The 1919-20 Palmer Raids in the US - And Who they Targeted

The Bolsheviks’ toppling of the Russian government during the Russian Revolution of 1917 led to 30,000 Russians coming to the United States. Then, in the late 1910s, a series of bombings that some called the ‘Red Scare’ ensued. The U.S. Attorney General retaliated with several actions, including what has come to be known as the Palmer Raids.

Janel Miller explains.

Men arrested in during the Palmer Raids are shown here on Ellis Island, New York awaiting deportation hearings in January 1920.

Bombs Sent to Politicians

To start with, in the days leading up to May Day (May 1), 1919, bombs were sent to at least 23 United States addresses. Some of the recipients were politicians. One of these attacks injured the housekeeper of a Georgia lawmaker.

Another round of bomb attacks on United States judges, politicians and law enforcement officials occurred about a month later. One of the attacks occurred on June 2 in front of the home of 1920 presidential hopeful and the U.S. Attorney General during part of Woodrow Wilson’s administration, A. Mitchell Palmer. The nation’s top lawyer immediately called for an investigation to determine who was responsible.

This investigation suggested that individuals often called radicals in the press were responsible. Subsequently, Palmer used that information, along with the 1918 Sedition Act (which limited free speech), to seek and persecute these individuals.

1919 Raids Targeted Radicals

The Kansas City Times reported that on November 7, with the intent of abating a nationwide plan "to defy governmental authority”, the federal government conducted raids and searches in roughly two dozen municipalities.

One of the raids that day took place in New York, where 200 people that federal authorities called radicals were arrested and another 50 alleged radicals were scheduled for deportation. Other raids, most of them with fewer arrests, took place around the same time in Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and Philadelphia. At least some of these searches yielded printed materials discussing the nationwide plan, making bombs and/or producing counterfeit documents. In Johnstown, Pennsylvania, no arrests were made, but a group of business leaders banished two people said to be labor organizers from the city. These actions coincided with the second anniversary of the birth of the Bolshevik government that so many Russian immigrants had tried to flee.

Not convinced the threat posed by those he called radicals was over, Palmer called for a law that, among other things, would allow radicals to be arrested even if they acted alone (at the time of Palmer’s request, only radicals working in groups of two or more could be arrested). He also claimed some of the 222 United States newspapers published in foreign languages encouraged violent overthrows of the U.S. government.

Palmer also asked for enhanced Justice Department facilities and the creation of a parole board that would relieve some of the Justice Department’s work burden and he also oversaw the deportation of 249 radicals via the U.S.S. Buford on December 21.

Raids Also Occurred in 1920

On January 2, 1920, another round of raids occurred in large United States municipalities such as Philadelphia and Chicago, as well as smaller ones such as Cortland, New York; Nashua, New Hampshire; Olneyville, Rhode Island; and Lynn and Brockton, Massachusetts. These January raids resulted in 10,000 individuals arrested who federal authorities said were members of the Communist and Communist Labor parties.

The following month, in an essay Palmer authored titled “The Case Against the Reds,” he stated his actions would prevent the “horror and terrorism of bolshevik tyranny” that was underway in Russia from occurring in the United States. Soon after the essay’s publication, Palmer claimed that radical-led attacks would occur on May Day, 1920, just as they had the year before.

Palmer Had His Detractors

Support for Palmer’s actions was not universal. For example, Francis Fisher Kane, the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, resigned rather than follow Palmer’s directives. Also, an essay published by future United States Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound discussed what the authors felt were the many legal problems with Palmer’s raids and other actions.

In addition, there were a few immigration inspectors who refused to follow instructions that Palmer authorized or approved. The Lewiston Daily Sun openly sought lawmakers willing to "expose the hollowness of the Palmer holler." The newly formed American Civil Liberties Union claimed Palmer’s actions were based on opinions, not laws.

