Right during the 1920s. Republican president s, fairly conservative ones, were elected by landslides, 1920, 1924, and 1928. Congress was in control of the republicans throughout the 1920s. With support of congress, republican president s signed bills which rolled back the income tax increases that were passed during world war i. And the leading social movements on the left, labor unions and the socialist party, both lost members during the war. In fact, the socialist party was never really a factor in american politics, again, after the 1920 election. And people on the left generally, whether people we now consider to be liberals, former progressives or radicals all on the defensive during the 1920s. The most popular president in the 1920s, Calvin Coolidge, took office in 1923 when harden died of a heart attack and was reelected in 1924. Famously said in the mid1920s, the business of america is business. It was a prosperous time for a lot of americans, though, certainly not all. Stock prices were fairly high. Wages were stable or going up depending on your occupation. Farmers were not doing as well in world war i as farm prices usually do in wars. But the one country was not doing so badly. Now, there was one piece of legislation passed in 1924, a number of pieces of legislation on the issue of legislation, which gave a sense both of the power of what you might call the old stock americans, americans from mostly western european backgrounds, white in every case. But also gave a sense, i think, of the vulnerability that those people felt because so many catholics and eastern orthodox and joewish people had moved ino the United States in the 1880s and 1890s. So many africanamericans had moved to the cities in the war as you know. This bill was passed in 1924, named the johnsonreed act, the key senator and key congressman who put their naums to the legislation and got it through congress. What this bill did is it restricted immigration in the United States after that point to 2 of the number of people from any foreign nation who had been in the United States according to the 1890 census. This sounds a little abstract. What it basically means is that the percentage of immigrants allowed to come in the country was dependent on the percentage of immigrants from that kuhn friday in 1890. 1890 was just at the beginning of the socalled new immigration, just the beginning of the influx of people from places like italy, russia, poland, greece, syria, other places in eastern and southern europe. And 1924 law completely excluded immigrants from east asia, except for filipinos who are came from an american colony. So, basically the quotas and they were called quotas that were until 1965, a little more than 40 year, it was much easier to come to the country if you were from ireland, if you were from england, if you were from norway, for example, because the number of people from those countries in the United States was pretty high in 1890. Much harder if you were from russia or poland or finland, lets say. And impossible if you were from japan or china or korea. So, the United States was supposed to remain an anglosaxon nation onward. That was the idea, the hope of the people that passed this bill, the republican majority in congress and some southern democrats voted for it as well. The only votes against this law really were from people from the ethnic cities, from new york, from chicago, from philadelphia, places like that. Many of them catholic and jewish. But they didnt have enough votes in congress to stop the bill from being passed and certainly not enough political clout to stop president cal vun coolidge from signing it. This was a sign of a certain fear and weakness, i think, among the white anglosaxon ma zwrierz well. The weakness could be glimpse in what was going on in American Culture in the 1920s which is the main topic of the lecture today. The 20s saw a number of fierce conflicts between white, deeply religious and mostly rural order, the majority, but a majority that fell to selfperil. The other side, those both immigrant and native born, but more tolerant or at least a looser sense of personal morality, and lived mostly in modern cosmopolitan cities with a mix of church goers and secularists. You see echos of the own time in the arguments of people who support gay marriage and those who support it, those who think Sex Education in schools is great and those who think not at all, those think that teaching evolution in science classes is nondebatable, its part of science, and those who think that creationism should be taught along with the teaching of revolution. This is not an accident. Cultural clashes, cultural conflicts have a way of lasting a long time. And even when the specific issues that were fought over in the 20s dont necessarily last as long, the legacy of those battles does last a long time. So n many ways, if youre in some parts of the country today, these culture clashes dont seem quite so much in the past at all. What i want to do today is discuss in specifics three sites of this conflict. First the battles of the prohad by. Second clash is over the content of movies, motion pictures, which became, in the 1920s, the most popular art in america. And then lastly, the conflict over whether the theory of evolution should be taught in Public Schools because laws were being passed in certain states in the 1920s to forbid the teaching of evolution in Public Schools. And as well see, the rationale for that, in part, was that the parents in Many School Districts didnt want evolution taught in their kids schools. So, weve got an idea of free speech and the claims of science versus the claims of democracy, if you will. But first, prohibition, which youve heard something about already, but not since its been law. This is a glimpse here of revenue agents busting a still in the northeast together with the may john jars about to be filled by this bootleg liquor. The 18th amendment to the constitution goes into effect in january of 1920. It was ratified by enough states in 1919. And by the way, Congress Passed it over