1920s is the emergence of various social issues in the midst of a rapidly changing world. Conflict arises as to what is deemed acceptable and respected and what should be prohibited or made illegal. Rapid conflicts converge into one especially between liberal urban areas against conservative rural areas.
Video Social issues of the 1920s in the United States
Alcohol prohibition
During the 1920s, the population in the cities grew rapidly. Political crimes and corruption are common and acceptable. After a relatively conservative period following the First World War, liberalism began to spread throughout urban areas during the following years of 1925. The urban areas began to have an increasingly liberal view of sex, alcohol, drugs, and homosexuality. The view that women and minorities are entitled to equality is becoming increasingly prevalent in urban areas, especially among educated people. For example, actor William Haines, who is regularly named in newspapers and magazines as the number 1 box-office draw man, openly lives in gay relationships with his girlfriend Jimmie Shields. Many people in rural areas are becoming increasingly surprised to see all the changes they see happen and many respond by being reactionary. The Volstead Act, a law intended to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment, is difficult due to lack of funding, brief employment and neglect and disdain for law that is considered ridiculous. The fact that congressmen get drunk on toast after passing through the Eighteenth Amendment reveals that even those who should be role models do not take seriously the law. This lack of respect for law enforcement eventually spread to other cultural areas, and many conservative members of the US Congress criticized this lack of command as a result of the rampant use of alcohol.
Maps Social issues of the 1920s in the United States
Dispute on human origin and Scopes experiment
This made for a great speech between a leading competitor, and it puts the debate over the teaching of evolution on the front page across the country. But one thing that was not done by the scope of "monkey experiments" in 1925 was to solve the evolving problem of evolution in schools, which continues to fuel strong desire and court action to this day.
The trial is about challenging the newly passed Tennessee state law against the teaching of evolution or other theories that deny the biblical record of the creation of man. Broadly speaking, the case reflects the collision of traditional views and values ​​with a more modern one: This is a time of evangelism by figures such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Billy Sunday against the forces, including jazz, sexual permissiveness and passionate Hollywood movies, which they think undermines Christian biblical and moral authority in society.
John Scopes, 24-year-old accused, teaches at a high school in Dayton, Tenn., And incorporates evolution in his curriculum. He agreed to be the focus of a test case that attacked the new law, and was arrested for teaching evolution and trying with the American Civil Liberties Union to support his defense. His lawyer is the legendary Clarence Darrow, who, apart from being a renowned defense attorney for workers and radical figures, is a recognized agnostic on religious matters.
The state attorney is William Jennings Bryan, a Christian, pacifist, and former US presidential candidate. He agreed to take the case because he believed that the theory of evolution caused a dangerous social movement. And he believes the Bible should be interpreted literally.
The weather is very hot and the same rhetoric is heating up in this "trial of the century" attended by hundreds of journalists and others who filled the Rhea District Court in July 1925. Instead of the legitimacy of the law in which Scopes is prosecuted, the biblical authority versus Darwin's health theory become the focus of the argument.
"Millions of guesses strung together," is how Bryan marks the theory of evolution, adding that the theory makes humans "indistinguishable among mammals." Darrow, in his assault, attempted to puncture Genesis's account in modern thought, calling them "foolish ideas unbelievable by the intelligent Christians of the earth."
The jury found Scopes guilty of breaking the law and fined him. Bryan and the anti-evolutionists claim victory, and Tennessee law will last for another 42 years. But Clarence Darrow and the ACLU have managed to publish scientific evidence for evolution, and the press reports that although Bryan won the case, he has lost arguments. The verdict had a terrible effect on the teaching of evolution in the classroom, however, and it was not until the 1960s reappeared in the schoolbook.
Isolationism, immigration, and communism
The American isolationist philosophy after World War I gave rise to xenophobic feelings across the nation. It is concentrated in rural areas and especially in the Southern States and Indiana, where the Ku Klux Klan gained widespread support and sought to persecute immigrants and minorities in the 1920s. At the same time, communism is still a new philosophy in government, and most of the general American public has a hostile view of it, especially after the anarchist bombing of the United States in 1919. The early 1920s saw the high and fall of First Red Scare as exemplified in the test try Sacco and Vanzetti. This opposition to Communism was due to the bloody terror of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Ku Klux Clan
Increased nativism and illusality also found an expression after World War I in the reappearance and phenomenal growth of the Ku Klux Klan. In contrast to the original Clan Reconstruction era which is purely a southern phenomenon aimed at detaining freed slaves in inferior positions, modern Clans form active branches in every region of the country and for a while gain political honor and power.