The Des Moines News stated that the Attorney General was "intimating that the labor department was letting off the reds and failing to deport them.” The newspaper reported that in contrast, members of the Labor Department accused Palmer of "deliberately framing up cases upon perfectly innocent foreigners and endeavoring to make a record by wholesale arrests on the flimsiest kind of evidence and in many cases without proper warrants.”

The attacks of May Day, 1920 that Palmer predicted failed to come to fruition, further damaging his credibility. The one-time 1920 presidential hopeful received 267 nominating votes for president that year, but Republican Warren G. Harding was ultimately elected president and Palmer left office rather than serve with his administration. Although Palmer would remain active in Democratic causes for the rest of his life, his hopes of becoming United States president were never realized.

In Context

Parallels can be drawn between this chapter in United States history and several events that preceded and followed it. For example, four-year-old Dorothy Good faced accusations of being a witch during the hysteria known as the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s because her mother was accused of witchcraft. In 2015, after the killing of a Californian woman by a man in the United States illegally, then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said that Mexico was sending the U.S. people with “lots of problems,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

What do you think of the Palmer Raids? Let us know below.

References

“Russian Beginnings.” https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/polish-russian/russian-beginnings. Library of Congress. Accessed October 22, 2022.

Palmer Raids. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/palmer-raids. FBI. Accessed October 11, 2022.

Blumberg, Jess. “A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/. Published Oct. 23, 2007. Accessed October 24, 2022.

Hennessey, Kathleen. “Trump Takes On Mexican Government In Comments On Immigrants.” https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-mexican-immigrants-20150706-story.html. Published July 6, 2015. Accessed Oct. 23, 2022.

“Nation Wide Hunt for May Day Bombs.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/837246919. Holyoke Daily Transcript, page 1. Published May 1, 1919. Accessed October 23, 2022.

Palmer Raids. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/palmer-raids. FBI. Accessed October 11, 2022.

Attorney General: Alexander Mitchell Palmer. https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/palmer-alexander-mitchell. U.S. Department of Justice. Accessed October 11, 2022.

Palmer Raids. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/palmer-raids. FBI. Accessed October 11, 2022.

Boyd, Christina L. “Sedition Act of 1918.” https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1239/sedition-act-of-1918. The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Accessed October 11, 2022.

“’Reds’ In Raid Net.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/654292552. The Kansas City Times,  page 1. Published November. 8, 1919, Accessed October 22, 2022.

“Raid Radicals In 18 Cities.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/614412771. The York Dispatch, page 1. Published November 8, 1919. Accessed October 22, 2022.

“Must Have Laws to Curb Radicals Palmer Declares.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/825798158. The Macon Daily Telegraph, page 1. Published November. 16, 1919. Accessed September 28, 2022.

“Palmer’s Report on the Reds and Their Work.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/552827864. The Gazette and Daily, page 8. Published Dec. 9, 1919. Accessed September 28, 2022.

“Second Ark to Leave.” https://newspaperarchive.com/ogden-standard-dec-22-1919p-1/. The Ogden Standard, page 1. Published December 22, 1919. Accessed October 23, 2022.

Williams, David. “The Bureau of Investigation and Its Critics, 1919-1921: The Origins of Federal Political Surveillance.” The Journal of American History. (68): 560-579. Accessed October 15, 2022.

“100 More ‘Reds’ Taken In New England Raids.”. New York Tribune, page 2. Published January 4, 1920. Accessed Oct. 23, 2022.

“130 Raid Prisoners in Philadelphia District to Be Held For Hearing.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/78218686. New York Tribune, page 2. Published January 4, 1920. Accessed October 23, 2022.

“’Perfect Cases’ Against 2,616 Taken In Raids Is Claim of Federal Agents.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/542621138. The Muscatine Journal and News-Tribune, page 1.  Published January 3, 1920. Accessed October 23, 2022.

Palmer, Mitchell A. “The Case Against the ‘Reds.’” Forum 63 (1920): 173–185. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4993/. Accessed October 23, 2022.

