The post-war "Red Scare"

Depression in rural America

The "Roaring Twenties"

The Scopes "Monkey Trial"

Participating in the world disarmament
        movement

The textual material on page below is drawn directly from my work A Moral History of Western Society © 2024, Volume Two, pages 125-130.

Americans had not been involved in the war as long as the Europeans and what military action had taken place had worked out fairly well for the Americans.  Consequently, America came back to a sense of triumph that would be lacking in the European countries.  However, as news of the deals being worked out in Paris after the war reached the ears of Americans a sense of frustration set in ... because it seemed that the very things that Americans had sacrificed their sons for was being ignored by America's "victorious" allies.  Then even more as workers' uprisings, inspired by Europe’s strange fascination with socialism and communism, made the news in America, Americans felt even all the more estranged from Europe and its politics.  The "Old World" was ignoring completely the democratic or progressivist dream America had been holding out in hope that the war effort might bring to fulfillment ... and thus redeem all the blood shed in a war that otherwise had no other noble purpose.  But toward such redemption clearly was not where Europe seemed to want to go. THE POST-WAR "RED SCARE" Complicating matters were several incidents involving Italian anarchists (particularly immigrants influenced by the Italian anarchist Galleani) that set the country on edge.  Attorney General Palmer even had his house blown up by an agitator ... determining him even more to break this ‘Red Scare.’  Thousands were arrested in the period November 1919 to February 1920.  Then the case of a robbery and murder in a payroll heist in April of 1920 – leading to the arrest of two Italians with anarchist background, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti – would absorb the attentions not only of all America but even much of the world.  They were sentenced in the summer of 1921 but appeals dragged the case out until they were put to death six years later ... with the country much divided over the issue.   Wilson's Attorney General Mitchell Palmer The anarchist Wall Street bombing - September 16, 1920 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Protest in NYC over the Sacco and Vanzetti trial - 1921 DEPRESSION IN RURAL AMERICA Then too there was the growing sense among traditional rural and small-town America that the rising urban society was corrupt and even anti-American.  Part of this was because of the huge number of immigrants moving to urban America and carving out strongly ethnic neighborhood where English was seldom heard.  For rural America going to the city was like going to a foreign country.  It was certainly not the America they knew. Part of this sense of alienation from urban America was fueled by the growing economic disparity between city and country life in America.  Farmers had prospered greatly during the war ... feeding much of Europe at a time when most of Europe’s farmers were in uniform fighting the war.  American agricultural business was so good that farmers took out loans and mortgages to buy more land and equipment.  But after the war, as the European farmers returned to their fields, the demand for American farm products dropped away.  Indeed, the oversupply of farm produce drove prices at times below even their production costs.  On top of this, those loans and mortgages had to be paid off ... and the farmers had no money.  Soon the lending banks found themselves in trouble as well.  Bankruptcies among rural banks spread quickly around the country ... creating a rural depression that anticipated the 1930s industrial depression in America by ten years.   Thus in the 1920s, rural America already knew what a massive economic depression was all about.   Minnesota potato farmer - 1920s THE "ROARING TWENTIES" Doing the Charleston in competition – St. Louis, 1925 Massive consumerism.  By contrast, urban America seemed almost in a partying mood.  America’s industrial war machine was easily converted after the war to the production of a whole new line of consumer goods, which quickly flooded the market: automobiles, radios, washing machines, vacuum sweepers, stylish clothing, movies. For instance, by 1927, Ford had produced over 15 million of its Model-T Fords; by 1929 the A&P grocery stores numbered 15,000, Woolworth’s 5 & 10 cent stores numbered nearly 2,000, and J.C. Penny department stores numbered almost 1,500; by 1930 13.8 million Americans owned radios. New "freedoms."  Also very visible about 1920s America (particularly urban America) was its strong emphasis that life was all about personal freedoms … rather than heavy social responsibilities – ones such as the recent war had required of them.  No … there would now be no social rules that would prevent them from undertaking life entirely on their own – in whatever manner they chose to do so.  Nationalism and patriotism were things to be avoided … in order to secure the freest life possible.  Yet (unsurprisingly), there was great conformity visible in their "free" hair styles, clothing styles, musical tastes, etc. Corruption in the White House.  Nonetheless the anti-social instincts also became quite visible during the brief presidency of Warren Harding (1921-1923), corruption in the Harding Administration (not so much in the person of Harding himself, however) seeming almost to be the word of the day ... though his presidency was cut short when he died of a heart attack on a visit across the country to try to put his administration in a better light.    His vice president Calvin Coolidge on becoming US. President did bring something akin to Puritanical dignity back to the high office ... though his was not exactly an activist presidency. "The Lost Generation."  