John Raulston who had bought Darrow's views of bigotry, lost his next election. Lawyer Darrow, on the other hand, continued his successful law degree, and the ACLU continued to March on, opposing religious values. In rural areas, the return to God continued with men like John Stewart Curry capturing the spiritual revival on canvas. In the cities, increased drinking went on. The Temperance movement — that had been around since Jackson's days, worked on Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment was passed in 1919. In The Great War, the Lever Act had required that grain be used for food., easing the impact of the Eighteenth Amendment. It worked. Per person alcohol consumption was reduced by more than 60%, from 2.6 gallons per person to under 1 gallon in early 1930. Of course, the lawyers, politicians, big city business men and other law breakers found ways to get liquor from bootleggers. Police even took money to guard the doors of Speakeasy's. This exposed the hypocrisy of corrupt individuals who did not want the public to see them as hypocrites. Politicians gave lip service to Prohibition, while making sure the Prohibition bureau was not funded sufficiently to prevent elimination of liquor. (Question: Does this seem anything like today's drug problem?) Either the elite hypocrites would have to obey the law and give up liquor, or they would have to find a way to re-legalize liquor. Eventually, it was legalized, just before Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1932. The police lost their jobs protecting law breaking establishments. Politicians and other society leaders could again drink, without appearing as hypocritical law breakers. In the midst of this cesspool of a drunken elite and the force feeding of anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Black "science," A new Ku Klux Klan rose, founded by William J. Simmonds. Two very creative publicity agents, Edward Y. Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler, were hired to increase membership. They did! By 1923 the New Klan had 5 million Americans. These Klan members tried to enforce prohibition, end gambling, stop anti-Christians and stop prostitution. Garraty says they also "put pressure on businessmen to fire higher paid blacks." The Indiana Klan leader, David C. Stephenson, was convicted of assaulting and causing the death of a young women. This was widely publicized and the Klan lost many members, and their power. In the meantime, Northern politicians were displaying their own rampant racism in the Sacco and Vanzetti case. In April 1920 two men were seen robbing and killing a paymaster in Braintree, Massachusetts. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (suspicious looking Catholic eye-talians) were arrested. They were then prosecuted by their trial judge, Webster Thayer, a WASP, declared his psychic powers on the issue by saying he knew both men were "anarchist bastards." Now, Vanzetti was no where near the site of the robbery. He was at the Italian Embassy at the time the killings took place. Still, Vanzetti and Sacco were both executed, demonstrating, once more, that WASP lawyer/judges of the 1920's could be as bigoted as the worst members of the older Klan had been. John Dos Passo's wrote about this injustice. Faced with a society that was bigoted from the top to the bottom, The "New Negro" arose. Black men like Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois were tired of waiting for something to crawl into the baskets they had dropped for Booker T. Washington. Blacks had suffered for years as the targets of elite white politicians and the scapegoats of white labor leaders. Fleeing to the cities, seeking a better place, they quickly discovered the same prejudices up North. They grouped together with other blacks in places like Harlem, which Garraty identifies as a "ghetto." One black sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, pointed out that places like Harlem did see an influx of rural people, not attuned to the needs of living in a city. The North's white power elite made sure blacks were kept in their place. The YMCA, churches, news reporting, movie houses and other facilities were segregated. W. E. B. Dubois wrote in "The Crisis", "we are cowards and jackasses if ... we do not marshall every ounce of our brains and brawn to fight ... against the forces of hell in our own land." Marcus Garvey, a West Indian, went further. As the leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, he called for a return to Africa. Black artists did thrive, like poet Langston Hughes and writer Alain Locke who asked blacks to participate in America, not become its wards. Like many Americans they benefitted from The "New Era," a prosperous decade of the 1920's, when the USA had 40% of the world's wealth and produced more electricity than the rest of the world. Our production was highly efficient, thanks to wealth building men like Henry Ford and Frederick W. Taylor. This was also The Age of the Consumer, with advertising being used to increase consumer demand. Bruce Barton wrote a book, "The Man Nobody Knows", explaining that Jesus was the greatest salesman that ever lived. By 1929 there were 23 million cars owned by Americans or — as Garraty says — "clogg(ing) the highways."
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