Drawing support from the urban, college- educated middle class, Progressive reformers sought to eliminate corruption in government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, improve working notations, and give the public more direct control over government through direct primaries to nominate candidates for public office, direct election of Senators, the initiative, referendum, and recall, and women’s suffrage In this paper plan to discuss how the 1 ass’s were a time when Americans attempted to repudiate progressivism and recapture the political, cultural and social values of the nineteenth century.
To begin, in the sass’s political values focused on immigration and prohibition. After World War 1 the u. S allowed fewer than 200, 000 immigrants to enter the country annually which was a huge change from a nation that admitted over 1 million Immigrants a year. This time period was called The First Red Scare, a time In which the Justice department arrested and departed alien anarchist and Communist suspected of trying to destroy American democracy and capitalism this lead to the congress passing the 1 921 Emergency Immigration Act.
This Act set limits on how many European immigrant could enter the country a year and how many could come from each European nation. About three years later congress made these limits permanent in the 1924 Immigration Act. A law that allowed unrestricted immigration from Western Hemisphere, curtailed all Asian immigration, and used quotas to control how many Immigrants emigrated from Individual European nations. Meanwhile prohibition was In effect. In 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment had been ratified this was a constitutional amendment that banned the sale, manufacturing, transportation of intoxicating liquors.
Along with this came the Violated Act. This was a law that established criminal penalty for transporting, manufacturing or possessing alcohol. These acts of prohibition gave birth to insidious crimes such as organized rimes and gave rise to a notorious Chicago gangster AH Capons. Thirteen years later these prohibition acts would be appealed by president Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Twenty-First Amendment. Even though politics seemed to have their hands full they also focuses on social and cultural issues of those days.
Cultural and social values of the sass’s were more so cars, music The Jazz Age and The Sex Revolution. In the early twentieth century cities were known to be dirty and smelly. Nearly 3 million ton of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine was left on the streets by horses. Cars came along and seem to change this. They offered cleanliness by providing asphalt roads for the ideal form life family by giving them a chance to go into the city, plowing was made easier and produce was shipped faster. Cars began to become a significant purchase for families in the 19th century.
Another key cultural value was music. Some people like to refer to it as the Jazz Age because the widespread of appeal during the decade. In the sass’s African American music and art culture was beginning to grow. Many African Americans expressed their culture through Jazz a type of music of black American origin characterized by improvisation, syncopation, ND usually a regular or forceful rhythm, emerging at the beginning of the 20th century. Also taking place was The Harlem Renaissance were black artist explored the African American culture through poetry and novels.
Finally The sex revolution which was a cultural and social value. During the sass’s young Americans challenged traditional beliefs of proper behavior this came to be known as modernist and anti – modernist. Modernist were more so the younger Americans who believed in independence and associated themselves with the city life and had a view of every man for himself. At the same time you had anti – modernist who believed in value of he community and the family life. Anti – modernist associated themselves with country and or rural life which required them to be interdependent.
