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CHAPTER 10: WAR, PROSPERITY, AND DEPRESSIONOUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORYment as special prosecutor, thenfoolishly allowed Darrow to call himas a hostile witness. Bryan’s confuseddefense of Biblical passages as literalrather than metaphorical truth drewwidespread criticism. Scopes, nearlyforgotten in the fuss, was convicted,but his fine was reversed on a technicality.Bryan died shortly after thetrial ended. The state wisely declinedto retry Scopes. Urban sophisticatesridiculed fundamentalism, but itcontinued to be a powerful force inrural, small-town America.Another example of a powerfulclash of cultures — one withfar greater national consequences— was Prohibition. In 1919, after almosta century of agitation, the 18thAmendment to the Constitution wasenacted, prohibiting the manufacture,sale, or transportation of alcoholicbeverages. Intended to eliminatethe saloon and the drunkardfrom American society, Prohibitioncreated thousands of illegal drinkingplaces called “speakeasies,” made intoxicationfashionable, and created anew form of criminal activity — thetransportation of illegal liquor, or“bootlegging.” Widely observed inrural America, openly evaded inurban America, Prohibition was anemotional issue in the prosperousTwenties. When the Depression hit,it seemed increasingly irrelevant.The 18th Amendment would be repealedin 1933.Fundamentalism and Prohibitionwere aspects of a larger reaction to amodernist social and intellectualrevolution most visible in changingmanners and morals that causedthe decade to be called the Jazz Age,the Roaring Twenties, or the era of“flaming youth.” World War I hadoverturned the Victorian socialand moral order. Mass prosperityenabled an open and hedonistic lifestyle for the young middle classes.The leading intellectuals weresupportive. H.L. Mencken, thedecade’s most important socialcritic, was unsparing in denouncingsham and venality in Americanlife. He usually found these qualitiesin rural areas and among businessmen.His counterparts of the progressivemovement had believed in“the people” and sought to extenddemocracy. Mencken, an elitist andadmirer of Nietzsche, bluntly calleddemocratic man a boob and characterizedthe American middle class asthe “booboisie.”Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald capturedthe energy, turmoil, and disillusionof the decade in such worksas The Beautiful and the Damned(1922) and The Great Gatsby (1925).Sinclair Lewis, the first American towin a Nobel Prize for literature, satirizedmainstream America in MainStreet (1920) and Babbitt (1922). ErnestHemingway vividly portrayedthe malaise wrought by the war inThe Sun Also Rises (1926) and AFarewell to Arms (1929). Fitzgerald,Hemingway, and many other writersdramatized their alienation fromAmerica by spending much of thedecade in Paris.African-American culture flowered.Between 1910 and 1930, hugenumbers of African Americansmoved from the South to the Northin search of jobs and personal freedom.Most settled in urban areas,especially New York City’s Harlem,Detroit, and Chicago. In 1910 W.E.B.Du Bois and other intellectuals hadfounded the National Associationfor the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP), which helpedAfrican Americans gain a nationalvoice that would grow in importancewith the passing years.An African-American literaryand artistic movement, called the“Harlem Renaissance,” emerged.Like the “Lost Generation,” itswriters, such as the poets LangstonHughes and Countee Cullen,rejected middle-class values andconventional literary forms, evenas they addressed the realities ofAfrican-American experience. African-Americanmusicians — DukeEllington, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong— first made jazz a staple ofAmerican culture in the 1920’s.THE GREAT DEPRESSIONIn October 1929 the booming stockmarket crashed, wiping out manyinvestors. The collapse did not initself cause the Great Depression,although it reflected excessively easycredit policies that had allowed themarket to get out of hand. It also aggravatedfragile economies in Europethat had relied heavily on Americanloans. Over the next three years, aninitial American recession becamepart of a worldwide depression.Business houses closed their doors,factories shut down, banks failedwith the loss of depositors’ savings.Farm income fell some 50 percent.By November 1932, approximatelyone of every five American workerswas unemployed.The presidential campaign of1932 was chiefly a debate over thecauses and possible remedies of theGreat Depression. President HerbertHoover, unlucky in entering theWhite House only eight months beforethe stock market crash, had triedharder than any other president beforehim to deal with economic hardtimes. He had attempted to organizebusiness, had sped up public worksschedules, established the ReconstructionFinance Corporation tosupport businesses and financialinstitutions, and had secured from areluctant Congress an agency to underwritehome mortgages. Nonetheless,his efforts had little impact, andhe was a picture of defeat.His Democratic opponent, FranklinD. Roosevelt, already popular asthe governor of New York duringthe developing crisis, radiated infectiousoptimism. Prepared to use thefederal government’s authority foreven bolder experimental remedies,he scored a smashing victory — receiving22,800,000 popular votes toHoover’s 15,700,000. The UnitedStates was about to enter a new eraof economic and political change. 9210211