This is a chapter for an open course on Modern American History with a discussion of Calvin Coolidge, the Caretaker. And, along the way, we’ll meet Model T’s, flapper girls, jazz and liquor, gangsters, we’ll visit “Satan’s Playground,” we’ll watch an American President become an Indian Chief, and, finally, talk about how a farming crisis becomes a banking crisis which becomes a profound economic crisis.
Any errors or mistakes are mine alone. Sorry about them.
Featured Jazz piano from the Youtube channel, “Relax Music.” They’re very good.
Welcome Dr epic here and today we’re going to discuss what kind of President do you actually want what kind of leader works best for America because one of our options is that fellow on the upper left Calvin kulage the caretaker and we’re going to examine the presidency of
Calvin coolage in some detail and along the way we’re going to meet model te’s and flapper girls Jazz and liquor gangsters we’re going to visit Satan’s playground we’re going to watch an American president become an Indian in Chief and talk about how a farming crisis becomes a banking crisis which
Becomes a profound economic crisis and we’re going to do so following that outline right up above my head so put that in your notes to serve as a framework for the information that’s about to follow as we build an answer to that question on the lower left Wilson
Versus coolage or what kind of America do you want evaluate the presidencies of woodro Wilson and Calvin kulage their respective ideologies their success esses and their failures in the early 20th century from a modern perspective who was the better president now woodro Wilson’s political career ends quite
Sadly he has a massive stroke in October of 1919 and he is effectively paralized for the last 17 months of his presidency Paving the way for a massive massive Republican victory in the election of 1920 Warren Harding coasts into the presidency on a wave of support and Warren Harding is elected specifically
To undo the activist presidency of woodro Wilson Warren Harding wins 60% of the popular vote it’s a massive win now Warren Harding as a senator had actually led the fight against woodro Wilson’s European plans and against the League of Nations in the Senate Warren Harding ran on a return to normaly he
Wanted to move away from Wilson’s radical reimagining of the American government he wanted to move move away from foreign entanglements in Europe now Warren Harding has his own set of scandals he gets involved in this bribery scandal with the Teapot Dome he gets involved in this sexual scandal
With his 24-year-old secretary and he manages to avoid all of these scandals by dying he dies on August 2nd 1923 and his vice president becomes the president of the United States and that man was Calvin kulage that’s him on the lower left Calvin kulage is actually visiting
His father in Vermont at the time when they received this news that you know you have to be sworn in as president so they look around like who is the nearest judge and much to their surprise Calvin kage’s father is the nearest judge so Calvin kulage becomes the only president
Sworn in as president by his own father and this is the beginning of the presidency of Calvin kulage which lasts from 1923 all the way to 1929 so let’s stop and just talk who is this guy who is Calvin kulage now he’s a New Englander he’s born in Vermont on
July 4th 1872 he was a successful lawyer in Boston Who Rose through the ranks of the Republican party to eventually become the governor of Massachusetts in 1918 and he became uh famous nationally as a result of his actions during this massive police Boston strike of 19190 in
Order to examine that in just a bit because what happens in 1919 is that as a response to low wages and long hours and wartime inflation the Boston Police Department was very upset and the policemen voted to strike and the result was the 1919 Boston police strike the
Police go on strike and Boston explodes into violence street gangs break into stores looting is rampant the Striking police start fighting openly in the streets because the mayor of Boston brings in the state police and the city police are fighting with the state police the entire city dissolves into chaos nine people are
Killed but the strike was massively unpopular people blamed the Striking policeman for the violence and the chaos in the streets of Boston and in fact this strike be is one of the very few strikes uh in American history where the people the average workers refus refused to side with the strikers they sided
With the government against the strikers the mayor of Boston admits it is escaped his control and the people of Boston appeal to the governor for help Governor kulage then calls out the Massachusetts state guard and he asks for veterans returning from World War I to volunteer
For the job Calvin kulage lays out his terms very clearly there is no right to strike against the public safety by by anyone anywhere at any time and the World War I veterans rallied to the governor governor kulage seized control of the Boston Police Department he got a
List of the Boston police and he fired 90% of them he instantly fired 1,500 police officers in one day and then over the next few years they rebuilt the Boston Police Force pretty much from the ground up allowing veterans and the state guard to Patrol the streets of
Boston for several years and it worked the chaos ended and his actions were incredibly popular overnight Calvin kulage became a national hero and this is why Warren Harding picks Law and Order kulage as his running mate in 1920 in an America racked with the Spanish Flu the results of the Great War police