The time has come for a secretive and seemingly powerful organization committed to reaffirming traditional American values ​​with violence and intimidation if necessary. Such is the effect of World War I and the paranoia of Red Scare. For millions of Americans in the postwar era, the country seems to be in trouble and on the verge of collapse. "American-born, white-born Protestant Americans, as members of a majority of religions and races, are usually incapable of casting doubt on their institutions of origin.Allegations of diseases in his world should rest elsewhere So he seeks foreign influences - Roman People" The Catholics who allegedly challenge the Protestant hegemony and the separation of church and state.A Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish immigrants swarmed to the American coast, Negroes seeking a more just treatment, American Jews who kept living costs while wages fell, and the other elements of frustration before he feels helpless, then the Clan enters his community and offers him a way to fight back. "Now is the time to fight back, to reaffirm traditional values, or lose forever the qualities that have made America great.
It is not surprising that the Clan's strongest supporters are rural and remote rural residents and townspeople who have just arrived from the farms struck by the lifestyle they witnessed in the big city. The drastic changes of the previous half century have largely passed them and diminished their influence in the country they felt they once dominated. Now the hatred of city and city people and nativism gathered together in the form of the Ku Klux Klan.
By using violence, intimidation, and organized political activity, the Clan denounces groups that seem to defame America with strange customs, strange religions and strange morals. The clan supports the crusading deportation of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer at the summit of Red Scare. Clans pressed Congress to restrict immigration to the country. Such limitations will also stem the flow of Roman Catholics and Jews into what has always been a Protestant state.
Perhaps their strongest effort, at least in Texas and other southwestern countries, is to impose middle-class Protestant morality on all members of society wherever they live. According to Charles C. Alexander in his study The Clan in the Southwesta: "There is also in the Clans a definite tension of moral bigotry, especially in the Southwest it finds expression in direct, often violent, attempts to force conformity.Therefore the reform conception south-west of Klansman includes efforts to preserve premarital chastity, marital loyalty, and respect for parental authority, to impose compliance with state and national prohibition laws, to counter the wave of postwar crimes, and to remove state and local governments from dishonest politicians. "People in Texas are thus threatened, beaten, or burned-and-hairy for practicing" new morality, "having an affair with their spouse, beating their spouse or children, seeing women in obscene ways, drinking alcohol, etc.
Clans began to participate in politics to clear up this arena of corruption and to endorse their ideas about moral behavior. Because it was interesting, at least initially, a "respectable" community member, the Clan quickly gained significant political power at the state and local government level. In Texas, for example, the Clan may elect a number of local officials in Austin, Houston, and Dallas. Historians feel that members of the Clan may be the majority of the Texas legislature between 1922 and 1924. The Texas Clan even has one of itself, Earl B. Mayfield of Austin, chosen for the US Senate at the height of his power. The clan grew so strongly in the national scene in 1924 that opponents could not convince the Democratic convention that year to denounce the Clan for its intolerance and violent methods.
It was widely recognized at that time that the Clan's most powerful chapter in the country was that in Indiana. In 1923, Indiana Klan membership exploded when local recruiter David Curtiss Stephenson became the organization's Grand Wizard. At the end of 1923, Stephenson led the Indiana Clans in breaking away from national organizations and forming a rival group. Indiana Klan emphasizes more social problems than racism, because it promises to uphold moral standards, help enforce the Prohibition, and end political corruption. The clan is also openly attacking adulterers, gamblers, and undisciplined youth. Stephenson gained support from many pastors and congregations because of this petition for popular issues, and the Clan grew rapidly in Indiana.
At the height of its power, the Clan has over 250,000 members, of which over 30% of the state's white male population. The highest concentration is around the center of the country. Despite counting the high number of members across the state, his interests culminated in the 1924 Edward L. Jackson election for governors. Moving from the more popular Democratic Party to the Republican Party, Stephenson sought to strengthen control of Indiana's political scene. During the November 1924 election in Indiana, Jackson and several other elected Republican elected officials in the state were singled out by Stephenson after they signed a pledge affirming support for him. After the election, Stephenson was later considered a "law in Indiana."
But when the Clan seems to use such power and influence, it is actually on the verge of collapse. In the mid-twenties, the Klan was hit by a series of internal struggles and scandals that resulted in political losses. The collapse of Clan power in Indiana will have an adverse effect on the influence of national organizations.
