George Burson

Aspen School District

Aspen, Colorado

LEARNING OBJECTIVE:

Understand the circumstances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America that led to the progressive movement.

Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, the United States underwent profound social, economic, and political changes. Mid-nineteenth century America was primarily rural, agricultural, and populated by the descendants of Northern European Protestants. The America of 1930 was primarily urban, industrial and increasingly populated by immigrants from other regions of the globe besides Northern Europe. This transformation caused significant social and political unrest in the United States. One manifestation of this unrest was the progressive movement.

The following factors helped contribute to the progressive movement:

1) Urbanization. The period between the Civil War and the Great Depression was the most rapid period of urbanization in the nation's history. In 1860, four times as many people lived in rural as in urban areas (25,227,000 v. 6,217,000). By 1930, the rural population had basically doubled, but urban population had increased more than tenfold (53,820,000 v. 68,955,000). In 1860 only nine cities in the U.S. had a population of 100,000 or more, by 1930 the number had grown to 93.

2) Industrialization. Beginning in the 1850s, the United States began to rapidly industrialize. After the Civil War this process accelerated. In 1860 about half of all the nation's work force was engaged in agriculture, by 1930 this number had decreased to around 22 percent. The gross national product had increased, in constant 1929 dollars, from $9.11 billion to $104.4 billion. And, industrial union membership grew from an estimated 300,000 workers to 3,393,000 (down from a 1920 high of 5,048,000).

3) Immigration. Prior to 1890 most immigrants to the United States came from England, Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia. During the forty years between 1850 and 1890, about 13,550,000 immigrants came to the United States. During the thirty years between 1890 and 1920 the number of immigrants coming to the United States increased to 18,218,761. Beginning in the late 1880s the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe coming into the United States dramatically increased. These Catholic and Jewish immigrants tended to be poorer than previous immigrants. During the decade of the 1870s immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe made up only 7.2 percent of the total (201,889 out of a total of 2,812,191 immigrants). During the decade of 1901-10 their numbers swelled to about 71 percent (6,225,981 out of a total of 8,795,386 immigrants). The volume of immigration also increased significantly; by 1900 a third of the nation was either foreign born of the children of foreign born--in many cities immigrants and their children were a clear majority.

From the late eighteenth century onward, the world experienced an unprecedented growth in population. Before 1800 the birth rate averaged in most countries between 35 and 50 per 1,000, and the death rate between 30 and 40. The slight surplus of births over deaths was periodically wiped out by war, disease, or famine. This ceased to hold true in the l9th century. Mortality rates dropped (in England to as low as 18 per 1,000), while birth rates either remained constant or rose, so that the gap between births and deaths kept growing wider. As a result, the l9th century population of Europe grew from an estimated 193 million in 1800 to 423 million in 1900. In other words, Europe accumulated more inhabitants in the course of a single century than in all the centuries of its previous existence.

Advanced industrial nations were able to maintain population densities that would have proved fatal to purely agrarian ones. The reasons for this phenomenon are: 1) the railroad and steamship facilitated the importation of food from distant areas; 2) the increase in agricultural yields per acre brought about by scientific farming; and, 3) the use of mechanical power instead of horse power allowed a reduction in the number of horses and freed much pasture land for food production. It is estimated that the steam engines operating in England in 1870 produced the equivalent power of 6 million horses. The growing population provided industrial countries with both a labor force and an expanding market.

But in countries with poorly developed industries the new population had nowhere to go. While Belgium in l900 could support 589 inhabitants a square mile, Spain could only handle 97 and Russia 55. In the non-industrialized, rural countries of Europe the bulk of the land remained concentrated in the hands of state, church, and large landowners. In these areas a huge landless proletariate began to emerge. The peasants in these areas--Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria-Hungary, eastern Germany, and Russia--were predominantly tenants, or at best, partial owners. For example, in central Spain at least 2/3 of the land was in holdings of more than 25,000 acres; in Ireland 90 percent of the land was farmed by tenants (1904).

This excess population could migrate to three principal places: to the cities, to other European countries, and overseas. All three movements took place (France was particularly receptive to immigrants, for its own population grew so slowly that there were well-founded fears that France would no longer be able to defend itself). But the principal form of migration was overseas, especially across the Atlantic. This migratory wave constituted the largest population movement in recorded history.