Strikes there’s an economic depression the Palmer Raids are still going on Wilson’s War time socialism is still everywhere the American people had had enough they wanted Warren Harding’s return to normaly they wanted Law and Order coolage now kulage was a very taciturn individual and it earns him this
Lifelong nickname silent cow but he was highly intelligent he was highly skilled uh he was fluent in multiple uh languages in fact one Diplomat jokingly described him as you know the president can be silent in five languages and this makes his political philosophy less than transparent less than apparent unlike Wilson who wrote
Everything down uh kulage wrote virtually nothing at all so the philosopher of this caretaker president has to kind of be pieced together from his actions and speeches uh given throughout his life many of these speeches and addresses were later collected into kage’s book on political philosophy titled have faith in
Massachusetts publ 1919 a year before the big Republican Landslide of 1920 and later Calvin kulage becomes one of the first American Presidents to give regular radio addresses often speaking directly to the American people through this strange new medium of radio and this is Calvin kage’s opinion on laws
And governance as he describes in have faith in Massachusetts kulage writes men do not make laws they do but discover them laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority they must rest on the Eternal Foundation of righteousness that state is most fortunate in its form of government
Which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of laws again people don’t create laws they don’t invent laws they merely discover the laws that work really well this is a caretaker philosophy good laws and good governance are things slowly discovered over time not in invented wholesale a caretaker
Government sees itself as the inheritor of a system that already works pretty well and if a problem arises then the problem can be identified and addressed through Federal action but it is the role of the government it is the role of the president to Simply Be a caretaker a
Gardener to do as little as possible and save their strength for the really big problems that it simply cannot avoid and this is another one of Calvin Cage’s sayings it is much more important to kill bad bills than it is to pass good ones Calvin kulage would be completely
Happy vetoing a hundred bad laws rather than passing one really good one and Calvin kulage adores the Constitution to him it is a sacred document discovered by the founding fathers in fact this is what Calvin kulage says about the US Constitution to live under the American Constitution is the greatest political
Privilege that was ever accorded to the human race and again compare and contrast kage’s perspective on the American Constitution which it is this near perfect document discovered by the founding fathers to woodro Wilson’s opinion of the US Constitution in that it is an impediment to progress and the
Will of the government to impose uh its goals and to find the goals of society and it’s a really interesting question to ask like how each man’s view of the US Constitution reflects their respective views uh for the role of government in society it’s really interesting uh Calvin kulage reveres and
Would never dream of changing a single period or comma in the US Constitution but to wdro Wilson it’s just something to be ignored or discarded or altered at will so in 1923 silent Cal becomes president and he inherits a country that is absolutely tired of Wilson’s activism
And of course the first really big issue is a brutal economic recession that has been caused by the end of the Great War now kulich had a great advantage in this in that he inherited Warren Harding’s Secretary of the Treasury a fellow named Andrew melon that’s Andrew melon right up above my
Head and Andrew melon is a treasure Andrew melon was an economic genius probably the most brilliant American Treasurer since the days of Alexander Hamilton now Andrew melon was actually an old Robber Baron left over from the Gilded Age he was a banker he was like a
Really good friend of Henry Frick if if you can remember him uh Andrew melon and Henry Frick would like tour Europe buying art together and one of the things that both kulage and Melon really really hated was the concept of federal income taxes they don’t like this at all in fact they view
It as something that was profoundly mistaken and this is what coolage says on the subject the collection of taxes which are not absolutely required which do not Beyond Reasonable Doubt contribute to Public Welfare is only a species of legalized Larsen under this Republic the rewards of Industry belong
To those who earn them coolage and melon do not like the federal income tax system which have which has after all it’s only 10 years old now they don’t have the power to abolish the income system but they can weaken the system what they do is together coolage and
Melon devise a series of massive Cuts in income taxes they cut taxes by more than 2/3 from 71% taxes at the highest tax bracket to less than 25% this becomes the lowest federal income tax in American history now this is the origin of what will eventually be called supply
Side economics you can see up there in all caps supply side economics is the idea that cutting taxes increases economic activity as the government is not pulling money out of the economy through income tax and as people get to keep their own money they then spend it
On themselves or they spend it on their homes or they spend it on improvements in their lives and the result is economic growth hence supply side economic increases it actually increases the supply of goods and services that’s why it’s called supply side less government action increases economic