The influence of Indiana Klan was reduced in 1925 after Stephenson kidnapped and raped local educator Madge Oberholtzer, who died shortly afterwards largely because of the staph infection he acquired as a result of Stephenson's injuries he caused during this ordeal. Although it is acknowledged that the decision of Oberholtzer to attempt suicide by ingesting mercury chloride tablets contributes to his kidney failure, it is determined by autopsy that the wound that Stephenson inflicts him is also enough to kill him because the staph infections resulting from them reach his lungs and kidneys. An autopsy also determined that Oberholtzer might also have been saved if Stephenson did not refuse to take him to the hospital while he took his hostage; in the declaration of his death, Oberholtzer claims that he retracted his decision to let himself die and asked Stephenson to take him to the hospital, but he refused to do so because he would not agree to marry him. In November 1925, Stephenson was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In addition to rape and murder, the evidence released during his trial seriously undermines the propaganda Indiana Clan when it was revealed that Stephenson, who frequently defends Protestant femininity and Prohibition in public, is personally a basket's eye and an alcoholic. With Stephenson's business destroying the Klan's image as law enforcement and morality, their influence on American society was severely crippled in 1926.
In 1927, Stephenson would avenge Jackson's refusal to pardon him by asking for his help to release documented promises proving that some Indiana politicians, including Jackson, have received bribes and other illegal aid from Indiana Klan in return for their support. The state filed an indictment against Governor Jackson; George V. "Cap" Coffin, head of Marion County Republican Party; and lawyer Robert I. Marsh, sued them by conspiring to bribe former Governor Warren McCray. Indianapolis Mayor John Duvall was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail (and banned for four years). Several Republican commissioners from the Marion County resigned from their posts after being accused of taking bribes from the Clan and Stephenson.
The post-war era of Nativism culminated and began to recede with the passage of the National Origin Law and with it the attractiveness of the Clan lost its fragrance. Furthermore, the "honorable" members of the Klan, shocked by the violent tendencies, began to drop out and by the end of the decade the Clan was once again seen by most Americans as part of the extremist crazy fringe.
Immigration and National Origins Act
Support for immigration restrictions, which began at the turn of the century and has been continuously built for twenty years, led to a congressional section of the National Origins Act. This law severely limits the total number of foreigners who will be allowed to enter the United States legally in any given year. It also instituted a quota system deliberately designed to hit Asia and eastern and southern Europe most difficult. The effect is to close the doors of the country to Asians overall and slow down the flood of Italians, Poles and Russians until a drop of what has happened.
The reduction of immigration is undoubtedly part of the rural backlash in the 1920s. The countryside is the most Anglo-Saxon, most Protestant region, the most traditional of nations and regions that feel most threatened by continued immigration. The fact that the rural population most advocates restrictions on immigration is clearly evidenced by the fact that no member of the Congress is from the south of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the Mississippi River against the Origin-Country Act. Only in the northeast are opposition. With such a limited number of immigrants, many feel the possibility of America being saved.
US Presidential Elections 1928 and Awakening Extreme Nativism
The urban-rural confrontation of the 1920s seems to be well represented by the 1928 presidential election and the defection of many traditional Democrats to Republican candidates because they were shocked at Al Smith's nomination by their own party.
Republicans rode the peak of national popularity in 1928, enjoying the excitement of the economic boom caused by Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Herbert Hoover, the presidential candidate in 1928, would probably win the election that year on economic power alone. His election became inevitable, however, when many lifelong Democrats in the South and Southwest rejected their party candidates. Rural Democrats can not stem Al Smith because he seems to represent all that threatens their Americans. He is the city's largest and most sinister inhabitants - the City of New York. He is a Roman Catholic practicing in a fierce anti-Catholic decade. He opposed the national ban and openly flaunted the law during the election campaign. In addition, he is suspected because of his relationship with the worst of all the urban political machinery - Tammany Hall of New York City.
In contrast, Hoover, while long-time Republican members discredited in the South and Southwest due to the Reconstruction experience, are indigenous to Iowa, one of the country's most rural nations. He is a Protestant who openly and strongly supports the Prohibition. Unlike Smith, he was not polluted by any association with the politics of the machine. On the contrary, his character and reputation look very good. He had saved Europe from starvation after World War I by leading a voluntary relief campaign, he was a self-made millionaire, and as Minister of Commerce from 1921 to 1928 had helped generate the current economic boom. J. Frank Norris, a leading fundamentalist shepherd in Texas, campaigned across the state on behalf of Hoover saying that the only real problem in the campaign was Smith Catholicism. Norris and others paint a horrible picture of the future if Smith wins. The Pope will actually run the country and very quickly the separation of church and state and freedom of religion will be a relic of distant past America.
The power of urban-rural confrontation in elections can be seen in the fact that the powerful Texas - rural, Protestant, and Democrats in their historic party affiliation - ended up in Republican column for the first time in its history. He is also not alone. Hoover also brought in the old Confederate nations in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. Such is the power of rural discontent with America's increasingly urban, industrial, and diverse cultures
See also
- Roaring Twenties
- Jazz Era
- Missing Generation
- Prohibition in the United States
External links
- Analysis of the Alcohol Prohibition failure
- Prohibition Party Website
- Hicks and Slicks: Urban-Rural Confrontation of the Twenties
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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