Prior to 1846 European migration tended to be sporadic and selective, the majority of the migrants leaving Europe less for economic than for political or religious reasons. The mass exodus began in 1846-1847 with the Irish migration caused by the potato blight. From then on every economic and political crisis sent from Europe fresh waves of overseas migrants. The development of cheap steamship transport contributed to this movement, for ships bringing wheat to Europe, rather than return empty, took on migrants at low fares. In the second half of the l9th century an average of 400,000 Europeans migrated annually. At the height of emigration (1900-1914), this figure exceeded 1 million. Between 1870 and 1914, 34 million Europeans left for overseas, 27 million of them for the United States. About 30 percent of the 34 million migrants eventually returned to Europe. The long-term net emigration totaled 25 million persons.

The above factors are all interrelated. Cities grew because the increased industrial base could support them. Immigrants came to the United States because there were jobs for them in the new factories. Increased mechanization allowed fewer and fewer farmers to support an increasing urban population, and many rural folk also moved to the cities. With the defeat of the South in the Civil War, and the failure of the Populist movement, rural America had lost its political and economic hold on the nation.

Yet, whether urban or rural, old-stock Americans wanted to preserve their traditional values. In addition, with the disappearance of inexpensive western land, and the development of urban industry, the immigrants tended to settle in the cities. Urban old-stock Americans did not want to lose political power to the new-comers. A lack of political power would mean loosing control over social and economic issues that controlled their everyday lives. Out of these concerns the progressive movement was born.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Understand the outcomes of the progressive movement.

Historians still debate about the personal motivations of the progressives and whether the outcome of their policy was planned or accidental. But whatever the motivation of the progressives, during the Progressive Era (c. 1895-1920), the American political system grew less democratic.

The progressives tended to be old-stock, upper and upper-middle class Americans. They tended to want to preserve traditional American values (e.g. Protestant, Northern European) against what they believed to be an attack by alien forces. Thus, prohibition, immigration restriction, racial segregation, super-patriotism, fundamentalism, an efficient, business-like government, a fear of communism and socialism, and labor-union busting, are all characteristics of the progressive era.

The progressives were strongest in the cities because this is where the conflict took place at the local level. Old-stock Americans never lost power in the nation's rural areas. In urban areas, the new immigrants used the Democratic party as a way to gain decision-making power. The Republican party had traditionally been hostile to immigrants, and the immigrants naturally gravitated to the Democratic party. In most cities power was decentralized and personal. Block, ward, and precinct captains looked out for their constituents, many of whom could not speak English. The Democratic party procured jobs, helped people out of minor scraps with the law, and generally took care of its constituents in time of trouble. In return for this assistance the party expected, and received, the votes of the urban masses. This system was personal, but inefficient. Money that could be better spent building new sewer lines and streets to an outlying factory was often spent on social services in order to insure votes.

The old-stock, upper and upper-middle class Americans wanted to regain political decision-making power. They wanted a centralized, efficient government that would deliver city services to where they were needed for economic growth, not to where the votes were. The fundamental problem the progressives had was how to gain this decision-making power when they, in many cases, were in a numerical minority.

The very name "progressive" illustrates one way they solved this dilemma. Progressive connotes progress -- thus, to be against the progressives was to be against progress. The progressives claimed to be "reformers." Reform is usually defined as "making better by removing faults and defects." Yet, a better definition of reform could be "change that benefits those advocating it" (an obvious example of this definition is the abolishment of slavery -- to the plantation owner it was not "reform"). By presenting themselves as reformers the progressives automatically made the opposition "anti-reform." A smart political move, but not always correct.

The Democratic party became the "Machine." A machine is cold and impersonal, and in this case, supposedly only produced one item--votes. Yet numerous historians have pointed out that the "machine" fulfilled specific needs for the urban masses, and it provided one of the few means of upward mobility to the immigrant. The progressives also attacked the politicians of the "machine" as corrupt. There is no doubt that urban politicians took bribes, used unfair advantage of their inside knowledge to feather their own nest, and welcomed kickbacks. But, as Samuel P. Hays has explained, "public corruption involves political even more than moral considerations." Because the immigrants had the votes the "Machine" tended to listen to them; for example, city governments would often not use the police to suppress labor strikes. Thus, the cities' business and industrial men used corruption as a way to get access into the system. Naturally, they would rather not have to spend this extra money, and they would rather have had direct, rather than indirect, control over political decisions.

