A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (184 page)

61. James H. Timberlake,
Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963); Norman H. Clark,
The Dry Years: Prohibition and Social Change in Washington
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965); John C. Burnham, “New Perspectives on the Prohibition Experiment of the 1920s,”
Journal of Social History
, 2, 1968, 51–68, quotation on 51.

62. Johnson,
History of the American People
, 679.

63. Prince A. Morrow, “Report of the Committee of Seven on the Prophylaxis of Venereal Disease in New York City,”
Medical News
, 79, December 21, 1901, 961–70, quotation on 967.

64. J. C. Burnham, “The Progressive Era Revolution in American Attitudes Toward Sex,”
Journal of American History
, 59, March 1973, 885–908.

65. Allan M. Brandt,
No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880
, exp. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 38–39.

66. Jonathan Zimmerman,
Distilling Democracy: Alcohol Education in America’s Public Schools, 1880–1925
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1999).

67. Gillon and Matson,
American Experiment
, 822.

68. Davidson, et al.,
Nation of Nations
, II:795; Gillon and Matson,
American Experiment
, 820; Brinkley,
American History
, II:827.

69. Norman H. Clark,
Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of Prohibition
(New York: Norton, 1976), 10, 83.

70. Mencken quoted in Johnson,
History of the American People
, 681.

71. Clark,
Deliver Us from Evil
, 9.

72. Johnson,
History of the American People
, 680.

73. Harry Elmer Barnes,
Society in Transition: Problems of a Changing Age
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1939), 455.

74. Daniel J. Kelves,
In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Use of Human Heredity
(New York: Knopf, 1985).

75. H. C. Sharp, “The Indiana Plan,” in Proceedings of the National Prison Association (Pittsburgh: National Prison Association, 1909).

76. Clark,
Deliver Us from Evil
, 65; David Pivar,
Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868–1900
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973).

77. Berkin, et al.,
Making America
, 606.

78. John R. Lott and Larry Kenny, “How Dramatically Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?” University of Chicago, John M. Olin Law and Economics Working Paper No. 60, 2nd series; John E. Filer, Lawrence W. Kenny, and Rebecca B. Morton, “Redistribution, Income, and Voting,”
American Journal of Political Science
, 37, February 1993, 63–87; Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy, “Why Women Like Big Government,”
Christianity Today
, November 11, 1996; Joel H. Goldstein,
The Effects of the Adoption of Woman Suffrage: Sex Differences in Voting Behavior—Illinois, 1914–1921
(New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1984); Jody Newman, “The Gender Gap: Do Women Vote for Women?”
The Public Perspective
, 7, February/March 1996.

79. Grant,
Killer Angel
, 38.

80. Ibid.

81. Albert Gringer,
The Sanger Corpus: A Study in Militancy
(Lakeland, AL: Lakeland Christian College, 1974), 473–88; Grant,
Killer Angel
, 63.

82. Margaret Sanger,
The Pivot of Civilization
(New York: Brentanos, 1922).

83. Ibid., 108.

84. Ibid., 123.

85. Stephen Mosher, “The Repackaging of Margaret Sanger,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 5, 1997.

86. Ibid.

 

Chapter 15. The Roaring Twenties and the Great Crash, 1920–32

1. David Burner, et al.,
An American Portrait
(New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1985); John Kenneth Galbraith,
The Great Crash of 1929
, 3rd ed., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972 [1955]); David Goldfield, et al.,
The American Journey
, combined ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998); John Mack Faragher, et al.,
Out of Many: A History of the American People
, combined ed., 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999). Typical statements are as follows: “Business had done all too well. Corporations had boosted their profits…by keeping the cost of labor low…. People made up the difference between earnings and purchases by borrowing….1 percent of the population owned 36 percent of all personal wealth…. The wealthy saved too much…huge corporations ruled the economy…flooding the stock market with call money; manipulating stocks and bonds; and failing to distribute enough in wages to sustain consumer purchasing power.” (James West Davidson, et al.,
Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic
, vol. 2: since 1865, 3rd edition [Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998], 873–74); “In the twenties, the uneven distribution of income should have suggested that the nation was risking economic disaster. The slowly rising real wages of industrial workers were outdistanced by the salaries, savings, and profits of those higher on the economic ladder…. Forty percent of all families had incomes under $1,500…. Those who were getting rich, meanwhile, found their savings piled up out of all proportion to need [and] they turned to speculation in real estate and securities, both blown up into a bubble sure to burst…. Tax policies favored the rich, making even more unequal the distribution of income.” (Winthrop Jordan and Leon F. Litwack,
The United States
, combined ed., 7th ed. [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991], 664–65); “The most important weakness in the economy was the extremely unequal distribution of income and wealth…. the top 0.1 percent of American fami lies…had an agregate income equal to that of the bottom 42 percent…. (Faragher,
Out of Many
, 719); “In 1929, nearly a third of the country’s income was going to a twentieth of the population…. [overproduction of consumer goods] not only preceded the stock market crash: [17] helped cause it…. Speculation in stock prices had begun on the solid basis of profits…. But in time it turned to sheer gambling….” (David Burner, Elizabeth Genove Eugene D. Genovese, Forrest McDonald,
An American Portrait: A History of the United States
combined ed., 2nd ed. [New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1985], 614–15). John D. Hicks, in his textbook of the age,
Republican Ascendancy, 1921–1933
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), contended that “money had flowed in from all over the world to support the wild American speculation,” and noted the observation, later used by Paul Johnson, that “many stocks that had never paid a dividend brought fantastic figures, and soared ever upward,”
History of the American People
[New York: HarperCollins, 1997], 277).

