3
Freedom from Fear, 1920–1945
. . . The only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
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Chapter Outline
3.1
3.2
3.3
A Return to Normalcy 125
Harding’s Normalcy 126
Harding’s Progressive Measures 127
Teapot Dome and Untimely Death 127
Harding’s Legacy and Posthumous Scandal 128
Calvin Coolidge 129
Babbitt and the Economics of the 1920s 131
Therapeutic Ethos 131
Purchasing on Credit 132
Conclusion 132
The New Society in the 1920s 132
The New Morality of the 1920s 133
Why Change Your Wife? 134
The Jazz Age 134
Pushing the Boundaries at Coney Island 135
The Rise of Relativism 135
A Conservative Reaction 137
Fundamentalism 138
The Great Migration 139
Garveyism and Africa for the Africans 139
The Harlem Renaissance 140
Conclusion 140
The Crash (1929–1933) 141
A Quiet Storm 142
October 1929 142
Causes of the Great Depression 143
Hoover and the Depression 144
The Response to Hoover 145
Conclusion 147
3.4 Roosevelt and the New Deal
(1933–1939) 147
The Rendezvous with Destiny 148
The Inauguration 149
The First 100 Days—Banks and Beer 150
The Agricultural Adjustment Act 151
The National Industrial Recovery Act 151
Tennessee Valley Authority 152
Welfare Reforms 152
Relationship with Congress 153
Timeline of the 100 Days 153
Conclusion 154
3.5
Depression Era Culture (1930s) 154
Technology as Freedom 155
More Work for Mother 155
The Electronic Hearth 156
War of the Worlds 157
Car Culture 157
Tourism—Food, Fuel, and Motels 158
Movie Palaces 159
Conclusion 160
3.6
The Second New Deal (1935–1941) 161
New Deal Critics 161
The Second New Deal—Wagner Act 162
The Second New Deal—Social Security 163
The Supreme Court Battle 164
Roosevelt Recession 165
The Good Neighbor Policy 166
The Rise of Dictators 167
Conclusion 167
3.7
The World at War (1941–1945) 168
Fascism 168
New World Leaders 169
The Road to War 169
The Arsenal of Democracy 170
December 7, 1941 171
Mobilization at Home 171
The American Family on the Home
Front 172
Wartime Injustice 173
African Americans at War 174
The War in Europe 174
D-Day 175
The Battle of the Bulge 176
Strategic Bombing at Dresden 176
The Holocaust 177
The War in the Pacific 178
Iwo Jima and Okinawa 179
The Manhattan Project 180
Truman’s Decision 180
The Costs of War 181
Shaping the Postwar World at Yalta 182
Conclusion 184
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I
t was a time in flux between optimism in the 1920s, depression in the 1930s, and fear
and heroism in the 1940s. The years from 1920 to 1945 represented a quarter-century like
none other in American history, with a pace of change, what some have called the “violence of contrasts,” requiring a need for strong national leadership and resilient citizens
(Kennedy, 1999, p. xiii). These years began with the economic prosperity of the 1920s, a
decade often called “roaring” because a sense of optimism pervaded the country. It came
to a sudden end in October 1929 as the nation experienced an unparalleled stock market
crash. As the riches and wealth of many evaporated, and when jobs of many more Americans disappeared, the United States entered the Great Depression of the 1930s. Under
the leadership of the only person ever to be elected as president four times, Franklin D.
Roosevelt attempted to chart a return course to prosperity with his New Deal. However,
the focus of the nation changed once again in December 1941, when Japanese aircraft
attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Thrust inexorably into World War
II, the United States emerged from its Depression to coordinate closely with its allies in a
fight to preserve democracy against the forces of fascism.
Eminent historian C. Vann Woodward, writing the preface to a Pulitzer Prize–winning
book on these years called Freedom from Fear, remarked on the uniqueness of this era. He
called the changes and challenges that all Americans faced “bewildering.” From unparalleled prosperity to wretched poverty during the 1920s and 1930s, the war years of the
1940s witnessed perhaps the most complex change of all. According to Woodward this
was the “repudiation of a century-and-a-half of isolation as America entered World War
II” (Kennedy, 1999, p. xiii). In these years from 1920 to 1945, America experienced the permanent end of international isolation. No longer could the nation temporarily select when
and where to engage the world because her oceanic protection had ceased to serve as an
effective shield from global threats and challenges.