The progressives were not always successful. In several cities decentralized, "Machine" politics exist down to this day. Where they were successful they tended to centralize government, making it more professional and less personal. By the end of the 1920s, most cities had adopted some form of municipal civil service. Members of school boards and the city council were elected city-wide rather than on a district-by-district basis. This action significantly increased the cost of campaigning, thereby helping the wealthier elements of society. It also made it more difficult for specific ethnic groups to elect their own representatives. Elections were moved from Saturday to Tuesday in an attempt to reduce the working-class immigrant vote. City elections became "nonpartisan," so that immigrants would have a difficult time knowing which candidate represented the "Machine."

These developments tended to exclude the lower classes from an active role in municipal politics. Voter participation declined as people felt farther and farther removed from their government. Zoning laws, initially established for efficient use of land and to protect community health, had the effect of segregating the poor from the wealthy. The recall (the electorate removes a politician from office), the referendum (elected officials put an issue on the ballot and the electorate votes on it), and the initiative (the electorate puts an issue on the ballot), while seeming to "more democratic," in reality shifted power away from elected officials to interest groups.

The 17th Amendment (1913) allowing the direct election of senators was an attempt by the progressives to reduce the power of special interests, especially "big business," by making it more difficult for them to control the election of senators. One reason that women received the right to vote nationally in the 19th Amendment (1919) was that the progressives believed that women were more "moral" than men, and womenâs votes would make it easier for progressive "reformers" to be elected. Another reason for the womenâs vote was that women had worked strenuously for the vote during World War I, and fighting a war to "make the world safe for democracy," and not allowing women to vote at home, struck many Americans as hypocritical.

In northern cities at least, the progressive movement was a conflict between the new immigrants and the old. In some cases the progressives won, and in some they lost. The progressive movement was not a case of good versus evil, of reform versus nonreform. It was two different power groups, with differing views of what the role of government should be, fighting it out in the political arena. That is the American way.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Understand the general character of the United States during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The increase in the proportion of eastern and southern European immigrants coming to the U.S. beginning in the 1880s increased Nativism sentiments. Local communities throughout the country redoubled their efforts at patriotism. They passed laws making English the only language of instruction in the schools. Such laws also prohibited some of the "immoral" practices associated with immigrants, especially in matters such as gambling and liquor sales.

In 1882 Congress excluded convicts, idiots, and persons likely to become public charges from immigrating into the U.S. It also imposed a head tax of 50 cents for each immigrant admitted. Between 1854 and 1883 several hundred thousand Chinese came to the U.S.--many took jobs building railroads in the West. With the decline in railroad production, in 1882 Congress barred further immigration of Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act and other acts of Congress also denied American citizenship to Orientals.

By 1905, about 100,000 Japanese had immigrated to the U.S., the great majority of them settling in California. Native Americans tended to view the Japanese as not being able to assimilate into American culture. Anti-Oriental prejudices, directed earlier at the Chinese, now focused on the Japanese. In 1906 the San Francisco School Board issued an order segregating Japanese children because they were allegedly over the accepted school age and they were overcrowding the public schools. Actually, the order involved only 93 Japanese pupils, of whom 25 had been born American citizens and the oldest two were only aged 20.

Such blatant racism greatly disturbed the Japanese. Incorrectly assuming at first the President could easily control the Californians, the Japanese government lodged a strong diplomatic protest and requested the revocation of the school segregation order. President Roosevelt was aware of Japan's great power (Japan had just defeated Russia in a war, and Roosevelt had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the peace), and he was furious at those "infernal fools" in San Francisco for recklessly insulting the Japanese and risking a needless war.