Prosperity or at least that’s how it’s supposed to to work in theory and this is what kulage says on the subject I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves I want them to have the rewards of their own industry this is
The chief meaning of freedom Calvin kulage is going to shrink the federal government and it worked the supply side economics works the cut in federal income taxes works the sharp recession of 1919 to 1923 vanishes almost overnight and it leads to six years of large scale massive economic growth a
Period of growth that will become known as The Roaring 20s this was a period of economic growth the scale of which had not been seen since the Gilded Age the entire US economy increases by almost 30% in a six-year period yet this is a very different kind of economic growth
From what happened back in the Gilded Age The Roaring 20s didn’t have the downsides of of the Gilded Age Instead This economic growth was accompanied by a surging consumer spending vibrant art and music and an optimistic modernist spirit this was a deep Prosperity that reached all levels of the American
Social structure this was Prosperity far in excess of any anything seen during the days of Woodrow Wilson and suddenly your average American is now able to afford things which before the 20s were you know the mechanical play things and toys of the ultra Rich suddenly almost everyone can
Afford a Model T car you can buy one back in 1924 for $250 incredible people ordinary Americans can now buy beautiful clothes and the latest fashions they can buy such incredible electric gigos as a refrigerator this is a level of prosperity that reaches deep down into the American class structure suddenly
Working class families have refrigerators cars beautiful clothing this is this is the Roaring 20s and Calvin kulage slashes the government left over from woodro Wilson he cuts it by more than a quarter fires 25% of all federal employees the economic boom from the Roaring 20s resulted in more tax
Revenue being collected thus allowing Calvin kulage to cut the US federal debt by half Calvin kulage ends up being the most fiscally responsible president since Andrew Jackson Calvin kulage pays off many of woodro Wilson’s debts he pays off debts left from World War I he pays off the debts left over from the
Implementation of the New Freedom Calvin kulage sits on top of this massive surge in economic growth caused by Andrew melon and the slashing of the federal income tax and this is this very famous quote by Calvin kulage the chief business of the American people is business if Government kept its hands
Off the economy business would Prosper is he correct though is Calvin kulage correct is the business of the American people business at any rate Calvin kulage is incredibly popular especially for a man who doesn’t like to talk and it comes to 1924 he is overwhelmingly reelected in the election
Of 1924 he doesn’t quite get the crazy numbers Warren Harden got back in 1920 but winning 54% of the popular vote is nothing to sneeze at Calvin kulage can’t even smile in his own reelection in his own reelection stickers he won’t do it and this is the Roaring 20s there are
Flapper girls this is the Harlem Renaissance Jazz you got people dancing the Charleston talking about Sigman Freud everybody’s hanging out in speak easys there’s this birth of American literature art and letters this is the period of The Lost Generation these kind of jaded veterans coming back from World
War I thinking that they were promised they were fighting for civilization and democracy and only to find they were largely fighting to save the bottom line of New York Banks so The Lost Generation writers are really cynical they’re these these really deeply pessimistic authors like Ernest Hemingway or William
Fauler Langston Hughes and of course the most famous novel of the of the era in fact arguably the most famous novel of of all time fcot Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and many people have described The Great Gatsby as the perfect American novel but art and literature get very
Very cynical they get very very pessimistic in this period of The Lost Generation but Hollywood movies go in the opposite direction Hollywood movies move away from Birth of a Nation they move into comedy and America welcomes one of this great comedic genius in Charlie Chaplain all of these movies
Become an escape from nature become an escape from reality anybody can go walk into a kinetoscope or pay their two bits and walk into a movie theater and sit and watch Charlie Chaplain amuse them for an hour it becomes incredibly popular now before I’d mentioned people
Hanging out in Speak Easy so like what exactly is is a speak easyy this is still the era of prohibition and speak easys are actually hidden bars there’s secret bars in cellers or underneath warehouses or at the very tops of hotels and you can see the people in the Speak Easy on the
Lower left making fun of the 18th Amendment drinking to the 18th Amendment these are secret bars but the problem with many of these secret bars many of these speak EES is that they’re all run by gangsters all right but of of course all the bootlegging and smuggling and
All the speak easys these are all illegal and they’re all being run by organized crime largely the Italian mafia and in the 1920s prohibition fueled the rapid rise of organized crime the crime rate skyrocketed the murder rate doubled and the prison population exploded as these organizations of
