USA in the 1920s

The American Dream

For four hundred years people from Europe have sailed to America to start a new life and escape poverty and oppression.  Many became settlers and began farming on the land that they had stolen from the Native Americans, who they called ‘Indians'.  They built homes, opened shops and factories.  Life was hard but ambition and hard work brought great wealth for some of them.  This opportunity to start afresh and to get rich has become known as 'The American Dream'.  Millions of Americans believed in this idea but few have ever had the chance to make it come true for themselves.  What is important is that people believed that it was true.

 

Source A: Statue of Liberty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Americans have always been proud of their freedom.  They called the United States 'The land of the free'.  This is symbolised by The Statue of Liberty, in New York harbour, has an inscription which welcomes newcomers and calls on other nations to: 'Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled Masses yearning to breathe free'.

Key Points:

       People from Europe sailed to USA to be free and to start a new life.

       They wanted an opportunity to start afresh and get rich.

       Hard work brought great wealth for some of them.

How is the USA governed?

In the United States the way in which the country is run is written down on a document called a Constitution.  In this Constitution, the job of running the country is divided between two kinds of government - the central, or federal, government in Washington and the local governments of each of the fifty states.

As you can see from Source B, there are three branches of the federal government.  The Congress makes the country's laws, the President runs the country and proposes new laws, and the Supreme Court makes sure that the laws are obeyed and do not break the rules of the Constitution.

The State governments are also divided into three branches or sections.  Each state has a Governor at the head of the executive branch or government, a legislature for making state laws as a supreme state court. 

In each state the laws are different, so gambling is against the law in some states but legal in others like Nevada.  The police of one state cannot chase a criminal into another state.  Only federal police, such as the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), can cross state borders.  This can make catching criminals very difficulty.  The sheriff and the mayor are elected in towns and cities right across the USA.

Political Parties

At the start of the 20th century the United States was a capitalist country, which means that industry and agriculture were owned privately by people not the state.  The government interfered very little in people's lives.  However, this idea was to be discussed and argued about in both the 1920s and 30s.

There are two political parties in the USA, the Democrats and Republicans.  An American can vote for members of both parties at election time.  The reason for this is that there are three separate elections for the President, Senators and for Representatives in Congress.

The differences between the two main parties are not as great as those between the Conservative and labour Parties in Britain.  However, the Republican Party is conservative and often supports businessmen and wealthy people, whilst the Democratic Party tends to be liberal and favours helping the poor and the old.

During the 1920s there were three Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. They believed that the federal government should not interfere in the running of businesses and peoples lives.  American had been built by ‘rugged individuals' who were used to doing things there own way and disliked being told what to do. In reality their low tax policies and isolationism benefited the interests of large companies.

Key Points:

       The USA had two political parties.

       The Democratic Party supported the interests of the old and poor.

       The Republican Party supported the interests of the rich.

       The USA was a capitalist country.

American Isolationism

When President Woodrow Wilson returned to the United Sates from the Paris Peace Conference, he tried unsuccessfully to get America to join the new League of Nations, which had been his idea.  But America was fed up with Europe.  Over 113,000 American soldiers had died fighting to solve Europe's problems.  Many people wanted to isolate the USA from future European quarrels and make sure that their country never got involved in another war.

This policy was called 'isolationism' and it lasted into the 1930s when the USA tried to ignore the threat to world peace posed by Nazi Germany.  Congress even passed a law called the 'Neutrality Act' which stopped future Presidents getting the USA involved in another war.  This is why the Americans did not enter the Second World War until December 1941.  It took the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and both Germany and Japan declaring war on the USA to change public opinion.  

Racism in the USA

The USA has a very long history of racism.  It took a civil war to abolish slavery.  Even though Black people were guaranteed equal rights under the American Constitution many white people tried to stop them from voting or even getting good jobs.  This was particularly true in the South.

However, black people were not the only people who suffered racism in the USA in the 1920s.  Jews, Catholics and even people who came from Eastern Europe were the targets of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and WASPs.  If you weren't a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant you could find it very difficult to get a job in some areas of the USA.

Between 1900 and 1914, 13 million ‘new' immigrants arrived in the USA.  They were described as ‘new' because they did not come from the traditional Protestant Anglo-Saxon countries of Europe like Britain, Germany or Scandinavia.  They were mostly Catholics or Jews from southern or eastern Europe.  They were soon to be made to feel unwelcome by these racist groups. 

In order to stop anymore people coming into the US from these countries Congress passed a series of immigration laws in the 1921 to cut immigration from southern and eastern Europe whilst continuing to allow it from Britain, Germany and Scandinavia.  This shows just how racist America was in the 1920s that even people in the government didn't think twice about changing the law to benefit white Anglo-Saxons at the expense of other ethnic groups. 

Text by Mr Huggins.