the veto of president woodrow wilson. So, you can see how popular it was. Prohibited the sell of manufacturer but not the consumption of alcohol. Thats being, by the way, to note. The 18th amendment did not stop individual who is had liquor in their hands from drinking it. The idea was to stop the business of alcohol, the manufacture of it, the sale of it, the commerce in alcohol, the traffic in alcohol as it was known. The thought was that if you stop people from being able to manufacture it and distribute it and sell it, eventually people will stop drinking it as well. But congress didnt want to pillery an individual that got liquor. People would stock up so they could drink it legally after the amendment was ratified. Contrary to conventional wisdom, prohibition, even though it did institute a regime of a lot of lawlessness, a lot of people broke did law, especially in big cities, did reduce drinking in america. Places where prohibition was pop r la, drinking did go down. It was an informal prohibition if you will. Neighbors would enforce it against other neighbors, for example. In rural america, small town america, in the south for example, parts of the west, drinking did go down, and quite dramatically. But it went up in big cities. The act that was passed along with the prohibition amendment when it was ratified to enforce the act was called the vol stead act. It was named after a minnesota congressman who authored it. From granite falls, minnesota. And it was, on one hand, a tremendous increase in the power of government. Government, after all, was given the power to go in and bust up any place where liquor was sold anywhere in the country and also to have Border Agents across the border to canada, especially, and the coast guard was empowered to stop boats from coming in to florida and other places to off load liquor. But on the other hand, congress did not appropriate enough funds to hire enough people to do all that the volstead act was supposed to be doing. Only 1,500 acts were hired to enforce the volstead act in a country of over 100 Million People was probably not enough. Yet, as i said, it was informally enforced by many protestant americans. And they continue to support prohibition. Not because they thought it was a good idea for people not to drink, not just because they believed the that liquor business was a sinful enterprise, driving people to do terrible things, but also because they saw it as a symbolic stand against the heedenistic libertarian values of the modern city, against alien customs of immigrants, many of whom took drinking as just part of their culture. And of course there are older arguments given as well which continue to have a lot of salience during the time prohibition was law. One of the arguments weve heard about before was that a drunken man was an abusive human being, that he would beat up his wife, that he would neglect his children, that he would be a terrible worker. This is one of the more popular illustrations of this attitude. Also added to it was the antiimmigrant side of it. Here you see two men unloading liquor from europe, from russia, going across the border from canada to the u. S. This was an immigrant invasion, alien invasion, not of individuals so much, but of immigrant alien commerce. Yes . [ inaudible question ] good point. It was tang from china. Tangs were supposedly gangs of chinese who terrorized the chinese immigrant population, also employed chinese gangsters. Ill talk a little bit more about how the fear of gangsters becomes part of this. So, you had an urban immigrant split. You had older arguments about protecting women and children. You had a sense of the fear of immigrants being married with the fear of prohibition, with the fear of prohibition not being enforced the way it should be enforced. Youve got a combustible mix here. Now, of course, what made this combustible mix so much apparent to Many Americans was the fact that in the bigger cities, in the more cosmopolitan places among very wealthy people where there are immigrants and the elite sort of mixing, you had bars. Now we think of speak easies which operated almost openly in places like new york and chicago where prohibition law was pretty much a dead letter. One example of this was a place called the 300 club in manhattan, which was run by this woman, texas gienen, her name was, who was a former silent movie star. Her club was one of the more famous clubs in america. Everyone who had newspapers in the 1920s would have heard of texas guinan and the 300 club. It was famous for selling liquor at high prices. It was famous for having scantily clad dancers. She was a hip, charming, charismatic person too. People wanted to drink at her club. There were many other clubs to drink at, but people wanted to be there. She was arrested many times. She always claimed, however, and uk successfully so, that her patrons had brought the liquor in with them. She hadnt sold them. And bringing liquor with you was not illegal. And it was pretty hard to prove that they had bought it there. There were no receipts. The club was pretty small. It served an elite clientele. She said, well, the girls werent touching the customers on purpose. It was just so small, there was no space. She claimed until the end of her life she never sold an alcoholic drink in her life. Her club was the hang out for some of the citys wealthy elite and also for many of the most important entertainment celebrities in the country. The great composer george gesh win used to go there a lot and play piano impromptu. Big film stars like gloria swanson, rudolph valentino. There were wealthy guests with names like vanderbilt and chrysler who used to come to the club. And she made a very good living one way or another, whether legally or illegally. When she died, it turned out she earned 700,000 in one year in 1926, lesser amounts other years. Even though the clubs were routinely raided by the police. Her famous greeting to people who came to the club was, hello, suckers. But she was obviously no sucker. Now, this kind of behavior repelled a good Many