APUSH 1920's AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION

In 1919, the Communist Party was gaining strength in the U.S., and Americans feared Communism. In January, 1920, Palmer raids in 33 cities broke into meeting halls and homes without warrants. 4,000 "Communists" were jailed, some were deported

In September, 1919, Boston police went on strike, then 350,000 steel workers went on strike. This badly damaged the unions

Two years after WW I, prices went up and consumers stopped buying. Unemployment rose from 2% to 12% and industry and export trade halted.

Harding wanted a return to "normalcy" - the way life was before WW

Forbes served time for fraud and bribery in connection with government contracts. He took millions of dollars from the Veteran's Bureau

1929 - The Naval strategic oil reserve at Elk Hills, also known as "Teapot Dome" was taken out of the Navy's control and placed in the hands of the Department of the Interior, which leased the land to oil companies. Several Cabinet members received huge payments as bribes. Due to the investigation, Daugherty, Denky, and Fall were forced to resign.

A great debater and political leader who believed in libertarian reforms, he was a major leader of the Progressive movement from Wisconsin

Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it offered farmers insurance against loss of crops due to drought, flood, or freeze. It did not guarantee profit or cover losses due to bad farming.

Writer Gertrude Stein named the new literary movement when she told Hemingway, "You are all a lost generation," referring to the many restless young writers who gathered in Paris after WW I. Hemingway used the quote in The Sun Also Rises. They thought that the U.S. was materialistic and the criticized conformity.

Most critics regard this as his finest work. Written in 1925, it tells of an idealist who is gradually destroyed by the influence of the wealthy, pleasure-seeking people around him

He gained international fame for his novels attacking the weakness in American society. The first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Main Street (1920) was a satire on the dullness and lack of culture in a typical American town. Babbit (1922) focuses on a typical small business person's futile attempts to break loose from the confinements in the life of an American citizen.

He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1952. A Farewell to Arms was written in 1929 and told the story of a love affair between an American ambulance driver and a British nurse in Italy during WW

Prohibition - 1919: the 18th Amendment outlawed the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors. Volstead Act - 1919: Defined what drinks constituted "intoxicating liquors" under the 18th Amendment, and set penalties for violations of prohibition. Al Capone: In Chicago, he was one of the most famous leaders of organized crime of the era.

Based on the post-Civil War terrorist organization, the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was founded in Georgia in 1915 by William Simmons to fight the growing "influence" of blacks, Jews and Catholics in US society. It experienced phenomenal growth in the 1920's, especially in the Midwest and Ohio Valley states. It's peak membership came in 1924 at 3 million members, but its reputation for violence led to rapid decline by 1929.

Broad movement in Protestantism in the U.S. which tried to preserve what it considered the basic ideas of Christianity against criticism by liberal theologies. It stressed the literal truths of the Bible and creation.