{"id":133,"date":"2023-03-13T15:29:39","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T15:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/chapter\/module-3-10\/"},"modified":"2023-04-27T21:10:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T21:10:47","slug":"module-3-10","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/chapter\/module-3-10\/","title":{"raw":"3.10 The Interwar Period","rendered":"3.10 The Interwar Period"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"Photograph \u201cWomen competing in low hurdle race, Washington, D.C.,\u201d ca. 1920s. Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-65429)<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nOn a sunny day in early March 1921, Warren G. Harding took the oath to become the twenty-ninth president of the United States. He had won a landslide election by promising a \u201creturn to normalcy.\u201d \u201cOur supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way,\u201d he declared in his inaugural address.1<\/sup><\/a>Two months later, he said, \u201cAmerica\u2019s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> The nation still reeled from the shock of World War I, the explosion of racial violence and political repression in 1919, and, a lingering \u201cRed Scare\u201d sparked by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.\r\n\r\nMore than 115,000 American soldiers had lost their lives in barely a year of fighting in Europe. Then, between 1918 and 1920, nearly seven hundred thousand Americans died in a flu epidemic that hit nearly 20 percent of the American population. Waves of labor strikes, meanwhile, hit soon after the war. Radicals bellowed. Anarchists and others sent more than thirty bombs through the mail on May 1, 1919. After wartime controls fell, the economy tanked and national unemployment hit 20 percent. Farmers\u2019 bankruptcy rates, already egregious, now skyrocketed. Harding could hardly deliver the peace that he promised, but his message nevertheless resonated among a populace wracked by instability.\r\n

The 1920s, of course, would be anything but \u201cnormal.\u201d The decade so reshaped American life that it came to be called by many names: the New Era, the Jazz Age, the Age of the Flapper, the Prosperity Decade, and, most commonly, the Roaring Twenties. The mass production and consumption of automobiles, household appliances, film, and radio fueled a new economy and new standards of living. New mass entertainment introduced talking films and jazz while sexual and social restraints loosened. But at the same time, many Americans turned their back on political and economic reform, denounced America\u2019s shifting demographics, stifled immigration, retreated toward \u201cold-time religion,\u201d and revived the Ku Klux Klan with millions of new members. On the other hand, many Americans fought harder than ever for equal rights and cultural observers noted the appearance of \u201cthe New Woman\u201d and \u201cthe New Negro.\u201d Old immigrant communities that had predated new immigration quotas, meanwhile, clung to their cultures and their native faiths. The 1920s were a decade of conflict and tension. But whatever it was, it was not \u201cnormalcy.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Notes<\/h4>\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. Warren G. Harding, \u201cInaugural Address,\u201d March 4, 1921, at Avalon Project at Yale Law School<\/em>, http:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/20th_century\/harding.asp.\"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Warren G. Harding, \u201cReturn to Normalcy,\u201d May 14, 1920, at Teaching American History.org, Ashbrook Center<\/em>, http:\/\/teachingamericanhistory.org\/library\/document\/return-to-normalcy\/. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
    \n
    \"Photograph
    \u201cWomen competing in low hurdle race, Washington, D.C.,\u201d ca. 1920s. Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-65429)<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    On a sunny day in early March 1921, Warren G. Harding took the oath to become the twenty-ninth president of the United States. He had won a landslide election by promising a \u201creturn to normalcy.\u201d \u201cOur supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way,\u201d he declared in his inaugural address.1<\/sup><\/a>Two months later, he said, \u201cAmerica\u2019s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> The nation still reeled from the shock of World War I, the explosion of racial violence and political repression in 1919, and, a lingering \u201cRed Scare\u201d sparked by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.<\/p>\n

    More than 115,000 American soldiers had lost their lives in barely a year of fighting in Europe. Then, between 1918 and 1920, nearly seven hundred thousand Americans died in a flu epidemic that hit nearly 20 percent of the American population. Waves of labor strikes, meanwhile, hit soon after the war. Radicals bellowed. Anarchists and others sent more than thirty bombs through the mail on May 1, 1919. After wartime controls fell, the economy tanked and national unemployment hit 20 percent. Farmers\u2019 bankruptcy rates, already egregious, now skyrocketed. Harding could hardly deliver the peace that he promised, but his message nevertheless resonated among a populace wracked by instability.<\/p>\n

    The 1920s, of course, would be anything but \u201cnormal.\u201d The decade so reshaped American life that it came to be called by many names: the New Era, the Jazz Age, the Age of the Flapper, the Prosperity Decade, and, most commonly, the Roaring Twenties. The mass production and consumption of automobiles, household appliances, film, and radio fueled a new economy and new standards of living. New mass entertainment introduced talking films and jazz while sexual and social restraints loosened. But at the same time, many Americans turned their back on political and economic reform, denounced America\u2019s shifting demographics, stifled immigration, retreated toward \u201cold-time religion,\u201d and revived the Ku Klux Klan with millions of new members. On the other hand, many Americans fought harder than ever for equal rights and cultural observers noted the appearance of \u201cthe New Woman\u201d and \u201cthe New Negro.\u201d Old immigrant communities that had predated new immigration quotas, meanwhile, clung to their cultures and their native faiths. The 1920s were a decade of conflict and tension. But whatever it was, it was not \u201cnormalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Notes<\/h4>\n
      \n
    1. Warren G. Harding, \u201cInaugural Address,\u201d March 4, 1921, at Avalon Project at Yale Law School<\/em>, http:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/20th_century\/harding.asp.\"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Warren G. Harding, \u201cReturn to Normalcy,\u201d May 14, 1920, at Teaching American History.org, Ashbrook Center<\/em>, http:\/\/teachingamericanhistory.org\/library\/document\/return-to-normalcy\/. \"image\"<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"menu_order":34,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-133","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":30,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/133\/revisions\/672"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/30"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/133\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}