Americans, those who supported prohibition and thought it should be enforced as strictly as possible and thought people who didnt enforce prohibition were immoral evil people. The most popular prohibitionist in the 1920s was not a Government Official or certainly not a Treasury Department agent trying to enforce the law. It was the most popular protestant evangelist in the country, the most popular protestant evangelist in the United States until billy graham later in the 1950s. Billy graham is still alive today but no longer preaching a lot. This evangelist was billy sunday and that was his real name, by the way. Heres billy sunday, a very aggressive fit guy got ahead of myself there. Billy sunday was a former Major League Baseball player with the pittsburgh pirates. Not very good, but at least good enough to play for a while. Lectured on many issues. Fundamentalist. Believed all the bible was written by people who food the will of god, if not by god himself. So, he was also a leading fundamentalist, but his leading cause in the 1920s was prohibition. And he took direct aim at people like guinan and her crowd. He called them, quote, the diamondwearing bunch, the big automobile gang, the silk gowned. He condemned the low downed, whiskey soaked, beer guz lg, foul mouthed hypocrite who beat his wife and abandoned his work. He would jump up like mick jagger or something except he would have hated mick jaggers style of life. Nevertheless this was an entertaining evangelist. But he was very much in ernst when he talked about prohibition or any subject that he lectured on. His most famous talk was what he called the booze sermon. This is where he urged people before prohibition became law and very much after it became law to get rid of liquor in their lives. He compared liquor to a rattlesnake and a voracious mon goose. He described in detail what alcohol does to the flesh, the face and liver. And he challenged men in his audience, and most of his audience was male, to do what he says was their moral duty. You have a chance to show your manhood, he said, by abolishing the curse of your wife and the poor innocent children that climb up on your lap and put their arms around your neck. Tens of thousands heard the sermon and swore an oath to vote for and enforce prohibition. With a supporter like sunday, and smaller sundays all around the country, and very powerful lobby behind them. There was a group called the Antisaloon League in the 1920s came into its own. Presbyterians, baptists, congregationalist, methodists especially are encouraging their parishers to make sure that that they not just dont purchase drink liquor themselves but they put the onus on anyone they know was breaking the law. This was a Big Government program with a lot of people supporting it behind it and yet at the same time a lot of people who believe that this was ridiculous, that people could drink without detroying their lives, without beating their wives. And of course not surprisingly, the rhetoric of Antisaloon League, the rhetoric of billy sunday was very much antiimdprant, anticatholic. So, catholics and immigrants in general took it almost as their duty to disobey the law and certainly to lobby against it. Throughout the 20s there was a big attempt to repeal the prohibition amendment which did happen in 1933. But even during the time, texas guinans club was just one side of the weakness of prohibition in the big cities. San francisco, for example, there were nine agents to enforce the volstead act, nine agents in the city. The major of San Francisco was seen drinking in speak easies. This is the republican mayor of one of the major cities in the country. You could see what a dead letter the volstead act was in the cities. Law proved difficult to enforce. But the enforcement was left more and more to citizens themselves. And a new social movement sprang up in part to help enforce it. And also to preserve the supremacy of white, protestant native born sids which was always one of the aims, implicitly, of most prohibitionists. And this new social movement was one that took name of an older social movement, the can yku kl klan. The klan was revived named william symonds. He got people to sign up with the client and took a portion of their membership these. They made a lot of money doing it. One of the reasons he was able to revive the klan using this term was even though the klan from the reconstruction years have been suppressed by the u. S. Army, its memory had lived on in Popular Culture in the south and elsewhere. As i mentioned before, it came back in a big way when this film was released in 1915. Birth of a nation. This is the actual poster of what was, at the time, the most popular film in america. 100 years ago, a little less than 100 years ago. On the strength of this heroic portrait of the klan defending the morality of white women especially in the south. 7 million members were signed up by the clan. By the 1920s, journalists, social scientists, noticed the decline was growing much more in the north than it was in the south. Its headquarters were in atlanta, in the south, where it had been formed in the late 18 sixties. But more and more people, would join the clan. Places like indiana and oregon. Rural michigan. Orange county in southern california. There, the main impetus to trying to clan was people who want to push back against catholic immigrants and jewish immigrants. Defend what they saw as an assault on Public Schools by parochial schools. Public schools at the time in america, in heavy protestant areas especially, tended to be in many ways protestant schools. The protestant bible was taught openly in these schools, the king james bible. The history of the world was taught as a story of protestant supremacy in the world. Protestants as a more moral group compared to catholics, jews, or other religions. So decline was very supportive of Public Schools. They wanted no funding for Catholic Schools of any kind for example. The clan by the mid 1920s had as many as 5 million members. It had as many women members as it did male members. Of