2. Robert Sobel,
The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1968). For the debate over stock valuations, see Eugene N. White, “The Stock Market Boom and the Crash of 1929 Revisited,”
Journal of Economic History
, 4 (Spring 1990), 67–83; and his “When the Ticker Ran Late: The Stock Market Boom and the Crash of 1929,” in Eugene N. White, ed.,
Crashes and Panics
(Homewood, IL: Dow Jones/Irwin, 1990); Gary Santoni and Gerald Dwyer, “Bubbles vs. Fundamentals: New Evidence from the Great Bull Markets,” in ibid., 188–210; J. Bradford De Long and Andre Shleifer, “The Stock Market Bubble of 1929: Evidence from Closed-end Mutual Funds,”
Journal of Economic History
, 51 (September 1991), 675–700; Peter Rappaport and Eugene N. White, “Was the Crash of 1929 Expected?”
American Economic Review
, 84 (March 1994), 271–81; Gene Smiley and Richard H. Keehn, “Margin Purchases, Brokers’ Loans, and the Bull Market of the Twenties,”
Business and Economic History
, 17 (1988), 129–42.

3. Edwin J. Perkins, “Charles E. Merrill,” in Larry Schweikart, ed.,
Encyclopedia of American Business and Economic History: Banking and Finance, 1913–1989
(New York: Facts on File, 1990), 283–90.

4. John A. Morello,
Selling the President, 1920: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001).

5. Burt Noggle, “The Origins of the Teapot Dome Investigation,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, 44 (June 1957–March 1958), 237–66.

6. Robert James Maddox, “Keeping Cool with Coolidge,”
Journal of American History
, 53 (June 1966–March 1967), 772–80, quotation on 779.

7. Burner, et al.,
An American Portrait
, II:607; Gene Smith,
The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
(New York: William Morrow & Company, 1970), 47.

8. Donald R. McCoy,
Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President
(New York: Macmillan, 1967).

9. Randall G. Holcombe, “The Growth of the Federal Government in the 1920s,”
Cato Journal
, 16, Fall 1996, http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n2_2.html, table 1.

10. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns,
Baseball: An Illustrated History
(New York: Borzoi, 1994), 209–10.

11. Jordan and Litwack,
The United States
, 645.

12. David Robinson,
From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Jack C. Ellis,
A History of Film
, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), chap. 8; Tino Valio, “Grand Design,” vol. 5, in Charles Harpole, ed.,
History of the American Cinema
(Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1995).

13. Robert W. Garnet,
The Telephone Enterprise: The Evolution of the Bell System’s Horizontal Structure, 1876–1909
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); John Brooks,
Telephone
(New York: Harper & Row, 1975).

14. Charles Merz,
The Dry Decade
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969); The Prohibition Amendment: Hearings Before the Committee of the Judiciary, Seventy-fifth Congress, Second Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931); Herbert Asbury,
The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1950); Mark Moore and Dean Gerstein, eds.,
Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1981); W. J. Rorabaugh,
The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
(New York: Oxford, 1979).

15. John C. Burnham, “New Perspectives on the Prohibition ‘Experiment’ of the 1920s,”
Journal of Social History 2
, 1968, 51–68, quotation on 66.

16. Ibid.; John C. Burnham, “The New Psychology: From Narcissism to Social Control,” in John Braeman, Robert Bremmer, and David Brody, eds.,
Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968), 351–97, quotation on 375.

17. Norman H. Clark,
Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of Prohibition
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 146.

18. Burnham, “New Perspectives on the Prohibition ‘Experiment,’ passim; “The Progressive Era Revolution in American Attitudes Toward Sex,”
Journal of American History
, 8, 1973, 885–908; and “The New Psychology: From Narcissism to Social Control,” in John Braeman, Robert H. Bremer, and David Brody, eds.,
Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America: The 1920’s
(Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1965).

19. Clark,
Deliver Us from Evil
, 146–47. Also see Martha Bensley Bruere,
Does Prohibition Work? A Study of the Operation of the Eighteenth Amendment Made by the National Federation of Settlements, Assisted by Social Workers in Different Parts of the United States
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1927).

20. Holcombe, “Growth of the Federal Government in the 1920s,” table 4.

21. Mark Mazower,
Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 109.

22. Ibid.

23. Robert Sklar, ed.,
The Plastic Age, 1917–1930
(New York: George Braziller, 1970), 93.

24. Thomas B. Silver,
Coolidge and the Historians
(Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1982), 20; Howard H. Quint and Robert H. Ferrell, eds.,
The Talkative President: The Off-the-Record Press Conferences of Calvin Coolidge
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964).

