The most popular nickname for the decade that spanned from 1920 to 1929 is The Jazz Age. For many people, it is a period that conjures up images of carefree flappers, smokey speakeasies, and stock market millionaires. It’s been characterized as one long, Great Gatsby-style party of high living and wild antics. The truth, as always, is a lot more complicated than the popular myth. As the twenties began, the United States was still unraveling itself from World War I. And as is always the case, peace did not come wrapped up in a neat, clean package, leaving the victors free to start celebrating. There were peace treaties to be written, economies to be rebuilt, and casualty lists to be read.
Although the United States was not eager to get involved in World War I when the hostilities began in 1914, once it became involved in 1917, the country rallied around the cause. U.S. citizens bought Liberty bonds, built ships, rationed food, and sent two million of their boys to Europe to fight on foreign soil. Idealistic and eloquent, President Woodrow Wilson outlined the noble purpose of the war: "The world must be made safe for democracy."
When victory was announced on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, the country rejoiced. Parade after parade of returning soldiers marched down Fifth Avenue in New York City through glittering flurries of ticker tape. Not only had the United States emerged victorious, but it emerged as the strongest military and economic power in the world. But the question that remained was whether or not Americans were ready to accept this new role. What most Americans wanted, now that the war was over, was a return to isolationism, to be left out of the political and economic turmoils of other nations. In reality, the American and European economies were tied together now more than ever before, and the United States had increasingly important security interests overseas.
As the country celebrated victory, expressions of pride took place beside demonstrations of hatred. Hastily stuffed effigies of the Kaiser, the leader of Germany during the war, were strung up on lampposts and burned to the cheers of gathered crowds. Americans were still filled with the fighting spirit. Yet they were also eager to begin a new era of peace, to put aside public duty, and to get back to their own individual concerns.
But settling that peace was proving extremely difficult. President Wilson had almost killed himself trying. He was determined that World War I would not have been fought in vain but would produce a better world than existed before the war. In December of 1918, Wilson sailed for the peace conference in France believing that it was the United States’ "fortunate duty to assist by example, by sober, friendly counsel, and by material aid in the establishment of just democracy throughout the world." But, in Versailles, he discovered that the Allies, while in a sober mood, were not in a friendly one. They had suffered far greater casualties and damage to their countries than the United States had, and now their goal seemed to be vengeance against Germany. Although they were receptive to Wilson’s plan for a League of Nations, they wanted guarantees that the United States would come to the defense of the other nations in the league. Wilson was forced to return home with a very different treaty than the one he had sought. Though in his idealistic heart he could not possibly have been confident in the justice of the treaty, Wilson pursued Congress’ ratification with uncompromising zeal.
The extreme isolationists in the Senate wanted nothing to do with the league. Others wanted to amend the treaty. Wilson was unwilling to change a word. Opposed by Congress, Wilson took his message to the people. During an exhausting speaking tour in the summer of 1919, which took the president by train to city after city for speech after eloquent speech, Wilson collapsed with a nervous breakdown, made worse by a recent bout of influenza. A week later he had a cerebral hemorrhage that paralyzed his left side and nearly killed him. As the new decade opened, Wilson was an invalid in the White House, still committed to getting the treaty ratified in its unchanged form though it was destined to fail. For the remaining year and a half of his term, Wilson saw almost nobody. Those wishing to communicate with the president, even on important government business, had to do so by letter. The letters were not always answered, and a rumor spread that it was Mrs. Wilson who was running the government. Whether this is true or not, Wilson’s physical condition did result in a lack of direction in domestic policy that proved disastrous for civil liberties and overall demobilization.
The hundreds of thousands of men returning from the war were not nearly as concerned with who ran the White House as they were with the more immediate problems they faced. Though the twenties are known as a time of prosperity, the country that these men returned to in 1919 and 1920 was in a recession. With the end of the war came a drop in government spending and a weakening of the export market. Business bankruptcies tripled from 1919 to 1920. Wages were cut and workers laid off. On top of the unemployment problem, everyone was complaining about the high cost of living. Housing costs were especially high, due in large part to a serious housing shortage. Some who could find neither a job nor affordable housing built shanty towns. One thing was painfully clear: the end of the war did not by any means bring an end to the United States’ problems at home.
The Strangers Among Us
In fact, the war added fuel to the fire of one problem. The patriotic spirit that united the country in purpose during the war also led to a chauvinistic nationalism that made many Americans suspicious of the "foreigners" among them. Of course, the United States is a nation of foreigners. Except for American Indians (most of whom were confined to reservations by this time), everyone came to the United States from foreign shores. But to the Americans who wrapped themselves in the red, white, and blue, the newly arrived immigrants, naturalized or not, were foreigners and therefore suspicious. The newly formed American Legion announced that among its goals was "100 percent Americanism." The Citizens’ Protective League, the American Defense Society, the National Security League and the National Civic League pursued similar goals. Under the supervision of the reformers of earlier decades, Americanization had done much to help the immigrants in U.S. cities. But in the hands of superpatriots, it could, and did, lead to such bullying behavior as forcing immigrants to kiss the flag.
The worst suspicion that a foreigner could fall under was that he or she was a Bolshevik, or Communist. As 1919 turned into 1920, the big Red Scare was in full bloom in America. The Bolshevik Revolution, which turned Russia into the world’s first Communist country in November 1917, seemed likely to spread to other countries in eastern and central Europe. When the Russian Communists announced that they were dedicated to transplanting the revolution to other countries, the question arose: Could the United States be at risk? A small group of radicals with attention-grabbing bombs convinced many Americans that the answer was yes.
In April of 1919, thirty-six bombs were sent through the mail to political and business leaders around the country. All but one were intercepted before they could cause serious injury, but the blazing headlines that spread the news of the bombs terrified most Americans. On June 2 that same year, the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was one of several bomb targets. Palmer was uninjured in the attack, but the bomb had its effect. It set Palmer off on an "anti-radical campaign" that escalated the Red Scare to a level of irrational hysteria and violated scores of civil liberties in the process.
During the war, political repression and censorship were considered a necessary part of the war effort, and the good patriot did not complain. When those methods were continued after the war in the name of protecting the United States from Bolshevism, Americans for the most part again accepted it. On the second day of the new decade, the Justice Department conducted massive raids of "radical" gatherings at bakeries, meeting halls, and restaurants around the country. Nearly two thousand people were arrested, most of them without a warrant and for dubious reasons.