“Department of Justice Agents Chosen for Assassination.” https://newspaperarchive.com/biloxi-daily-herald-apr-30-1920-p-1/. The Daily Herald, page 1. Published April 30, 1920. Accessed October 23, 2022.

“Kane Quit Because of Palmer’s Raids to Catch Radicals.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/162305073. Evening Public Ledger, page 1. Published January 23, 1920. Accessed September 28, 2022.

NCC Staff. “On This Day, Massive Raids During the Red Scare.” https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-massive-raids-during-the-red-scare. The Constitution Center. Published January 2, 2022. Accessed October. 11, 2022.

Williams, D. “The Bureau of Investigation and Its Critics, 1919-1921: The Origins of Federal Political Surveillance.” The Journal of American History. (68): 560-579. Accessed October 15, 2022.

“Editorial.” https://www.newspapers.com/image/828299251. The Lewiston Daily Sun, page 4. Published January. 24, 1920. Accessed September 28, 2022.

ACLU History. https://www.aclu.org/about/aclu-history. American Civil Liberties Union. Accessed October. 11, 2022.

“Impeachment.”. https://newspaperarchive.com/des-moines-news-apr-23-1920-p-6/. The Des Moines News, page 6. Published April 23, 1920. Accessed October 23, 2022.

“On This Day, Massive Raids During the Red Scare.” https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-massive-raids-during-the-. The Constitution Center. Published January 2, 2022. Accessed October. 11, 2022.

Attorney General: Alexander Mitchell Palmer. https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/palmer-alexander-mitchell. U.S. Department of Justice. Accessed October 11, 2022.

Warren G. Harding. https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/warren-g. whitehouse.gov. Accessed October 23, 2022.

“A. Mitchell Palmer.” https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1273/a-mitchell-palmer. The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Accessed October 26, 2022.

Scared America: The Post World War One Russian Bolshevik Red Scare in the US

In the years immediately after World War One, a Red Scare swept the US. Following the Russian Revolution there were fears that the Bolsheviks would seek to undermine America and democracy, leading to various laws being enacted. Jonathan Hennika (site here) continues his Scared America series below (following articles on strained 19thcentury politics here, Chinese immigration here, and anti-German propaganda during World War One here).

A drawing depicting the Steel Strike of 1919. From New York World, October 11, 1919.

In a Forbes Magazine editorial, political science Professor Donald Brand wrote, “Donald Trump’s nativism is a fundamental corruption of the founding principles of the Republican Party. Nativists champion the purported interests of American citizens over those of immigrants, justifying their hostility to immigrants by the use of derogatory stereotypes: Mexicans are rapists; Muslims are terrorists.” The United States is not the only nation affectedby Nativism. Great Britain faced its nativist fight in the referendum regarding the nation’s involvement in the European Union. “Nativism … is prejudice in favor of natives against strangers, which in present-day terms means a policy that will protect and promote the interests of indigenous or established inhabitants over those of immigrants. This usage has recently found favor among Brexiters anxious to distance themselves from accusations of racism and xenophobia” journalist Ian Jack wrote in The Guardian.[i]

In 2018, voters in both nations facedthe consequences made in 2016. Great Britain struggled with the formalization of an exit from the European Union; theUnited States grappled with a President who calls himself a “nationalist.” In the lead up to the midterm elections,President Trump demonized a caravan of Latin Americans seeking asylum in the United States; proposed ending birthright citizenship; and threatened to shut down the border between the United States and Mexico. President Trump'slast-minute anti-immigrant rhetoric did not yield him noticeable benefit in the mid-terms; his party retaineda precarious hold on the United States Senate and lost the majority in the House of Representatives.  It is possible the American electorate understood the tactic as one of fear; it is possible President Trump pushed the issue toofar and crossed a line. Perhaps President Trump is a man out of time, as he said at a campaign rally in Houston, Texas” "You know, they have a word. It sort ofbecame old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist," he continued. "And I say, 'Really, we’re not supposed to use that word?' You know what I am? I'm a nationalist. ... Use that word."[ii]

