A History of the United States: Chapter 25: The Jazz Age

Tired of war and world responsibilities, the American people longed for a return to a way of life they viewed as normal.

They urged workers around the world to overthrow capitalism, the economic system based on private property and free enterprise.

Fanning the fears were the actions of anarchists—people who believe there should be no government.

The government deported—expelled from the United States—a few hundred of the aliens it arrested.

Despite the unions' decline, a dynamic leader named A. Philip Randolph started the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

He did not support integration—African Americans and whites living side-by-side.

In 1922 Fall secretly leased, or rented, government oil reserves to two oil companies.

Like Harding, Coolidge believed in laissez-faire—the idea that government should be involved as little as possible in the lives of citizens and businesses.

He said, "If the federal government should go out of existence, the common run of the people would not detect the difference for a considerable length of time."

To support American businesses, the United States intervened in Latin America several times in the early 1900s.

After World War I, the United States went through a recession, or economic downturn.

Many employers hired experts with advanced knowledge to create scientific management methods.

Scientific management lowered costs and increased productivity—the amount of work each worker could do.

Larger businesses began using mass-production techniques.

With installment buying, consumers bought goods by making small, regular payments over a period of time.

The symbol of the new "liberated" woman of the 1920s was the flapper—a carefree young woman with short "bobbed" hair, heavy makeup, and a short skirt.

The growth of mass media—forms of communication that reach a wide audience—helped spread cultural changes.

The radio was another device that changed American life.

Businesses realized that the radio offered an enormous audience for messages about their products.

Some became expatriates—people who choose to live in another country.

This amendment established prohibition—a ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor.

Their concerns led to a rise in nativism—the belief that native-born Americans are superior to foreigners.

In 1921 Congress responded to these fears by passing the Emergency Quota Act. This law set up a quota system, a fixed number of immigrants allowed from each country each year.

In 1925 Tennessee passed a law making it illegal to teach evolution—the scientific theory that humans and other species developed over vast periods of time.