But all this freedom and glitz and glitter did little to satisfy the burdened hearts of a number of members of America's artistic-intellectual community.  Under the patronage of Gertrude Stein, a group she herself entitled "the Lost Generation" gathered in Paris, in the attempt to offer each other companionship and support (e.g., Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Cummings, etc.).  Others went down the dreamy path of Marxism … with its anti-nationalism (Marx detested the way nationalism was dividing his working-class movement) … which was an understandable instinct given the horrors of the nationalism-induced war the world had just gone through. But disillusionment did not extend just to the newly rising nationalist spirit that had just infected the world.  It also took on a struggling world of the Christian faith … at a time that God seemed to be most distant. Freud takes on the struggling world of Christendom.  An individual that would have a tremendous impact on modern culture and how it understood human behavior – and life itself – was the Austrian psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud.  He was a prolific writer … whose ideas were widely accepted as "scientific truth" – although they were in fact only that … just his ideas about things.    Freud went on the attack against Western "rationalism" … the key understanding of human nature held by "enlightened" Westerners since even the 1600s.  Freud instead posited the idea that we humans are actually driven not by reason but by deep forces within our "subconscious" realm … forces that we are hardly aware of because they are buried so very deep in our being.  Dreams however are actually these subconscious forces surfacing from that deeper realm … and reveal the truer nature of our being.  Thus in his "psychotherapy" with his patients, he would explore deeply their dream world. Freud claimed that these deep forces originate with us in our earliest years as children … as sexual thoughts – but ones that we are taught to repress as we become increasingly socialized during our childhood years.  He claimed that boys have a natural sexual fixation with their moms (the "Oedipus complex") … and girls with their fathers. He also ventured into analysis of masculinity versus femininity … tending to support the dominating role that men play in the social scheme of things … something that later caused feminists to depart from his legacy because of this view of his. In two respects Freud "spoke for his age."  As already noted, sexual freedom was considered to be a basic right by the Jazz Age generation … and Freud somehow justified it as a more natural, less Victorian or sexually repressed instinct … that has every good reason to be simply released.    Secondly, he also had his own interesting views on religion, seeing Christianity derived from a more feminine instinct and Judaism (his own ethnic background) as derived from a more masculine instinct. But in any case, Freud felt strongly that belief in a heavenly God –   Jewish or Christian – was merely a form of escapism from hard reality … into a prettier dream world.  Such religion was simply delusional, a form of collective or social neurosis … much like the nationalist spirit had been.   Thus it was that Freudian psychology spoke to the skeptical mindset that followed up the recent war.  Hadn't each of the warring parties gone into battle, very certain that "Gott mit uns"/ "God with us"?   So then, where indeed was God?  He seemed to have been very silent during the horror of the war.  Thus the question was not something answered easily.   Perhaps Freud seemed to have it right.  Perhaps the belief in God was simply a made-up belief that weak people dream up in order to comfort themselves in confronting a difficult world.  Thus to a lot of people, Freud and his ideas made a lot of sense.    And thus also, fewer and fewer people headed to church on a Sunday to find themselves in God's company. The 18th Amendment (1920).  Watching all this was rural America – shocked at the number of speakeasies (illegal bars), operating in brazen defiance of the new 18th Amendment to the Constitution outlawing alcoholic beverages.  Urban America interpreted the Amendment as a moral slap by rural and small-town Christian America against the libertarian behavior of an increasingly secular urban America ... and responded to the challenge with delight in seeing the law violated.  Even the criminal underground generated by the law was regarded in urban America as almost heroic in its defiance of the law. Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Destroying Beer - 1924 A 1920s Speakeasy "Scarface" Al Capone Johnny Torrio, Capone's mentor in Chicago gang action – who subsequently retired and turned his operations over to Capone.  He has just posted bail on federal charges St. Valentine's Day massacre of Chicago mobsters by enemy mobsters THE SCOPES "MONKEY TRIAL" An event occurred in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925 – one that represented very accurately the social-moral division digging deeply into American society ...  and for that matter much of the rest of post-war Western society. When the state legislature of Tennessee passed a law forbidding the teaching of the Darwinist view of the origin of life, a group of local town leaders decided to challenge the law ... as a way of bringing some needed attention to their town.  They had no idea of just how much attention that would end up being.  Immediately the very "Liberal" America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) decided to take up the cause in defense of Darwinism,1 by bringing in the famous New York criminal lawyer, Clarence Darrow, to argue their case.  Brought in to represent the "Christian" or Biblical stand on the matter was the old national political figure, William Jennings Bryan.  