America at a Crossroads 

The United States at the end of World War One was a nation in turmoil. After running on a re-election campaign touting, he kept America out of the European war; Wilson became a War President in April 1917. The President postulated that if Americans went towar “they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”[iii]American culture changed over-night as war fervor gripped the nation: “Every element of American public opinion was mobilized behind `my country, right or wrong,’ dissent was virtually forbidden, democracy at home was drastically curtailed so that it could be made safe abroad, while impressionable children were `educated’ in Hun atrocities, or their time was employed in liberty loan, Red Cross, war saving stamp or YMCA campaigns.”Soon, this Americanism became codified under the Espionage Act of 1917 and further enforced with the Sedition Act of 1918. Taken together, the Alien-Sedition Act is an early 20thcentury version of the post-September11, 2001,the PatriotAct, in that they curbed criticism of America’s involvement in the First World War. “There was clear implication that people who utilized free speech as a means of gaining improper ends had to be restricted.”[iv]

Once the war ended, those encouragedby the implementation of the Alien-Sedition Act wanted similar peacetime laws. Therefore, a new enemy was required. Political leaders pointed towards the radical revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe and Russia. Their tactic in creating this Red Scareincluded propaganda, which proved politically useful to President Wilson and his public relations man, George Creel. Inciters of the Red Scare painted a picture of Eastern European immigrants as non-conformists and declared they and “their Socialist `cousins’ rejected the premises upon which the American system rested, namely that rights and privileges were open in a free society to anyone who was willing to work up patiently within the system. Or if the individual wereincapable of utilizing this technique, he would eventually be taken care of in a spiritof paternalism by the affluent class, as long as he stood with his hat in his hand and patiently waited.” The fear of the socialist and Bolsheviks was so great that “by 1920 thirty-five states had enacted some form of restrictive, precautionary legislation enabling the rapid crackdown on speech that might by its expression produce unlawful actions geared toward stimulating improper political or economic change.”[v]

These politicians cast themselves as defenders of the United States and all things American. A partial list of these defenders includes Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, former First Army General Leonard Wood, Post Master General Albert Burleson, William J. Flynn, director of the Bureau of Investigation and his head of intelligence, J Edgar Hoover.  Both Palmer and Wood were contenders for the Republican nomination in the 1920 election. Flynn, Hoover, and later Flynn’s successor, William Burns, used the Bolshevik threat to enhance the power and prestige of the Bureau of Investigation, as well as their reputations. 

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and the Red Scare of 1919

The end of the war, which had been an economic boon for the United States, brought with it a depression due in part to the cancellationof no longer needed war orders. As the economy slumped, retail prices climbed more than doubling by 1920, the worse increases occurring in the spring and summer of 1919. The workers who had prospered during the boom years of the warnow complained about low wages. Over 4,000,000 workers participated in 3,600 strikes in 1919. Veterans, returning to civilian life, resulted in high unemployment. Speaking at a public event, Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson indicated that two significantstrikes in Seattle and Butte, Montana were “instituted by the Bolsheviks…for the sole purpose of bringing about a nationwide revolution in the United States.”[vi]

Americansoldiers arereturning to civilian life, having performed their patriotic duty, found their jobs had been taken over by African-Americans and others who had not served in the war. There was a sharp rise in unemployment which increased nativist sentiment. Soldiers returned to a country where Socialists and other radicals were striking and threatening violence against the government and the democracytheyhad defended in the trench warfare of France. The threats of violence became real in April and June 1919. Bombing campaigns targeted various cities and public officials. Speaking of the June 1919 bombings, William Flynn, Director of the Bureau of Investigation, declared that the “bombers were connected with Russian Bolshevism aided by Hun money,” placing the enemy directly at the feet of the old enemy, Germany, and the new enemy, Russia.[vii]