3.1 A Return to Normalcy
A
t the start of the 1920s, most everyone in America wanted to take a collective breath
and pause from the tumultuous era it had just endured. The world war, flu pandemic,
labor unrest, and racial violence of the previous decade, weighed greatly on the psyche
of many Americans. Many yearned for peace and strove to attain some level of calm and
prosperity. The nation was becoming a different place, as the 1920 census told. Most significantly, city populations were increasing, and for the first time, more than half of the
population (54 million) lived in places identified as urban. This did not mean that all of
these people were living in large cities. Instead urban, according to the 1920 census, simply
meant any community of more than 2,500 people. Nevertheless, times were changing, and
the 1920s represented a transitioning point between traditional and modern America. As
the number of people living in agricultural regions that centered on farming diminished,
those drawn to the big cities increased. More than 16 million Americans now lived in the
12 cities that had populations of more than 500,000 people (Kyvig, 2002, p. 8).
Despite these transitions from a traditional to modern America, there was one word that
captured the spirit of this entire era. It was a word popularized by Republican Warren
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CHAPTER 3
A large crowd gathers at the 1920
Republican Convention, where
Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding
was nominated for President.
G. Harding as he ran for president of the United States.
His word that captured the attention of the nation was
normalcy. Harding explained it like this in May 1920:
“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not
nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration;
not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity;
not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment,
but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but
sustainment in triumphant nationality” (Cashman,
1989, p. 84). In this chapter, we will explore how the
United States attempted to attain its new goal of normalcy in both the political and economic realms during
the 1920s. The result was a reshaping of America that
in many ways reflects the political and economic world
that surrounds us today.
Harding’s Normalcy
The 1920 election was one in which Woodrow Wilson, then President of the United States,
did not participate. With his health failing at the end of his term and his struggles over the
League of Nations continuing, another four years as president was something he neither
desired nor could endure. In his place, the Democrats selected Ohio’s Governor James M.
Cox as their candidate, with Franklin D. Roosevelt as the vice president. Regardless of the
outcome of the election, everyone knew that someone from Ohio was going to win the White
House because the Republicans ran a conservative senator from Ohio, Warren Harding.
The election was a landslide with Harding, and his vice president Calvin Coolidge, earning
16 million votes to Cox’s 9 million.
Harding’s presidential approach was, in many ways,
the opposite of his Progressive predecessor. The Progressive movement quickly declined after World War I
as a conservatism that supported more individual freedom and a limitation of governmental activism arose
(McGerr, 2005). Indeed, Harding was far more favorable to and tolerant of big business and demonstrated
his convictions by changing the policies of the Interstate
Commerce Commission and the Federal Reserve Board
to make them much more pro-business than they were
in the past. He also strove to enact legislation that gave
corporations more power. For example, business owners approved Harding’s more hands-on approach to
breaking strikes of organized workers and often made
workers sign agreements not to join unions. Labor leaders derisively called these yellow dog contracts. However, to their credit, business leaders devised a social
policy called welfare capitalism. This was a series of
programs that attempted to take care of the needs of the
workers through safe conditions, clean places to eat in
Republican running mates in 1920:
Warren G. Harding with Calvin
Coolidge, in June 1920.
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new cafeterias, and even social events like baseball leagues. More importantly, many businesses offered health insurance that became vital to the employees. As a result, union
membership declined dramatically. Harding’s appointment of four Supreme Court justices also pushed the country into a much more conservative direction.
Harding’s Progressive Measures
Harding was not completely opposed to all progressive ideas and demonstrated this during his second State of the Union address in 1922. He called for federal partnerships for
internal improvements projects such as irrigation and conservation, he wanted more electrical plants throughout the country, and he believed that child labor should end even if
that meant a new constitutional amendment (Dean, 2004).
The Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921 was one of the most
remarkable progressive successes on Harding’s watch. Introduced in 1918 by Jeannette
Rankin, the Republican congresswoman from Montana, it became the first social welfare
legislation sponsored by the federal government (Lemons, 1990). Rankin was the first
woman to serve in Congress, and her bill was significant because it called for states to
provide pre- and postnatal care, infant hygiene, and a place where mothers could go to
learn about child care. The main incentive for the bill was the alarmingly high infant mortality rate in the United States at the time. In 1920, the infant mortality rate for live births
was 95 out of 1,000 male babies and 76 out of 1,000 for female babies (Rothstein, 2003,
p. 93). Between 1925 and 1929, this improved to 69 babies (male and female combined)
who died out of every 1,000 live births (Eberstadt, 1995). The situation was worse among
African Americans, where poverty contributed to poor health, especially in large cities.
For example, in Harlem, the infant mortality rate was 70 percent higher than the rest of
New York City (LaFeber, 2008, p. 136). The fact that women could now vote due to the
suffrage amendment lent great support to this cause; it is likely that without women, the
bill would not have passed (Tobias, 1997). Harding signed it into law in 1921.
Teapot Dome and Untimely Death
Though things seemed to be running smoothly for Har
ding’s presidency, scandal was brewing underneath.
The most infamous was the Teapot Dome scandal. Teapot Rock overlooks a 9,000-acre oil deposit, 50 miles
north of Casper, Wyoming. In 1915, the United States
established a naval oil reserve there; however, Harding’s
secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, leased out these protected oil reserves to developers without competitive
bidding. Fall received money under the table from the
developers, calling it a “loan” of $700,000. Fall resigned
on March 4, 1923, and federal authorities subsequently
sent him to prison in 1931 (Noggle, 1965). This scandal
demonstrated the corruption that lay within the Har
ding administration, and much of the blame fell on Harding’s associates from Ohio whom he had appointed to
President Harding’s train in Alaska
with some of the entourage of 75 on
the caboose.
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political positions. The press and others derogatorily called them the Ohio Gang. Though
Harding had not personally accepted money during the Teapot Dome scandal, his close
relationship to those that did cast doubt on his judgment.
In June 1923, Harding planned a trip to Alaska and began campaigning for reelection
along the way. To increase the range and effectiveness of his speeches, he equipped his
presidential train with an innovation: a set of amplifiers mounted on the roof of the train
so that thousands could hear his words. He gave more than 85 speeches and countless
interviews before his train pulled into his last stop in San Francisco. However, on August
2, 1923, while his wife was reading him the Saturday Evening Post, he died. The official
death certificate indicated that he died from apoplexy, which is a loss of consciousness
due to a blocked blood vessel in the brain. He was just 58 years old. More than 3 million
people mourned the passing of his train as it traveled from the West Coast to Washington,
DC, and then back to his home in Ohio.
Harding’s Legacy and Posthumous Scandal
The cause of his death soon brought great speculation. The first scandal came to light
when Nan Britton published her “tell-all” book, The President’s Daughter, in 1927. According to Britton, she had had a six-year affair with Harding that began when he was an
Ohio senator. The Brittons and Hardings became friends in Marion, Ohio, so when Nan’s
mother needed a job after her husband’s death, Nan consulted with Harding. Harding
said that he was concerned for Nan and that perhaps he could “do something for her”
(Britton, 1927). By late February 1919, she realized that
she was to become the mother of Warren Harding’s
child. According to her, Harding looked forward with
anticipation to the event; on October 22, 1919, Elizabeth
Ann was born. That was Britton’s side of the story, and
her book became a best seller.
Nan Britton (1896–1991) and her
daughter, Elizabeth Ann (1919–
2005), who she claimed was
fathered by then Senator Warren
G. Harding.
Perhaps inspired by Nan Britton, Gaston B. Means published theories regarding another scandalous Harding
story in 1930 in a book called The Strange Death of President Harding. Means wrote that he met with Mrs. Har
ding upon her return to Washington. He described her
as “alert, cold, hard . . . [with] no touch of sympathy or
hysteria, or feeling” (Means and Thacker, 1930, p. 258–
259). He said at that moment he knew the truth; Means
surmised that she poisoned him by drugging his water
glass. He believed that Mrs. Harding reveled in having
the world focus on her and compliment her on how well
she was handling the situation. He postulated that Mrs.