After several goodwill gestures to assuage Japan, Roosevelt summoned the San Francisco mayor and school board to the White House in early 1907. Roosevelt promised to stop the Japanese influx, and they agreed to rescind the segregation order. The so-called Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907-08 resulted. The U.S. agreed not to bar Japanese immigration by law in exchange for Japan's promise not to allow its people to emigrate to the U.S. mainland. This agreement assuaged Japan's national honor and pride, but the entire affair left an unpleasant aftertaste.

In 1917, Congress, over President Wilson's veto, passed a bill that required a literacy test for admission into the U.S.. Immigrants over the age of 16 had to read "not less than 30 nor more than 80 words in ordinary use" in English or some other language. In 1921 Congress limited annual immigration to 357,802 and set a quota for each nation. The quota was arrived at by taking 3 percent of the total number of persons of that nationality residing in the U.S. in 1910. The quota favored northern and western Europe. In 1924, the law was toughened. It provided that after 1927 total immigration in any one year would be limited to 150,000. A quota was allocated to each country according to the proportion of its natives in the population of the U.S. in 1920. The quota allocated to each group had no relationship to the number of people who actually wanted to come to the U.S. This law also forbade the immigration of Asians, thus terminating the Gentlemen's Agreement and insulting the race-sensitive Japanese.

Prejudices against the new immigrants and blacks led to the founding of the modern Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain Georgia in 1915. Only "native born, white, gentile [e.g. Protestant] Americans" could be members. By 1925 membership in the Klan approached 5 million. The governor and a U.S. Senator from Colorado were members of the Klan, and it was an important political power in many states. The Klan used floggings, kidnappings, cross-burnings, arson, even murder to terrorize whole communities. The Klan began to fold with the restriction of immigration and the total segregation of blacks. In addition, scandals rocked the Klan and many people turned away from an organization that pretended to guard civic purity but was now exposed as corrupt.

Prohibition was another attack upon the new immigrants and the city. While fundamental Protestants considered liquor an instrument of the Devil, to the new immigrants it was part of their everyday life. In Europe social life revolved around the pub, bistro, gausthause, and cafe. In addition, the Catholic Church used wine in celebrating the Eucharist. Prohibition was an attempt to control the values of the new immigrant and to insure that they would show up to work on Monday sober and ready to go.

Twenty-six states had already adopted prohibition laws by 1917. During World War I, Congress first prohibited the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors. The 18th Amendment, ratified in 1919, placed this prohibition in the Constitution. The Volstead Act, which enforced the Amendment, defined alcoholic beverages as anything with one-half of l percent of alcohol by volume. The government had to depend on a small force of agents to enforce the law. Since millions of people continued to drink, the traffic in illegal liquor (bootlegging) helped organize crime tremendously. The 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933, ended prohibition.

The rapid change that was taking place during the last years of the 19th and the first years of the 20th centuries caused an upsurge in the power of fundamental Protestantism. Several Southern states passed laws forbidding the teaching of evolution in the schools. In 1925 Tennessee passed such a law. John Scopes, a Dayton High School biology teacher, taught evolution and was brought to trial. Scopes was defended by the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Clarence Darrow, the most famous lawyer of the time and an acknowledged agnostic. William Jennings Bryan led the prosecution. The all-star cast of the Dayton "monkey trial" engaged the interest of the press, and therefore the nation. Scopes was convicted for violating the law, but the state supreme court reversed the decision on a technicality, and the constitutionality of the statute could not be tested. Bryan had testified on the stand as an expert on the Bible and was generally humiliated. He died a few days after the trial. Although the Tennessee law was finally repealed in 1967, the conflict over evolution still exists to this day.

Generally speaking, the first two decades of the 20th century were marked by full employment and a rising standard of living for all classes. Adjusted to the cost of living, the total national income increased from $480 per capita in 1900 to $567 per capita in 1920. Yet the benefits of prosperity were not evenly distributed. Census figures reveal that the top 5 percent of the population in income received 30 percent of the nation's family personal income in 1929, and the bottom 40 percent of the nation's families only received 12.5 percent.