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was one of the public officials targeted by the April bombings. Palmer began a swift retaliation campaign between 1919 and 1920. Palmer’s Justice Department rounded up and deported over six thousand aliens and arrested thousands more upon suspicion of belonging to subversive or radical groups. At this time President Wilson had taken ill (having suffered a stroke), Palmer went unchecked. Of the thousands arrested, most were taken within a warrant and detained for inexcusably long sentences. Thosearrested were later released.[viii]In a precursorof what was to come in the 1950s, Attorney General Palmer presented a report to Congress in November 1919. In his report, Palmer stated that “the Department of Justice discovered upwards of 60,000 of these organized agitators of the Trotsky doctrine in the US… confidential information upon which the government is now sweeping the nation clean of such alien filth…. The sharp tongues of the Revolution’s head were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes and seeking to replace marriage with libertine laws.”[ix]

As a result of the Red Scare of 1919-1920, New York State disbarred five Assemblymenas socialist.  Being the nation’s top-crusader against the Red menace, Palmer was unable to turn his campaign of fear and red-baiting into higher political office. Unlike President Trump in 2016, Palmer lost his party’s bid for the nomination. However, as an intended consequence of the Red Scare, in 1921 Congress enacted the Quota law. This was the first of many billspassedduring the Roaring Twenties to sharply curtail an influx of immigration to a country founded by immigrants. These immigration and Naturalization Laws increased the United States’ move towards a return to pre-war isolation and harbored disastrous consequences as the fascists began to seize power in the 1920sand 1930s Europe.

What do you think of the post World War One red Scare in the US? Let us know below.

[i]Donald Brand, “How Donald Trump’s Nativism Ruined the GOP,” Forbes, June 26, 2016. http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/donald-trump-nativism-gop/; Ian Jack, “We Called it Racism, Now it’s Nativism,” The Guardian, November 12, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/12/nativism-racism-anti-migrant-sentiment

[ii]Brett Samuels, “Trump: `You Know What I Am? I’m a Nationalist,” The Hill, October 28, 2018.

[iii]Ray Stannard Baer, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters(New York: Scribners and Son, 1927), 506-07.

[iv]Paul L Murphy, “Sources and Nature of Intolerance in the 1920s,” The Journal of American History, 51 (June, 1964), 63.

[v]Ibid,62,  65

[vi]Stanley Coben, “A Study in Nativism: The American Red Scare of 1919-20,” Political Science Quarterly, 79 (March, 1964,)66-8.

[vii]Ibid, 60.

[viii]Ibid, 72-3.

[ix]Paul Johnson, Modern Times: From the Twenties to the Nineties(New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 205.

The roaring Twenties! But were the 1920s a liberal or conservative period in the USA?

Bradley Phipps from bphipps.co.uk has provided us with this fascinating article on 1920s America. Was the 1920s a decade of fun, liberal values? Or was it rather a time of great conservatism? Bradley presents his view by looking at key topics in the decade – race, immigration, female suffrage, prohibition, the economy and election results.

It’s tempting, partly due to portrayal in the media and literature, to see the 1920s in America as a time of consensus around progressivism and liberalism, consumerism, excess, and fun. Whilst there are elements of truth in this, the decade which came to an abrupt and memorable close in the 1929 Wall Street Crash was actually a time of reactionism, conservatism, and division.

Before delving into the experience of different groups in society and looking at some important issues like prohibition, it’s important first to briefly set the scene. The 1920s was, in part, a battle between conservative forces and progressive forces. This battle was epitomized in religion, which is where much of the attempt to make society more moralistic stemmed from. There was a fierce battle raging during the decade between the traditionalists and the modernists in religion, with questions over how the Bible should be interpreted and whether theories like evolution – which challenged the usual wisdom of how the world worked – should be taught in schools. This battle in religious issues spilled over into just about everything else, with the forces of conservatism attempting to preserve tradition and what they believed to be morality, and other forces seeking a more liberalized, free society. The conservative forces certainly won the war of ideas during the Twenties, though the 1930s would in many ways be in quite stark contrast due to Roosevelt’s New Deal policies.

