History - chapter 9 - p307 onwards Notes | Knowt (2024)

‘the vanishing americans’

• population from 1.5 million to 250,000 in 1920

  • those who survived were forced to move to reservations in the Midwest

• in the 1920s, gov. became more worried about treatment

  • 12 000 had served in army which helped change attitudes towards them

  • census in 1920 showed most lived in extreme poverty with bad health and education and poorly paid jobs

  • quickly losing land

    • mining companies legally seized land

    • struggled to continue to own land and sold up

  • losing culture

    • boarding schools for assimilation

      • destroy beliefs, traditions, dances and languages

• 1920s was somewhat a turning point

  • 1924 granted citizenship and allowed to vote

  • 1928 Merriam Report proposed widespread improvement to laws relating the Native Americans

    • reforms introduced under Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1934

Religious intolerance

• increasing divide between urban and rural America in the 1920s

  • many younger people and professionals in the growing towns and cities indulged in consumerism and partying associated with the Roaring Twenties

    • they held liberal and progressive views about race

  • rural America - ‘Bible Belt’

    • traditional and conservative opinons

    • protestant churches preached that city life was increasingly immoral and threatened the fabric of American society

The Monkey Trial

• 1925 - showdown of religions between evolutionists and creationists

  • Butler Act of 1925 which prohibited schools from teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution because it went against religious beliefs

  • first trial to be broadcast on live TV

  • after trial, anti-evolution lobby was weakened

Why was the Prohibition introduced?

• rural areas of USA - temperance movement

  • no drinking alcohol

  • devout christians who saw the damage of alcohol to family life

• Anti-Saloon League + Women Christian Temperance Union

  • persuaded state governments to prohibit the sale of alcohol within state

  • by 1916, 21 states has banned saloons

• supporters of prohibiton became known as ‘dries’

  • claimed that 3000 infants are smothered yearly in bed by drunken parents

  • WWI boosted dries campaign - alchol drinkers were unpatriotic cowards

    • biggest breweries were german-run = enemy

    • drinking was linked to evil

• campaigns became city vs country values

• 1917 movement had enough states on its side to propose the 18th Amendment to the Constitution

  • ‘prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors’

  • became law in jan 1920 - ‘Volstead Act’

Impact of the Prohibition

• 1920-1933

• levels of alcohol consumption fell by 30% in early 1920s

• Prohibition agents arrested offenders

  • Isadore Einstein + deputy Moe Smith

    • made 4392 arrests

    • funnel to ensure evidence

Supply and demand

• enforcement of prohibition was difficult in cities

• vast number of suppliers stepped in to supply the demand for illegal alcohol

Bootleggers

• 2/3 illegal alcohol came from canada

• captain McCoy - scottish whiskey - wait in water until opportunity presented itself

Stills

• illegal distilleries sprang up around USA and made own illegal whiskey - moonshine

• 280,000 stills seized

Speakeasies

• 1925 there were more speakeasies than there were saloons in 1919

• Izzy Einstein filed a report on how easy it was to find alcohol in cities

  • chicago - 21 mins

  • atlanta - 17 mins

  • pittsburg - 11 mins

  • new orleans - 35 secs

• Al Capone made around $60 million a year from bootlegging and speakeasies

  • ‘prohibition is a business. All i do is supply a public demand’

Corruption

• led to massive corruption

• many law enforcement officers were involved in liquor trade

• big breweries stayed open by bribing officials and police

• 1 in 12 prohibition agents was dismissed for corruption

Gangsters

• gangs made about $2 billion out of sale of illegal alcohol

• George Remus was a very succesful bootlegger and at a party:

  • gave diamond cuff links worth 25,000 to men

  • cars to each woman

• gangsters generally from immigrant backgrounds

• Lucky Luciano + Dan O’Banion + Pete and Vince Guizenberg

• In Chicago alone, there were 130 gangland murders in1926 and 1927 and not one arrest

Chicago and Al Capone

• arrived in chicago in 1919 on the run from a murder investigation in 1919 NYC

• controlled lots of police, judges.. and even the chicago mayor - William Hale Thompson

• well liked by citizens

  • gave 30,000 to a soup kitchen for unemployed

• 1929 had destroyed the power of the other chicago gangs, committing at least 300 muders in the process

• peak of violence was the Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929

  • Capone’s men murdered seven of his rival Bugsy Moran’s gang, using a false police car and two gangsters in police uniform to put Bugsy’s men off guard

The end of the prohibition

• after Vday Massacre - showed that gangs were not murder but massacre

• after Wall Street Crash

  • there was all the reason to end prohibiton to create jobs, increase tax revenue and free up resources tied up in the impossible task of enforcing the Prohibition

• Roosevelt elected in 1932 and repealed prohibition in 1933

What were the causes and consequences of the Wall Street Crash?