During the 1920s most urban dwellings had electricity. Industry, using "scientific management" and the assembly line, greatly increased production and reduced prices on products. Many new products came on to the market. By 1930 there was one car for every five Americans. Technology and urbanization gave many Americans something they had never had before÷discretionary income and leisure time. The automobile, movies, radio, and mass marketing techniques changed American culture. Values were no longer determined by the local community÷it was Hollywoodâs and Madison Avenueâs influence that mattered to many people. Many young people embraced the new culture. Young women known as "flappers" bobbed their hair, wore short skirts, and threw away their corsets. This attitude, of course, shocked many of their parents.

Jazz made its appearance on a nationwide scale during the 1920s. With its roots in the African-American community, most whites had never heard of jazz or the blues prior to the 1920s. The movement to the North of many blacks during World War I, and the development of the phonograph and the radio, made jazz mainstream music. Whites modified it into a style suitable for dancing, and dances like the Charleston, first seen in a black movie, swept the nation. Because of housing segregation, blacks were confined to specific neighborhoods. Harlem, New York City, was the black cultural center. The outpouring of music, art, and literature that came out of Harlem during the 1920s is known as the Harlem Renaissance.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Understand the Red Scare of 1919-1920.

The Communist triumph in Russia in 1917 and the subsequent withdrawal of that country from the Allied effort in World War I caused many native-born Americans to fear a socialist or communist take-over in the United States. During the war immigrant workers were no longer "Hunkies," "Dagos," and "Polocks," they were members of the community fighting for democracy. Wages were high and overtime was common. The immigrant factory workers expected to benefit from this new attitude after the war. But, after the war conditions returned to the way they were before the war and many workers went out on strike. By the end of 1919, the most strikebound year in U.S. history, about four million workers had participated in more than 3,000 strikes.

Business leaders used the general fear of Communism to break the strikes and the workers' desire to organize. Business leaders claimed that the point at issue was not unionism as such, but whether the American government would be supported and American institutions upheld. A typical comment is illustrated by Elbert Gary, Chairman of the Board of U.S. Steel. In 1919 Gary claimed that the only outcome of a victory for unionism would be Sovietism in the U.S. "and a forcible distribution of property." The total membership in all socialist and Communist organizations in the U.S. during this time was between 90,000 and 120,0000; less than half of 1 percent of the population.

In April and June 1919 bombs were mailed to prominent individuals and several officials had their offices bombed--no one, except the thrower of one bomb, was killed. The bombings were not part of a communist plot to overthrow the government; they were the work of a few dangerous individuals. But most Americans did not differentiate among radicals. They grew more frightened every day, and they saw Red on everything they feared or disliked.

Woodrow Wilsonâs Attorney General was A. Mitchell Palmer and he saw this fear of communists as a method of gaining political power and fame, and perhaps even getting the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination. President Wilson's stroke had left the nation devoid of leadership and Palmer saw an opportunity to fill the vacuum. Beginning in November 1919 Palmer ordered the FBI to conduct a series of raids against radical groups. In December Palmer cooperated with the Labor Department in deporting 249 aliens to Russia, most of whom had committed no offense and were not communist. A nationwide raid on January 1, 1920, led to the arrest of about 6,000 people. The raids revealed no evidence of a communist conspiracy. Nevertheless, few Americans protested the unconstitutional tactics of Palmer.

Palmer overreached himself when he predicted that a revolution would take place on May Day, 1920. When the outbreak failed to materialize the public gradually began to tire of his unfounded alarms. In addition, unionism had been soundly defeated by 1920 (membership declined by about 1.7 million over the next decade), and business propaganda against the Reds declined sharply. Immigration restriction and the Ku Klux Klan took over where the Red Scare ended.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Understand American national politics during the 1920s.

With the election of 1920 the Republicans regained control of the national government. The Democrat Wilson had only won election to the Presidency in 1912 because the Republican party had split its votes between William H. Taft and Theodore Roosevelt (Wilson only received 41.9 percent of the popular vote). Even in his reelection victory of 1916, Wilson was a minority President, receiving only 49.4 percent of the popular vote. In other words, after the reordering election of 1896, the Republican party was the majority party in the U.S., and the election of Wilson was an anomaly. Throughout the 1920s the Democratic party continued to remain bitterly divided between its urban, eastern, working-class immigrant wing, and its southern/western rural, agricultural wing. The nomination of William J. Bryan in 1896 had exacerbated these conflicts; as long as they continued the Democratic party would not gain political power. The party split over the cultural issues of the day--urbanization, modernization, segregation, immigration, fundamentalism, the Klan, the Red Scare, and prohibition.