Criminals began to engage in larger and larger criminal Wars over control of the illegal alcohol trade but other factors also contributed to the economic prosperity of the Roaring 20s and one of these things was the devastation that had been inflicted on Europe during World War I I mean World War I just
Devastated Europe many of the European nations like France Britain and Germany they had been economic competitors to the United States before the war but now they begin to rely very heavily on imports from the United States as they struggled to rebuild their countries and the second thing that really contributed
To the uh Roaring 20s was the massive war debt owed to the United States again France and Britain alone owed the United States more than billion doar and they really struggled to make payments you can see on that chart on the left the debt owed by these foreign countries to
The United States Britain is barely able to make the interest payments on its loans but that massive flow of cash from Europe into the United States helps to fuel the American economy and it’s it’s worthwhile to stop and kind of talk about what’s happening in Europe after
The end of World War I Germany loses World War I their Nation shatters at the end of 1918 and they are forced to sign a humiliating Treaty of Versailles in 1919 Germany itself is broken up you know huge areas are carved away from Imperial Germany and without American mediation because the Americans
Completely rejected Wilson’s peace treaty the Allied Powers impose a brutal brutal treaty on the defeated Germans and it becomes known as the Treaty of versailes of 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles has four major points to it it calls for Germany one to accept guilt from the war two Germany has to pay
Massive war reparations to the Allied Nations around the realm of 31 billion dollar three Germany has to surrender a quarter of their entire nation and five Germany has to has to accept very heavy military restrictions on the size of their Army and Navy and the problem with the Treaty of
Versa the problem with the Treaty of Versa is that it’s brutal enough to humiliate a proud and industrious Nation but it’s not crippling enough to Really Ever slow them down in other words the Treaty of Versailles really does nothing more than really really anger and humiliate the German people and it’s
Only a matter of time before the German people demand uh retribution for this defeat and humiliation and it is for this reason that the leader of the Allied armies uh Field Marshal Ferdinand fos says this is not peace he looks at the Treaty of Versailles and says this
Is not peace this is an arisce for 20 years he will be absolutely correct and after the Treaty of versailes you have this period in Germany called viar Germany and it’s called viar Germany because the Constitution was written in viar and viar Germany can barely can really control the country it’s this
Period of a great deal of economic instability and political instability as Germany is just kind of trying to put itself together you know from the ruin of the first world war and Germany particularly suffered uh it experienced a near total economic collapse in the early 1920s and in a desperate attempt
To save their country viar Germany resorted to something called hyperinflation they began to Simply print money outrageously in an attempt to pay all their bills and keep the country solvent and the result of hyperinflation was a complete and total disaster I mean you can see the guy in
The street literally sweeping up German money because it’s so utterly worthless that people just leave it in the gutter there’s a loaf of bread which is being sold for 460,000 deuts Marks that is hyperinflation this affected the United States because viar Germany is trying to pay its War reparations to France and
Britain and France and Britain are trying to use those War reparations to pay off their debt to the United States so if Germany actually collapses so does France and Britain and if France and Britain collapse then they’re going to bring down the American banking system so hyperinflation becomes a starts as a
German problem and rapidly becomes an international problem and you can see there’s the the dollar bill right at the top that that currency a 100 billion Mark there is a toilet paper and the amount of money required to buy uh that role of toilet paper this is hyperinflation now viar Germany isn’t
Alone other countries have experienced a hyperinflation and there’s this great little chart there on the upper left like what causes hyperinflation and it happens when a country begins to print money to pay for goods and services uh but because it’s printing money the value of the money drops and inflation
Goes up and instead of trying to R in its spending the government then just proceeds to print more money and gets trapped in this cycle of having to print money to spend the money but in printing the money they drive prices up which means they have to print more money and
The result is these economies which absolutely collapse under the weight of hyperinflation that picture on the bottom left is from Venezuela Venezuela went through its own cycle of hyperinflation in the 21st century and there is six tomatoes and the stacks of cash is how much money required to buy those six
Tomatoes uh in Africa Zimbabwe went through hyperinflation and there is a day laborer and in the wheelbarrow that’s how much that’s his daily pay the money becomes absolutely worthless uh in a cycle of hyperinflation but you see hyperinflation was a German problem that then became an international problem so
Calvin kulage asks his vice president a guy called Charles Daws to remedy the situation and this is what Charles dos comes up with the Dos plan of 1923 the Dos plans was was an arrangement between the United States and viar Germany in which the Germans could make use of the