People campaigning for female suffrage.

Race relations and Immigration

There are a number of areas to look at when assessing the decade, one of the most important being race relations and immigration. Whilst it’s true to a certain degree that the Roaring Twenties were a period of prosperity and liberalism for some people, for new immigrants and African-Americans, this cannot be seen to be the case. The decade saw resurgence in nationalist and racist sentiment, as well as more understandable concerns about immigration. The division in race was most clearly seen in the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which probably benefited from the nationalist sentiment and racial tensions which the First World War had brought up, as well as the migration of African-Americans to the north. The Klan’s membership rose rapidly to around 6 million in 1920, which totaled over 5% of the population at the time. Whilst that may not sound impressive, the KKK wielded substantial influence in politics, and as there was general popular consent for things like immigration restrictions and less of a liberal attitude towards race relations compared to what we have today, the Klan did not come under serious threat throughout the decade. Even politicians, who often have different and more moderate views than the public at a given time, were in general agreement with their voters in terms of restricting immigration. In 1921, the Emergency Immigration Act was passed, which severely reduced immigration and did so partly on race-based lines in terms of blocking off immigration from the Middle East. These restrictions were tightened further still in the 1924 Immigration Act, which placed further restrictions and quotas on immigration in a further attempt to please the public. There appeared to be a conservative consensus during this time on the issue of immigration; both the public and the political classes were in consensus that there should be a large reduction in the number of people settling in the country, and there was also general agreement that the race of a potential immigrant should play a deciding role.

The difficulties for immigrants and minorities during this period were not just political though; the Klan did not limit its activities to the political arena. The passing of the immigration restriction legislation was a success for the Klan; it had in many ways fulfilled its purpose. With the public satisfied at the restrictions on immigration, membership of the Klan plummeted from its peak of 6 million in 1924 down to just 30,000 in 1930. But during the 20s, such was its fervor in defending what it believed to be traditional, white, Protestant values and morality, that it took to more violent methods to attack those who it believed to be corrupting the morals it defended, including violence against black people up to and including the infamous public lynchings, serving as yet more evidence against the fairly common perception of the decade as being liberal, care-free, and fun.

Female Suffrage

Women are often portrayed as having a new-found freedom in 1920s America, having undergone a sexual liberation and seen their role in society turned on its head. This is perhaps the only section of society where the myth of the 1920s fits quite well. There can be no denying that for many young women, their willingness to challenge the status quo increased; photographic evidence alone serves as evidence of new short skirts, provocative dances, and more open and flagrant promiscuous behavior. In contrast to the attempts to enforce morality and good behavior, youthful women found a new side of life and many of them embraced it with open arms, throwing themselves into exciting new jazz music and dances like the Charleston. Luchtenburg succinctly summarizes the increased personal freedom of women: “Before the war, a lady did not set foot in a saloon; after the war, she entered a speakeasy as thoughtlessly as she would go into a railroad station.”

Aside from in the social context, the increasing move for more power for women in politics was seen in the suffrage movement which became increasingly powerful before the 1920s. This culminated in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920, when women were finally given the right to vote on equal terms with men. Opposition came primarily in the form of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which disbanded after the 19th amendment was successful, but continued to publish works which opposed the liberation of women and their changing role in society. There was also considerable opposition in Congress, with 25 members of the 96-strong Senate voting against the amendment, alongside a number of abstentions. There was also considerable difficulty in getting the amendment ratified by some states, particularly Southern states, where members of the state legislature faced considerable lobbying by various groups.