It took the 1920 Democratic convention 44 ballots to select Governor James Cox of Ohio as the Democratic Presidential nominee and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been a popular Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as his running mate. In 1924 the urban-rural conflict tore the Democrats apart and it took 102 ballots before they could agree on a dull compromise candidate (John W. Davis). When the urban wing got its chance in 1928 and nominated Alfred E. Smith, the Catholic mayor of New York City, the conflict between urban immigrant America and old stock rural America, as personified in the Republican candidate Herbert Hoover, an Iowa Protestant and self-made millionaire, offered Americans a clear choice. The election was not even close, Hoover received 58.2 percent of the popular vote to Smith's 40.9 percent. It was not until the 1929 Great Depression subjugated social issues to economic issues that the Democrats were able to regain control of the national government.

Warren G. Harding is usually ranked by historians as one of our worst presidents (it is a close race between Harding, Coolidge, and Grant). Basically Harding was a hard-working, conscientious executive, aware of the nation's most pressing problems, and sometimes willing to take chances to achieve his goals. Harding's downfall was caused because he was unwilling to make moral judgments about his associates. Desperately wanting to be liked and constantly desiring companionship, Harding put friendship above good judgment.

With the exception of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and the Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, many of his cabinet and other presidential appointees were either servants of narrow special interests or crooks. Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon pursued tax policies that favored the wealthy and helped bring on the Great Depression.

Attorney General Harry Daugherty and his intimate friend and housekeeper, Jesse Smith, presided over the "Ohio Gang." Daugherty's friends did a flourishing business selling immunity from prosecution, government appointments, liquor withdrawal permits, and pardons and paroles for criminals. Charles Forbes, head of the Veterans Bureau, stole about $200 million. At a time when disabled World War I veterans on hospital cots lacked bandages, bedding, and drugs, Forbes condemned carloads of these supplies and sold them off at a fraction of their cost in return for a rake-off. When caught in 1923, Forbes was sent to jail for two years and fined $10,000. His legal advisor committed suicide. There was a second suicide in May. Threatened with ruin and exposure, Jesse Smith killed himself in Daugherty's apartment.

The Teapot Dome scandal also occurred during Harding's administration. The Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, secretly leased government naval oil reserve land to the oil companies of Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. Conservationists became upset over the use of the naval reserve oil and they persuaded the Senate to instigate a special investigation. The investigation disclosed that Doheny and Sinclair had received the right to drill for oil in the Teapot Dome and Elk Hill naval oil reserves without competitive bidding; that Doheny had "lent" Fall $100,000 and that Sinclair had given him a herd of full-blooded cattle for his ranch, $85,000 in cash, and $223,000 in bonds.

In the aftermath of the scandal, Fall was convicted of accepting a bribe and he received a year's jail sentence and a fine of $100,000 (which he never paid). Fall was the first Cabinet officer ever to go to prison. Although Sinclair received a nine month prison sentence for jury tampering, he and Doheny were both acquitted for giving Fall a bribe.

Harding knew of the exploits of only Forbes and Smith. In June 1923, before setting out on a speaking tour through the West, the President unburdened himself to a newspaper reporter: "My God, this is a hell of a job. I have no trouble with my enemies. . . But my damned friends, my God-damned friends. . .they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!" Late in July, while in Seattle, the President suffered acute chest pain. His physician (another Ohio appointment) diagnosed it as indigestion. It was in fact a heart attack, and on August 2, 1923 President Harding died.

Calvin Coolidge, Harding's Vice President, quickly rid the cabinet of the political hacks that he had inherited from Harding. He then presided over the most business-minded administration to his time, and, in return, business supported Coolidge to the hilt. Coolidge worshipped financial success and believed without reservation that businessmen knew what was best for the country. "The man who builds a factory builds a temple," he said. On another occasion he explained that: "The business of America is business." The Republicans used the revival of the postwar economy after 1923 and Coolidge's unblemished record for honesty to elect Coolidge in his own right in 1924.

Go on to  Ch. X.  World War I

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