American banking system they could borrow money from American Banks to to invest money in their own country and thus spark economic growth their growing economy would then pay off their War reparations to France and Britain and that would enable France and Britain to pay their debt to the United States I
Mean it’s it’s kind of a a very complex uh situation so the US invests in Germany J the German economy grows they pay their War reparations to France and Britain and then France and Britain pay off their debt to the United States that’s how it’s supposed to
Work and it did work it it sort of worked and you know you you can see from the cartoon on the upper left the that’s a German cartoon they were very very happy that the Americans showed up to save their economy the da plan and its successor something called the Young
Plan actually worked it stabilized the German economy it got rid of this hyperinflation but there’s a big butt here you can see it it’s right there but this firmly anchored the German economy to the American banking system so the entire German economy and therefore the entire German political structure become
Dependent on the stability of American Banks if viar Germany wanted any kind of monetary liquidity it was dependent on American Banks and it is dependent on the American Stock Market this is Calvin kulage as the caretaker president he’s just a gardener taking care of a garden that somebody else planned and this is
The do plant a problem emerges inside this garden and it is addressed in the most light-handed manner possible income taxes are a problem therefore Calvin kulage doesn’t uproot and rip out the income taxes he just cuts it down to an absolute minimum and thus he creates the
Booming economy of the Roaring 20s the economy of viar Germany has become a huge problem he just trims it back forms the Daw plan to remedy the problem and then Germany became a little more stable he’s a caretaker he’s just a gardener taking care of a garden that somebody else planned and planted
But there are two problems with this kind of light-handed approach one it assumes that there are no big pre-existing problems in America the Assumption of a caretaker government is that the garden kind of works as is that the nation doesn’t need deep deep reform anywhere the caretaker is just going to
Address problems as they arise secondly it is unable to anticipate or predict huge growing problems that will lead to a massive crisis and even catastrophe in the future because it’s not a far-sighted plan a caretaker government is just going to take care of problems as they arise for example prohibition
Even by 1924 it was obvious that the 18th amendment was a complete and total failure it was felt very une evenly on the American people with Rich and affluent Americans having very little difficulty getting liquor speak EES abounded whiskey Stills proliferated it’s not hard to make whiskey people
Brewed up Jin in their bathtubs bootleggers and speedboats and fast cars would smuggle Whiskey In from Canada and Mexico even empowered by The Volstead Act which gave them the ab the legal authority to enforce the 18th Amendment treasury agents were absolutely hopelessly over welmed in trying to enforce uh prohibition and especially
For people in Texas if you wanted a drink if you wanted a stiff glass of whiskey or a beer you could just drive across the border Mexico had no prohibition and this is the origin of the party towns of the Mexican border they all pop up during prohibition and
It becomes a regular thing to get in your new model T drive to the border and then walk across into Mexico to dieo Kentucky kasail venos whiskey takila cesa these huge party towns just on the other side of the border and some of these huge party towns get really really
Infamous Tiana itself emerges as the Border Party Town of Mexico so much so that Tiana acquires a nickname Satan’s playground because it’s where all the movie stars would go to party to get around prohibition prohibition was was a profound failure all it really did was give Americans a taste for hard liquor
Usually served with mixers which is to say the cocktail because and it was served with mixers because generally the Gin in the whiskey was like awful because it had been brewed up in somebody’s bathtub and so they they mixed these various mixers uh with the hard liquor
To hide the awful Taste of the home brw gin or the home brw whiskey and this in fact continues to this day uh Americans generally prefer drinking highballs and boiler makers fancy cocktails instead of Europe which just drinks generally beer wine and hard cider but in America we like our
Cocktails in fact we like our Cocktails so much we actually created a special soda to drink with Backwoods moonshine and that is the origin of Mountain Dew because the Backwoods moonshine was so horrible tasting they wanted to mix it with a very syrupy super sweet sugary
Soda so they would mix the Moonshine and the soda and the special soda that they made to mix with this moonshine was Mountain Dew and that that that is actually the origin of the soda made to be drunk with Backwoods moonshine and prohibition gangsters rapidly grew in wealth and power and
These these criminal organizations became elaborate organizations dedicated solely to defeating prohibition dedicated solely to defeating crime there is the mafia commission and you can see all of these famous gangsters over to the left there’s Al Capone the original Scarface there’s Joe banano and one guy I want you to pay attention to