25. Silver,
Coolidge
, 26.

26. Stephen A. Schuker, “Charles G. Dawes,” in Schweikart,
Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography: Banking and Finance, 1913–1989
, 68–77, quotation on 72.

27. Ibid., 74.

28. Stephen A. Schuker,
The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).

29. Davidson,
Nation of Nations
, 863.

30. McCoy,
Calvin Coolidge
, 367.

31. Johnson,
History of the American People
, 721.

32. McCoy,
Calvin Coolidge
, 384.

33. Joan Hoff Wilson,
Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1975).

34. David Burner,
Herbert Hoover
(New York: Afred A. Knopf, 1979), 234, 237.

35. Letter from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Hugh Gibson, in the Hoover Papers, Hoover Library, Stanford University, quoted in Martin L. Fausold,
The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover
(Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1985), 13.

36. William Allen White,
A Puritan in Babylon, the Story of Calvin Coolidge
(New York: Macmillan, 1938), 400.

37. Ibid. recorded the reaction in the White House to Hoover’s nomination as “dismay…sadness, disappointment, regrets” (402).

38. Burner,
Herbert Hoover
, 180.

39. Fausold,
Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover
, 18.

40. Herbert Hoover,
American Individualism
(West Branch, Iowa: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, 1971 [1922]).

41. Fausold,
Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover
, 24; Johnson,
History of the American People
, 737–39.

42. James Bovard,
The Farm Fiasco
(San Francisco, California: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1989), 16.

43. Joseph S. David,
On Agricultural Policy
(Palo Alto, California: Stanford University, 1938), 435.

44. Johnson,
A History of the American People
, 733.

45. Larry Schweikart, “U.S. Commercial Banking: A Historiographical Survey,”
Business History Review
, 65, Autumn 1991, 606–61; Gene Smiley,
The American Economy in the Twentieth Century
(Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western Publishing Co., 1994), chap. 6; Peter Temin,
Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression?
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1976) and his
Lessons from the Great Depression
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Richard H. Keehn and Gene Smiley, “U.S. Bank Failures, 1932–1933: A Provisional Analysis,” Essays in Economic History: Selected Papers from the Business and Economic Historical Society Meetings, 1987, 6 (1988), 136–56.

46. Jude Wanniski,
The Way the World Works: How Economics Fail—and Succeed
(New York: Basic Books, 1978).

47. Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman, “Investment During the Great Depression: Uncertainty and the Role of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff,”
Southern Economic Journal
, 64 (1998):4, 857–79.

48. Douglas A. Irwin, “The Smoot-Hawley Tariff: A Quantitative Assessment,”
Review of Economics and Statistics
, 80 (May 1998), 326–34; “Changes in U.S. Tariffs: The Role of Import Prices and Commercial Policies,”
American Economic Review
, 88 (September 1998), 1015–26; and “From Smoot-Hawley to Reciprocal Trade Agreements: Changing the Course of U.S. Trade Policy in the 1930s,” in Michael D. Bordo, Claudia Goldin, and Eugene N. White,
The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 325–52. See also Barry Eichengreen, “The Political Economy of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff,” in Roger L. Ransom, ed.,
Research in Economic History
, vol. 12 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1989), 1–43.

49. Mario J. Crucini and James Kahn, “Tariffs and Aggregate Economic Activity: Lessons from the Great Depression,”
Journal of Monetary Economics
, 38 (1996), 427–67, quotation on 458; Mario J. Crucini, “Sources of Variation in Real Tariff Rates: The United States, 1900–1940,”
American Economic Review
, 84 (June 1994), 732–43.

50. Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz,
Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), versus Paul Kubic, “Federal Reserve Policy During the Great Depression: the Impact of Interwar Attitudes Regarding Consumption and Consumer Credit,”
Journal of Economic Issues
, 30 (September 1996), 829–42.

51. William D. Lastrapes and George Selgin, “The Check Tax: Fiscal Folly and the Great Monetary Contraction,”
Journal of Economic History
, 57, December 1997, 859–78.

52. Fausold,
Presidency of Herbert Hoover
, 160–61.

53. W. Elliot Brownlee,
Dynamics of Ascent: A History of the American Economy
, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 409.

54. Ted Morgan,
FDR: A Biography
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 39. See also John T. Flynn,
The Roosevelt Myth
(New York: Devin-Adair Company, 1956).

55. Marvin Olasky,
The American Leadership Tradition: Moral Vision from Washington to Clinton
(New York: Free Press, 1999), 210.

56. Ibid., 215.

57. Dick Morris,
Power Plays: Win or Lose—How History’s Great Political Leaders Play the Game
(New York: ReganBooks, 2002), 260.

58. Ibid.

59. Olasky,
American Leadership Tradition
, 222.

60. Roosevelt’s speech in Sioux City, Iowa, September 1932, quoted in William E. Leucthtenburg,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
(New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 11.