Even the politicians and lobbyists who supported women’s suffrage cannot necessarily have been doing so purely out of the moral cause of increasing women’s rights and making the nation more democratic. The extent of the dominance of conservative thinking in the era can be seen in Daniel Okrent’s argument, who believed they could only make alcohol illegal and have popular consent for doing so with the votes of women, who were generally more in favor of it becoming illegal than men.

Interestingly, even the women’s suffrage movement cannot be seen as entirely progressive and liberal; particularly in the South, the women campaigners sought to gain more support from men by playing upon the issue of race. They said it was unfair that males from ethnic minority groups could vote whilst women could not. Even more divisively, there was also the suggestion that allowing women to vote would ensure that white voters remained dominant and more politically powerful than minority groups. We can see that even the progressive political causes in the decade were in some ways heavily regressive and conservative.

Prohibition

Something important during the 1920s that we’re all aware of is prohibition. Alcohol became illegal in early 1919 with the passing of 18th Amendment and whether it should continue to be so remained a contentious issue throughout the following decade. Prohibition is the best and clearest example of an increasing trend towards enforcing morality and an attempt to return to traditional Protestant values. The nation was divided over the issue, with much of the division being between traditional rural areas and the more liberal and less morally strict urban areas. Leuchtenburg writes that prohibition served as a way for rural America to “impose their social mores on city folk”; for Protestants to stop Catholics drinking; and for Anglo-Saxons to change the behavior of immigrants. As is well known, making alcohol illegal led to a reliable source of income for many criminal and mafia gangs, and so far from enforcing morality, prohibition is often seen as just opening up new avenues of immorality.

Similarly, prohibition led to speakeasies and other illegal hidden parties at which people continued to indulge in alcohol. However, despite the common wisdom that prohibition was a complete failure, it did actually succeed in substantially reducing alcohol consumption, a reduction which largely remained in place even when prohibition had ended. By 1933, when prohibition came to an end, alcohol consumption was 70% what it had been before prohibition. Whilst not a raving success, it’s safe to say it fulfilled its purpose at least a little bit. Though of course other factors could also have led to these variations in consumption.

Conversely, prohibition brought out the very worst in the American policing system; bribery was common, with many police willing to turn a blind eye to illegal bars provided they had received a bribe or other benefit for doing so. This is an important lesson for today - laws imposed without significant popular consent cannot work; they will be subject to capricious enforcement. Leuchtenburg argues that the public anger at the police’s mix of corruption and harsh treatment of bars led to anti-police sentiment springing up, with one example being crowds cheering on the boat of a bootlegger in New York when being pursued by the police.

Perhaps the weakness of the whole attempt to enforce morality upon parts of society which were pursuing liberalization was that Eliot Ness, a key prohibition enforcement agent and leader of the elite ‘Untouchables’ group, died an alcoholic.

Radical Groups

Radical political dissent during the Twenties was not tolerated. It is important to view policies in era in context. Having just come out of the First World War, the United States now saw a new threat emerging in Russia. The threat was Red. The Bolshevik revolution in what was to become the Soviet Union began in 1917, leading to a civil war between defenders of the old Tsarist regime, and those who sought to impose a communist-inspired regime. America has always feared communism – it is anathema to its principles of liberal democracy and free trade, and red scares have become part of its history. Whilst McCarthyism in the 1950s is fairly well-known, the red scare during the 1920s is less well remembered.

There was increasing government action against radical left-wing political groups and moves to clamp down on leftist groups had already begun before the 1920s, as seen most clearly in the arrest and imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs – the leader of the American Socialist Party - who had performed remarkably well in elections considering his outsider political position. Deportations without due process or trials became common, particularly against the Socialist International Industrial Workers League; in January 1920 around 10,000 people were arrested for holding radical political views. Furthermore, the immigration acts which were discussed earlier were also used to restrict radical literature and punish any immigrants with sympathies towards left-wing political groups.

