1920's and 1930's

The 1920’s and Early 30’s

Generalization: While there is a general consensus on which figures and events of the 1920's and 1930's are particularly important, there are major differences in interpreting just about every one of these figures and events. Comment.

Potential ID’s: PROHIBITION, HARDING, COOLIDGE, SACCO AND VANZETTI, SCOPES TRIAL, BRYAN, ANDREW MELLON, HOOVER

I.   Introduction

II.   Prohibition

III.   Warren Harding

IV.   Calvin Coolidge
“America’s present need is not heroics but healings, not nostrums but normalcy, not revolution but restoration, not surgery but serenity.”

V.   Sacco and Vanzetti trial
“If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words--our lives--our pains--nothing! The taking of our lives--lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler--all! That last moment belongs to us--that agony is our triumph.”

VI.   Scopes Trial

VII.   1920’s Economy
“No congress of the United States ever assembled on surveying the state of the Union has met with a more pleasing prospect. The great wealth created by our enterprise and industry, and saved by our economy has gone out in the widest possible distribution among our own people….Enlarging production is consumed by an increasing demand at home and an expanded commerce abroad. The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism.”—Calvin Coolidge.

“We in America are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land… We have not reached the goal, but given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.”—Herbert Hoover.

VIII.   Herbert Hoover

IX.   Stock Market Crash

X.   The beginning of the Great Depression