Harding’s motive was the discovery of Harding’s infidelity with Nan Britton and that she also wanted to save
her husband from the nepotism scandals that involved
his friends.
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More recent analysis of Harding’s private letters have cast doubt on Britton’s story and
focused more attention on the complex extramarital affair between Harding and Mrs. Carrie Phillips. However, the fact that Phillips was likely a German spy further casts doubt
on Harding’s judgment (Robenalt, 2009). Nevertheless, these posthumous scandals were
important for several reasons. The first was because, in Nan Britton’s case, it represented
a new type of tabloid “tell-all” journalism in America that continues to this day. Second, it
was politically important to the Harding legacy because it helped to unmake his reputation. On his death, the country mourned his passing more than any president since Lincoln;
today, his legacy is that he is best remembered for being America’s worst president because
of the scandals associated with his presidency both before and after his death (Dean, 2004).
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge, Harding’s vice president, took over as chief executive upon confirmation of Harding’s death on August 3, 1923. As a Republican senator from Massachusetts,
Coolidge entered the national political spotlight during his handling of the 1919 Boston
Police Strike (see Section 2.7). Like Harding, Coolidge was also pro-business and believed
that it was the president’s job to listen and defer to Congress. He became well known for
slogans that encapsulated the Republican political philosophy, such as “The chief business
of the American people is business,” which he first stated in 1925 (Kennedy, 1999). Another
of his famous sayings was that “the man who builds a factory builds a temple. The man
that works there worships there” (Phillips, 2003). With sayings like these, Coolidge set the
tone of his presidency—which was strong on business and weak on government. Various
political commentators and satirists of the day, such as H. L. Mencken, claimed in 1927
that “Silent Cal” Coolidge’s ideal day was “one on which nothing whatever happens”
(Mencken, 2006). Mencken further criticized the president for evading the most important
problems that confronted the nation.
Coolidge did have a great task ahead of him when he took office. Few presidents in American history have assumed office with such tremendous scandals still hovering over the
previous administration. Harding was responsible for establishing the important Veterans’ Bureau in 1921 (which is now called the Veterans Administration), which worked to
give war veterans and their families a variety of social benefits such as health care, education, loans, insurance, and job training, but it was mired in scandal (Pencak, 2009, p. 389).
The Veterans’ Bureau became a “hotbed of fraud and kickbacks” to one of Harding’s chief
supporters (Brinkley and Dyer, 2004, p. 327). Further Harding problems arose during the
Coolidge presidency when investigators revealed that the former president’s attorney
general had allowed the Justice Department to engage in a variety of illegal activities.
Despite Coolidge’s struggles to overcome the scandals of his predecessor and the general loss of confidence in government, his economic policies did result in five-and-a-half
years of prosperity. Much of this was due to Andrew W. Mellon, his secretary of the treasury. The American public gave Coolidge a vote of confidence for his economic policies
in 1924, when they elected him to serve another four years of office because they liked
what they saw in the year-and-a-half that he served after Harding’s death. In part, he won
acclaim for lowering taxes four times, and he was careful with governmental spending.
He became a favorite of wealthy Americans by lowering estate taxes, and this fueled massive investment in the stock market (Greenberg, 2006).
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Technology in America
Television
At the same time people were exploring the wonders of film at movie theaters, a new technology
quietly emerged in the 1920s that promised to bring moving pictures to the home. It transformed the
market for the home radio by adding a visual component. Though television technology existed prior
to World War II, it was not commercially viable until the Dumont Television Network began broadcasting in the 1940s. Dumont called it the “biggest window in the world” and the “answer to man’s ageless
yearning for eyes and ears to pierce the barrier of distance.”
Initially, static and flickering black-and white-images shadowed across the television window. By the
1960s, new advancements in color improved the pict ...
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