Lucky luchano one of the crime bosses of New York City he gets very important later on and all of this criminal organization is fueled by bootlegging but from bootlegging they expand into gambling prostitution graft fraud theft kidnapping artsen bribery they corrupt entire cities they take over entire
Neighborhoods and soon they begin to run large parts of the United States most famously Chicago there is the very Infamous gangster Al Scarface Capone he became the mob boss of Chicago bribing judges paying off the mayor controlling the police the organized crime families begin to ES es alate and they begin to
Go to war with each other they’re not worried about the police who can’t even keep up with them the real threat to these gangsters are other gangsters and these other gangsters go to war with each other in crime Wars of ever escalating violence this is why the murder rate doubles all right people
Began getting gunned down in the streets shot at with tommy guns you can see from the crime statistics on the upper left suicides homicides all of this is going going up and in the middle of this most famously is when Al Capone wipes out the last of his opposition in Chicago in the
Very Infamous St Valentine’s Day Massacre where his gangsters dressed up as Chicago police officers rounded up you know his Rivals and gunned them down you know against a warehouse wall and some of the Assassins might have actually been broad Chicago policemen St Valentine’s Day Massacre
And in the face of of this kulage did nothing it’s not his problem now while Calvin kulage did not support prohibition it’s not his role to rip it up and he did not see it as his job to try and change it by altering the Constitution after all he’s just a
Caretaker in fact what he does is actually strip Federal support for prohibition uh he says look prohibition is largely Enforcement issue and it’s best left up to local law enforcement I’m not going to send any federal police after them and basically the completely underfunded and overpowered local police
Were no match for the gangsters Calvin kulage did nothing wasn’t his job and then of course there is the sad and deteriorating situation in terms of civil rights because woodro Wilson’s old dream of expanding Jim Crow across the United States begins to actually happen
And you can see in this map on the lower left Jim Crow begins to spread out from the Old South and it begins to take over states that were never part of the old Confederacy West Virginia Delaware Missouri Oklahoma even it starts cropping up in places that used to be quite opposed uh
That used to be quite opposed to slavery that were in favor of of of racial equality like Kansas Wyoming these were places which were never part of the Old South and they suddenly start passing these laws greatly restricting the civil rights of Africa African-Americans and during this period membership in the
Klux Clan surges largely as a result of the popularity of the film Birth of a Nation the Klux clan in this period reached the height of its membership peing with 4 million members in 1924 there they are Marching in Washington DC they’re they don’t even bother covering
Their face anymore they were an openly racist anti-semitic anti-catholic group that used torture and death to support G Crow laws and to help spread Jim Crow Across the Nation in fact the presence of the clux clan at the 1924 Democratic National Convention is so strong that the clan
Actually makes an attempt to take over the entire Democratic party and the clan tries to take over the Democratic party some of the Democrats fight back uh there’s a measure made to condemn the clan which fails on a party-wide vote and in fact at the 1924 Democratic National Convention so many Democrats
Are also members of the KKK that the clu CLS Clan holds its National Convention at the same time and there’s buses so that the Democrats can go to the clan convention and that the clan convention the the clansmen can go and be part of the democratic uh National Convention
It’s horrifying uh and in fact one of the few presidential candidates one of the few you know Democrats of any stature that’s him right there who to fight against the clan takeover the Democratic party is Franklin delanor Roosevelt WRA Wilson’s old Secretary of the Navy and the vice presidential candidate uh back from
1920 and indeed the 1920s was in fact the height of racism in America it’s as bad as it gets in the 1920s and it gets bad it gets really bad thousands of African-Americans are lynched or otherwise murdered across the South across the West in these states that never were part of the
Confederacy nobody ever knows the actual number of Americans that get murdered uh in this period and in fact the 1920s experienced the worst incident of racial violence in American history something called the Tulsa Massacre Tulsa Oklahoma 1921 fights break out between black Americans and white Americans it escalates into Street battles which
Escalates into gunfighting they set fire to the black part of town and even take crop dusting airplanes to drop sticks of dynamite and bomb bombs on the black part of town they literally burn down the African-American part of town and Destroy one of the most prosperous africanamerican communities in the
United States this is the worst incident of racial violence in American history the Republicans actually start doing something Northern Republicans eventually remember that they are in fact the party of Abraham Lincoln and they try to Halt this violence even before Calvin kulage is President they
Try to Halt it uh led by this Republican senator leonitis Dyer leonitis Dyer proposes the Dy anti- lynching law of 1918 it it sought to make racial ly lynching a federal crime enforcable by federal police and subject to federal courts instead of local courts that way