And the huge national press corps gathered to watch the proceedings ... for the case truly represented the very battle going on in America between the older Christian worldview and the rising Secular-Humanist worldview, the latter determined to challenge the Christian position in order to "progress" America towards a more modern or "scientific" understanding of life and its dynamics. Which side actually won the case was hard to say ... for the case itself decided very little legally.  But it did highlight the moral-spiritual crisis hitting Middle-America ... a traditionalist sector of American society attempting to not be swept aside by the rising Humanism worldview, the latter appealing to a much younger and increasingly urban sector of American society. 1The trial gets its name from Darwinism's claim that man was not make complete in his present form at the dawn of history, but instead evolved slowly over the eons from some primal ape or "monkey." 2Actually, Bryan's views were more "Centrist" than "Fundamentalist."  He was arguing on the basis of the moral rather than scientific character of the case.  His closing argument (which had to be printed because closing arguments were not allowed to be delivered) makes his case very clear: Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane, the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world. Sadly, five days after the close of the case, Bryan died in his sleep while on another speaking tour. John Thomas Scopes (left) and George Washington Rappleyea (right) - Dayton, Tennessee, June 1925 Smithsonian Institution Archives Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in Dayton, Tennessee - 1925 William Jennings Bryan under examination by Clarence Darrow PARTICIPATING IN THE WORLD DISARMAMENT MOVEMENT The general view of the times, both in America and Europe, was that the greatest danger to the peace that the world craved so deeply was to be found in the heavy militarization of the nations.  "Take the weapons away and the nations will be forced to act peacefully with each other."  This huge Humanist hope seemed very logical, especially when the nightmare of the Great War was still deep in people’s thoughts. When Germany was forced to agree to a huge cutback in its military as required by the Versailles Treaty, the Germans were led to believe that this was not intended as punishment but instead as the first step in a larger disarmament of all nations.  On that basis the German negotiators seemed to be accepting of the disarmament terms imposed on them. The Washington Conference (1921) Toward that end America moved to host a disarmament conference in at its capital in 1921.  The Washington Conference brought participants to agree on the outlawing of poison gas ... and also the limiting of the building of naval vessels at a ratio of 5:5:3 for Britain, America and Japan, these numbers reflecting the relative size of each nation’s maritime activity.  But beyond this naval accord the powers were not willing to go ... France being especially nervous about reducing its military in the face of a Germany that would surely one day rebuild.  Subsequent protests from the Germans that no serious moves were being made to bring other countries in line with Germany’s level of forced disarmament ultimately fell on deaf ears. The Locarno Conference (1925) Instead another approach was made to the ideal of world peace.  In 1925 Germany was admitted to the League of Nations – recognizing it as a major power with a permanent seat on the League Council ... and in that same year it was a major participant at a diplomatic conference held in the Swiss Alpine city of Locarno.  The Locarno Agreement contained the promise of France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Belgium that they would not resort to war in their relations with each other ... but would resolve their conflicts only by peaceful means.  Locarno thus gave hope that Europeans might be ready to move to more serious thoughts on military disarmament. The Kellogg-Briande Pact (1928) In 1928 American Secretary of State Frank Kellogg met with French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand and signed a pact agreeing to renounce war as a means of settling conflicts and to use peaceful means instead.  Soon the Kellogg-Briand Pact was joined by 59 other nations (including Germany, Italy and Japan) – seemingly indicating that the world was finally coming to its senses.  Never again would a war such as what the world had gone through ten years earlier ever have to happen again. Yet all of this was simply humanistic illusion ... as events would soon prove.  Serious conflicts of interest (such as contested boundaries and revanchist dreams of gathering nationals scattered in neighboring countries) were never really dealt with ... nor could they be by peaceful means in any case.  Too much was at stake for nation-states not to attempt the use physical force if push came to shove.  And it soon did. But in the meantime, those still shocked by the trauma of the Great War were happy to believe that they had solved rationally one of life’s most critical problems ... forever. Europeans ascending the steps to the U.S. State, War and Navy building in 1921 - to begin the Washington Naval Conference designed to set limits on naval fleets Delegates of the nine nations participating in the Washington Naval Conference - 1921-1922 The diplomatic meeting at Locarno, Switzerland - October 1925 The monocled British diplomat Austen Chamberlain meeting with European diplomats (French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand is at the right) to "outlaw war" - through a series of treaties recognizing the inviolability of European borders (with the notable exception of Russia, whose borders were still in dispute). The signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war - at the Palais D'Orsay in Paris - August 27, 1928 U.S. President Coolidge signing the Kellogg-Briand Pact - January 1929 Go on to the next section:  The Emerging Realm of Quantum Mechanics   Miles H. Hodges