1. 1919 - 1929

2. A PERSONAL VOICE IRVING FAJANS “ If you were caught distributing... union literature around the job you were instantly fired. We thought up ways of passing leaflets without the boss being able to pin anybody down.... We... swiped the key to the toilet paper dispensers in the washroom, took out the paper and substituted printed slips of just the right size! We got a lot of new members that way—It appealed to their sense of humor.” —quoted in The Jewish Americans In the 1920’s Irving Fajans was a department store clerk and union organizer. He later became a local union president.

3. A PERSONAL VOICE A. MITCHELL PALMER “ The blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order.... eating its way into the homes of the American workman, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat... licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes,... Burning up the foundations of society.” —“The Case Against the Reds” _____________________________________________________________________ J. Edgar Hoover A. Mitchell Palmer After mail bombs were sent around the country Americans became fearful of a Communist threat. The answer for the Red Scare was named for Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. The Palmer Raids were led by his young protégé J. Edgar Hoover. Union activists and immigrants were rounded up and jailed without charges and civil rights were violated.

4. A PERSONAL VOICE BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI “ In all my life I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood.... We were tried during a time... when there was hysteria of resentment and hate against the people of our principles, against the foreigner.... I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian and indeed I am an Italian.... If you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.” —quoted in The National Experience “Sacco & Vanzetti,” by Ben Shawn ____________________________________ In 1920 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were charged with robbery and murder. Despite alibis and with only circumstantial evidence the two were convicted in a trial considered to be a sham. It was an example of the treatment given to immigrants during the post World War I era.

5. In the 1920’s the Ku Klux Klan became very popular, with nearly 5 million members. Along with Blacks, KKK members also hated Jews, Catholics, and foreign born immigrants. One reason for their success was anti-communism and professed “Americanism.”

6. At the end of World War I there were many labor disputes in the U.S. - Shown above is the Boston Police Strike, which was ended when Governor Coolidge (later president) called in the National Guard to end the strike. The Policemen were all fired. Communism became a winning argument for business as labor leaders (some were and some were not) were all accused of Communist beliefs and sympathies and thus associated with the Russian Revolution and anarchy. There were strikes in the coal mines led by John L. Lewis, and also steel mill strikes, but these were put down, often with violence. By the end of the 20’s membership in unions had fallen from 5 million to 3.5 million members.

7. A PERSONAL VOICE WARREN G. HARDING “ 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 submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.” —quoted in The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding _____________________________________________________________________ The first man elected as President with women participating in the vote was Warren G. Harding. He did host the Washington Naval Conference, which reduced the size of modern navies, and the Lincoln Memorial was opened during his term in office, but he is mostly remembered for the many scandals that occurred in his administration, and for his untimely death in 1923.

8. In an attempt to protect American Industries against foreign competition, Congress raised the tariff on foreign goods entering the United States. This was particularly a bad thing to do because the 60% tariff, really a tax, hurt countries trying to recover from the First World War. By the end of the war the U.S. had become (really New York), by virtue of all the money owed to it, the banking center of the world. High tariffs limited trade and that is cited as one of the root causes of the Great Depression. Nobody saw that in the 1920’s, however. Key: P, QPrice and quantity of good S, D Domestic supply and demand in importing country F, TEquilibrium values under free trade and tariff tSpecific tariff PWPW Price of good on world market Deardorff Website