The economy…

But aside from all this, wasn’t the economy at least growing – wasn’t everyone sharing in a newfound wealth? In some ways, yes. The economy was growing and people were generally more affluent, giving the majority more access to consumer and electric goods. However, not all shared in the increased prosperity; urban workers saw their wages increase quite rapidly, but the wages of farmers stagnated, and some manual laborers such as miners saw their wages decline, and with the rise in machinery and technology, some manual workers were replaced by automated systems. Union membership during this period fell, dropping from 5 million in 1920 to 3.5 million in 1929, a sign of general increasing prosperity as well as the government’s crackdown on radical elements. As often happens during economic booms, the gap between the rich and the poor widened, with the poorest seeing their standard of living stagnate whilst the richest saw their wealth continue to skyrocket.

Undoubtedly, though, the economy did improve the standard of living for many people during the decade. Gross National Product grew by 40% through the decade, wages for most workers rose in real-terms, and prices on some previously inaccessible goods became accessible. The prices of cars, for example, fell due to more efficient and faster production, leading automobile ownership to rocket by nearly 200%, from 8 million to 23 million people owning cars. Similarly, increasing access to the radio gave a source of entertainment in almost everyone’s home, and with increasing demand came national programming which provided most of the nation with access to some of the same programs. This boom in the economy also led to an upsurge in the number of people buying shares, with it becoming increasingly common for middle class families to buy into the market; as we know, this ended in catastrophe in 1929. The great tragedy of the decade is that, though the Wall Street Crash impacted everyone, those who bore its brunt most heavily were the poorest, who had seen the least benefit from the economic boom.

Election results

Finally, the clearest indication of the conservatism and consistency of the decade which helps to dispel the myth of the decade being progressive and unique is the actual results of election. We’ve already seen that from prohibition, to the Red Scare, to attempts to enforce morality, the politics of the decade were conservative and at times regressive. But the real flavor of a decade can be found in its election results.

In the 1920 Presidential election, Republican candidate Warren Harding won with a massive 60% of the vote, leaving the Democrat candidate James Cox with an abysmal 34%. In 1924, Coolidge was victorious with 54% of the vote, leaving the Democrat with just under 30%. This election was notable because of a rarity in American politics – the strong performance of a third party candidate, which came in the form of Robert La Follete who stood for the short-lived Progressive party. Whilst it could be argued that the Progressives split the Democrat vote, thereby allowing the Republican in by default, the vote for the Democratic candidate and the Progressive Party candidate still falls 10% short of the Republican vote. In 1928, Herbert Hoover continued the Republican ascendancy. Pledging continued economic growth, he won 58% of the vote, leaving his Democrat opponent with only 40%. Whilst some of these margins may not sound incredibly wide, bear in mind that American Presidential elections are apt to have very narrow margins of victory. In the year 2000, for example, the result between Bush and Gore was less than a percentage point apart.

But Presidential elections don’t give us the full picture. The Congress Republicans were also dominant. They gained control of the house in 1918, and comfortably retained control of it until 1930. The Republicans also gained control of the Senate in 1918, keeping it until 1932. This means the decade saw uninterrupted Republican control of the Presidency, and both chambers of Congress; a very rare thing indeed. There is no way this could have happened unless the vast majority of the public were aligned in a conservative consensus. They were content with Republican policies and did not desire change.

On reflection

So we’ve seen that in very few ways can the decade which has been dubbed the Roaring Twenties be seen as a time of radical change. It was  conservative and reactionary, and in some ways regressive. Even in modernizations like female suffrage, the forces of conservatism were involved in their support of it in order to ensure more support for prohibition. Modern liberal ideas had little place in this decade; they would not gain common support until the 1930s, when the much-lauded (though much-overrated) Franklin D. Roosevelt put into practice his new vision for the role of government in society and much greater regulation of the free market.

This article is provided by Bradley Phipps from bphipps.co.uk.

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