• a number of financial experts warned that the American ecnomy was slowing down and in Sep 1929 some investors started selling shares in large numbers

  • this made people nerbous and investors went into panic and rushed to sell their shares

• On 24 Oct 1929 - Black Thursday - 12.8 million shares were sold - thousands saw their fortune, or any money in the banks disappear

• On 29 Oct 1929 - 16 million shares were sold at very low prices

• The stock Market in NYC had collapsed

• Roaring Twenties came to a sudden end

  • investors lost their money in the crash and culdn’t pay their debts

  • in 1929 - 659 banks failed + in 1930 another 1352 failed

    • ordinary people lost their savings and hope for their future

  • people couldn’t buy consumer goods

    • workers made redundant and worker’s wages cut and unemployment rose to very high levels

      • by the end of 1929 - 2.5 millions Americans were out of work

• STATS FOR CONSEQUENCES:

  • vanderbilt family lost $40 million

  • Rockefeller lost 80% of his wealth

  • Winston Churchill lost $500,000

  • between 1928 and 1933 both industrial and farm production fell by 40% and average wages by 60%

  • by 1933 - 14 million unemployed and 5000 banks gone bankcrupt

  • USA’s international trade reduced from $10 billion in 1929 to $3 billion in 1932

  • 1932 steel city Cleveland, 50% of workers were unemployed and in Toledo 80%

The 1932 Presidential Election

Hoover vs Roosevelt

How succesful was the New Deal?

The Hundred Days

• 60 million tuned into ‘fireside chat’

  • confidence in government

• Emergency banking Act

  • all banks shut for 4 days whilst they were checked and then 5000 trustworthy banks were reopened with the promise of government loans

  • in 1933, over $1 billion was redeposited by customers

• Securities Exchange Comission

  • set up to help restore investor confidence in the stock market

  • tightened up rules and regulations to stop reckless speculation

• Civilian Conservation Corps

  • aimed at unemployed young men

  • sign on for periods of six months which could be renewed if no work was found

  • around $2.5 million were helped by this scheme

• Federal Emergency Relief Administration

  • help state and local governments create temporary work for the unemployed and provide help for those in desperate need

  • nearly 20 million temporary and part time jobs were created by this administration between 1933 and 1935

  • $500 million was spent on soup kitchens, clothing and employment schemes

• Civil Works Admnistration

  • help unemployed americans during winter of 1933-1934

  • provided an additonal 4 million short term jobs

• Home Owners Loan Corporation

  • over 1 million families received loans by 1935

  • stopped after this and focused on repayments

• Agricultural Adjustment Administration

  • help problems facing farmers

  • set quotas to reduce farm production in order to force prices gradually upwards

  • helped farmers modernise and use farming methods that would conserve and protect the soil

  • receive help with mortgage

  • over 90% farmers were helped by AAA

  • prices of agricultural produce rose by 50% between 1933-1936

• National Industry Recovery Act

  • set up:

  • Public Works Administration

    • ued government money to build schools, roads, dams…

    • spent $7billion on job creations

    • built over 70% of US schools and 35% of hospitals in 1930s

  • National Recovery Administration

    • imporved working conditions in industry and outlawed child labour

    • set out fair wages and sensible levels of production

    • over 2 million employers joined scheme

• Tennessee Valley Authority

  • TVA cut across powers of the local state governments

  • construct 33 dams on Tennessee river

  • helped farming

  • over 9000 jobs created

  • lead to displacement of over 15000 families

Drawbacks of Alphabet Agencies

• public spending and debt increased significantly from $22billion in debt in 1933 to $33 billion in 1936

• ‘pump priming’ - investing public money into the economy to create jobs

• Roosevelt tried to balance federal budget by cutting spending elsewhere

  • government employees salaries and pensions were cut by 15%

  • military spending was reduced

  • taxes were raised on rich

The Second New Deal

• Despite his achievements, by May 1935 Roosevelt was facing a barrage of criticism. On Tuesday 14th of May 1935, Roosevelt met with a group of senators and close advisors who shared his views and aims. One month later, he presented leaders of all Congress with a huge range of laws that he wanted passed. This became known as the second new deal and was aimed at areas that affected Ordinary People - for example strengthening unions to fight for the members rights, financial security in old age - as well as continuing to tackle unemployment.

• resettlement administration -

  • helped smallholders and tenant farmers who had not been helped by the AAA. This organisation moved over 500,000 families to better quality land and housing.

• Farm Security Administration -

  • replaced the RA in 1937. It gave special loans to small farmers to help them buy their land. It also built camps to provide decent living conditions and work for migrant workers.

• The Works progress administration -

  • brought together all the organisations whose aim was to create jobs, it also extended this work beyond building projects to create jobs for office workers and even unemployed actors, artists and photographers. opponents of the new deal coined these jobs and work creation schemes ’boondoggles’ in the newspapers. they claimed over three million dollars of taxpayers money was wasted on Pointless that did not contribute to economic growth over one billion Dollars was spent helping the poorest farmers

• Wagner Act -

  • forced employers to allow trade unions in their companies + to let them negotiate pay and conditions + made it illegal to sack workers for being in a union + set up a national labour board to oversee disputes between trade unions and employers

• social security act -

  • provided state pensions for the elderly and for widows + allowed state governments to work with the Federal Government to provide help for Sick and Disabled People + set up a scheme for unemployment insurance

Opposition to the New Deal

• Huey Long

  • Governor of Louisiana in 1928 + senator in 1932

  • gained power through bribery

  • used power to help poor + segregated

    • taxed big corporations and used money to build roads, schools and hospitals

    • employed African - Americans same as white Americans

  • supported New Deal at first but then believed it was too compicated and didn’t do enough

  • put forward a scheme called ‘share our wealth’

    • all personal fortunes reduced to $3 million

    • maximum income $1 million

• Catholic priest Father Coughin

  • used radio programme to attack Roosevelt

  • set up National Union for Social Injustice with a large membership