If so gu gets lynched in Louisiana or Mississippi he’s going to be tried in a federal court you know in the north and not a local court with a like a bunch of racists in Alabama Southern Democrats kill the bill but leonius dwire will not
Stop he sees it as his duty to attempt to defend the civil rights of African-Americans and year after year after year Dyer reposes his anti- lynching law reposes his anti- lynching law and one of the things he wants to do is he wants to force Southern Democrats to attack and defend this horrible
System of Jim Crow and leonidus DWI wants to show it for the ugly violence that it is and leonatus DWI calls upon president kulage for help and Calvin kulage does nothing while Calvin kulage supported the bill and spoke out in favor of the bill he takes no direct action himself
And it’s not that he had no sympathy it’s just that his ideology left no room for him to intervene Calvin kulage viewed his role as a caretaker merely preserving what pre-exists for a nearly perfect Nation this blinded Calvin kulage to the fact that like America had deep deep problems especially deep
Problems relating to its treatment of African-Americans and these problems needed large scale reform they needed long-term reform without president kage’s help the dire anti- lynching bill is a again it fails to pass and Congress has in fact never passed an anti- lynching Bill even up to the 21st century they
Tried to pass one I believe in 2020 and again it failed leonardus dwi’s Legacy Still Remains unfulfilled but one of the odder things that Calvin kulage does is he really goes to bat not for African-Americans but for Native Americans supporting the Indian citizenship Act of 1924 which automatically grants American
Citizenship to all Native Americans and for his efforts he’s asked to visit the Sue Indian nation and Calvin kulage is proclaimed to be a chief of the Sue nation that is how an American president became a Native American Chief now remember when I said there’s two problems with Calvin kage’s ideology
There’s two problems with this kind of caretaker approach to government we’ve already talked to one that there are no big pre-existing problems in America but it’s the second one that is going to be even more dire it is a caretaker approach to government is unable to anticipate or predict growing problems
That will eventually lead to a big crisis and even catastrophe because the United States is nearing an economic precipice and something strange starts to go on with the economy and it starts in the early 1920s with a farming crisis so you have all these small farming towns scattered all across the country
Now during the Great War during World War I the banks and the government had encouraged Farmers to borrow a lot of money and greatly encouraged expansion Farms across the country even small farms accumulated a lot of debt they would borrow a lot of money to buy fertilizers and tractors and seed and
Expand their Farms thinking that they’re just going to sell all of this food to Europe and they did uh they did make a lot of money but as they made more money that just encouraged them to borrow more and more money and you can see the price
Of corn and wheat over there on the left it goes up it goes up it goes up and then it comes crashing down because as European agriculture recovered from World War I the nations of Europe not only stopped buying American food but the nations of Europe began to sell
Their own agricultural produce and they the the nations of Europe went from customers to competitors prices collapsed look at that the price of corn fell by 63% in 1920 1921 uh the price of wheat Falls by 52% farming incomes collapsed by 2/3 but so many of these small farms owed a lot
Of money to their local banks and this is how a farming crisis eventually starts to become a banking crisis as small toown Banks start foreclosing on Family Farms and you can see in the chart right up above me that’s that’s the rate of farm mortgage foreclosures
And you can see it just goes up and up and up it becomes very very difficult to make a living as a small Farmer in the 1920s and when Banks foreclose on these Farms they seize these Farms but then nobody wants to buy these Farms because
Again it’s really hard to make a living as a small farmer so the result is is that all of these small Banks just get saddled with worthless Farm after worthless farm and these Banks themselves start to fail between 19 20 in 1929 more than 200 rural Banks go out
Of business and because banks at the time were not required to carry Insurance when a bank collapses it takes the life uh Savings of every one of its customers with it and if you’ve got a small town with only one bank that bank goes belly up it will wipe out the
Savings of your town it might even wipe out the entire town whole small towns are erased as this wave of bank failure just crosses the United States but you see all of these little banks are connected little banks are connected to each other and little banks are
Connected to the big Banks you can see in the chart right there all of these banks are constantly lending money to one another they’re moving currency back and forth so as this wave of bank failures in the countryside begins to affect the big banks in the big cities
All of that debt that had been accumulated by the little Banks moves into the big Banks and these Banks carrying a lot of debt people begin to not trust the banking system because so many banks are going out of business people started to react in one
Of two ways the first was to just kind of quietly pull your money out of the bank and put it in a box and bury it in the backyard or slip it under your mattress to just pull your money out of the economy altogether or two stick your
Money in one place that can’t go out of business a place that seems very very safe especially given the booming economy of the 1920s you know as long as you weren’t a farmer and that safe place was the stock market specifically the New York Stock Exchange in fact the
Stock market was seen as being much much safer with banks and it was so much safer than banks that even the banks themselves now that they’re carrying all of this accumulated debt see investment in the stock market is a way to discharge that debt that they have accumulated by taking over these little
Banks so this whole time all of this money starts to flow into the stock market people began to pour money into the stock market because the stock market can’t go out of business and look it goes up and up and up it’s just a great rate of return but as as this
Money is going into the stock market the amount of money in circulation is slowly declining because some people are literally just sticking money under their mattress liquidity which is the degree of flexibility in any economic system was declining so in other words the stock market was booming but at the
Same time it was becoming much much more brittle and everyone’s life savings were now depending on the prosperity of the New York Stock Exchange in short by the end of the 1920s the entire American economy was slowly turning into a ticking time bomb but nobody saw that coming nobody
Saw that coming Calvin kulage certainly didn’t see that coming indeed kulage veto several Farm bills aimed at Farm relief thinking that agriculture just needs to work its own problems out the idea that the farming crisis could eventually result in in in total economic catastrophe was just inconceivable and also around the same
Time Calvin kulage is distracted by a great personal tragedy his youngest son the boy he’s wrapping in the flag and the photograph right up above me he develops an infection on his foot the infection goes from bad to worse it goes septic uh and with stunning speed the kid dies of six
He’s 16 years old he dies of an infection and Calvin kulage never really recovers from this really terrible uh personal tragedy he never really really recovers from the death of his youngest son and he goes from this really engaged intelligent you know leader to this like man who’s Mor gross he’s exhausted he
Sleeps upwards of 12 hours a day he’s people get him it’s really hard to get him focused on a task and as 1929 draws near Republicans were like the economy is great Calvin kulage everybody loves you you should absolutely run for a third term Calvin kulage but Calvin
Kulage is done Calvin kulage is absolutely done he he’s just incredibly depressed over the death of his son and while he is a very popular president and he probably would have won reelection in 1928 he just doesn’t want it he just doesn’t want it anymore he
Gives 10 words that says he is not running for a re-election because he is silent Cal after all so he turn he ends up backing his Protege his secretary of Commerce this really energetic uh mining engineer called Herbert Hoover all caps Herbert Hoover and on the strength of Calvin kage’s recommendation Herbert
Hoover is easily elected President in 1928 one of the really interesting things about the election of Herbert Hoover in 1928 is his vice president is Charles Curtis who is actually native American he becomes the first person of color to actually get elected to high office inside the United States yeah
1928 and Herbert Hoover is President everybody likes Herbert Hoover Calvin kulage picked him out seven months into Herbert Hoover’s uh presidency that ticking Time Bomb of the economy detonates and that day is called Black Tuesday October 29th 1929 the economy explodes all of that money went into the
New York Stock Exchange and in two days the New York Stock Exchange loses 23% of its value by the Year’s End the stock exchange has lost 50% of its value over the next three years the stock exchange has lost 98% of its value all of that money that’s been poured into the stock
Exchange disappears people are ruined the economy is paralyzed the Great Depression has begun and the Great Depression will be the greatest existential crisis in the United States since the days of the Civil War now it remains an open question like how how much coolage is responsible for the Great Depression histories are
Deeply divided over the causes of the depression even to the present day uh Calvin kulage certainly didn’t see it coming but nobody saw it coming uh Calvin kulage was blind to the coming catastrophe and he did nothing to prevented uh nobody else saw it coming either but the thing is he was the
President everyone else was not the American president supposed to be your job to see this type of stuff coming but he’s a caretaker he’s not an activist he’s not going to secret he’s not going to actively go out and seek problems to solve that’s not his Ideology Now you
Should have all of the information required to answer our big question there to the left you should have an answer to the question Wilson versus coolage what kind of America do you want you should be able to evaluate the presidencies of wro Wilson and calage Calvin kulage and judge their respective
Ideologies evaluate their successes and failures in the early 20th century and you should have a really good informed opinion as to who was the better president and we’re going to go beyond Calvin kulage in the next lecture we’re going to talk about the Great Depression itself and I will see you there