American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Ford’s Sociological Department]: Stephen Meyer, “Adapting the Immigrant to the Line: Americanization in the Ford Factory, 1914–1921,”Journal of Social History, vol. 14, no. 1 (Fall 1980), pp. 67–82, quoted at pp. 70, 71; Allan Nevins, Ford: The Times, the Man, the Company (Scribner’s, 1954), pp. 551–63, Edgar Guest verse quoted at p. 552; Stephen Meyer, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908–1921 (State University of New York Press, 1981), esp. ch. 6.

  482 [Ford official on observance of “American” holidays]: quoted in Meyer, “Adapting the Immigrant,” p. 74.

  [Ford as transforming leader]: William Greenleaf, “Henry Ford,” in John A. Garraty, ed., Encyclopedia of American Biography (Harper & Row, 1974), p. 369.

  483 [Ford in politics]: Nevins and Hill, pp. 114–22.

  [Ford’s anti-Semitism]: Leo P. Ribuffo, “Henry Ford and The International Jew,” American Jewish History, vol. 69, no. 3 (March 1980), pp. 437–77; Upton Sinclair, The Flivver King (Upton Sinclair, 1937), pp. 118–28.

  [Tribune suit]: Nevins and Hill, pp. 129–42.

  [Ford’s personality]: Ann Jardim, The First Henry Ford (MIT Press, 1970); Samuel S. Marquis, Henry Ford: An Interpretation (Little, Brown, 1923).

  [Ford and decentralization]: John Robert Mullin, “Henry Ford and Field and Factory,” Journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 48 (Autumn 1982), pp. 419–31; Nevins and Hill, pp. 227–30.

  483 [Ford’s associates]: Charles E. Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford (W. W. Norton, 1956); Nevins and Hill, pp. 11–17, 167–70, 269–78.

  [Fitzgerald on Ford]: quoted in Greenleaf, p. 370.

  “The Business of America ...”

  484 [The 1920s in retrospect]: Henry F. May, “Shifting Perspectives on the 1920’s,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 43, no. 3 (December 1956), pp. 405–27; Burl Noggle, “The Twenties: A New Historiographical Frontier,”Journal of American History, vol. 53, no. 2 (September 1966), pp. 299–314. For general accounts, see William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32 (University of Chicago Press, 1958); David A. Shannon, Between the Wars, 1919–1941 (Houghton Mifflin, 1965); George Soule, Prosperity Decade (Rinehart, 1947); Ellis W. Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order (St. Martin’s Press, 1979).

  485 [Coolidge’s pledge to adhere to Harding policies]: Robert K. Murray, The Politics of Normalcy (W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 131.

  [Murray on Coolidge able to be the President Harding wanted to be]: ibid, p. 143.

  [Harding Administration]: Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era (University of Minnesota Press, 1969); Leuchtenburg, ch. 5; Soule; Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (Regents Press of Kansas, 1977). [Mellon]: Andrew W. Mellon, Taxation: The People’s Business (Macmillan, 1924); Allan Nevins, “Andrew William Mellon,” in Robert L. Schuyler, ed., Dictionary of American Biography,vol. 22, supplement 2 (Scribner’s, 1958), pp. 446–52; Harvey O’Connor, Mellon’s Millions (John Day, 1933).

  486 [Harding on America as a business country]: quoted in James Warren Prothro, Dollar Decade (Louisiana State University Press, 1954), p. 223.

  487 [Coolidge on factories as temples]: ibid., p. 224.

  [Hoover on banishing poverty]: ibid, p. 225.

  [Madison on majority rule]: Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (Putnam’s, 1900–10), vol. 2, p. 366; Jacob E. Cooke, ed., The Federalist (Wesleyan University Press, 1961), p. 351 (Federalist No. 51).

  488 [Post-World War 1 Supreme Court]: Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Little, Brown, 1924), vol. 3; Alpheus Thomas Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft toWarren (W. W. Norton, 1964), ch. 2; William F. Swindler, Court and Constitution in the 20thCentury: The Old Legality (Bobbs-Merrill, 1969).

  [Chief Justice White “holding” the chief justiceship for Taft]: quoted in Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft (Farrar & Rinehart, 1939), vol. 2, p. 955.

  [Adair case]: Adair v. U.S., 208 U.S. 161 (1908), quoted at 178.

  488–89 [State yellow-dog contract case]: Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915).

  489 [Child labor case]: Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918), quoted at 281; Holmes dissent reprinted in Max Lerner, ed., The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes (Little, Brown,1943), pp. 168–71, quoted at p. 171.

  [Second child labor case]: Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company, 259 U.S. 20 (1922).

  [Adkins case]: Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923), quoted at 558.

  [Lerner on Sutherland’s treatment of labor as a commodity]: Lerner, p. 173.

  490 [Taft “massing the court”]: Mason, pp. 57–58.

  [Taft’s Sunday afternoon “caucus”]: Pringle, vol. 2, pp. 1043–44.

  [Rail and coal strikes of 1922]: Murray, Politics of Normalcy, pp. 80–81.

  [Farmers and the Harding Administration]: ibid., pp. 50–52, 61–64.

  [Harding and black rights]: Murray, The Harding Era, pp. 397–403, Birmingham address quoted at p. 399; Richard Sherman, “The Harding Administration and the Negro: An Opportunity Lost,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 49, no. 3 (July 1964), pp. 151–68.

  491 [Tax reductions]: Murray, Politics of Normalcy, pp. 53–55, 57–58, Harding quoted on complexities of “this tax problem” at pp. 54–55.

  [Harding scandals]: Burl Noggle, Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s (Louisiana State University Press, 1962). Leonard Bates, Origins of the Teapot Dome (University of Illinois Press, 1963).

  492 [Coolidge’s luck as to day he heard of Harding’s death]: William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon (Macmillan, 1938), p. 243.

  Bankers and Battleships

  [Republican foreign policy in the 1920s]: L. Ethan Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy, 1921–1933 (Rutgers University Press, 1968); Betty Glad, Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence (University of Illinois Press, 1966), part 3; Murray, The Harding Era, op. cit., ch. 11; Joan Hoff Wilson, American Business & Foreign Policy, 1920–1933 (University Press of Kentucky, 1971).

  [Ellis on zigzag foreign policy]: Republican Foreign Policy, p. 34.

  [Confusion as to American intentions]: Benjamin D. Rhodes, “British Diplomacy and the Silent Oracle of Vermont, 1923–1929,” Vermont History, vol. 50, no. 2 (1982), pp. 69–79.

  [Editors on the mystery of Republican foreign policy]: Thomas A. Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (Macmillan, 1948), p. 238.

  [Harding’s Cabinet]: see James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy (Prentice-Hall. 1963), p. 149.

  493 [Borah Resolution as “Model ‘T’ ”]: John C. Vinson, The Parchment Peace (University of Georgia Press, 1955), p. 52.

  [Business attitude towards arms control]: Wilson, ch. 2. See also Vinson, p. 46, for cost figures on military spending.

  [Catt on taking action]: Gaddis Smith, “The First Freeze,” New York Times Magazine, April 24, 1983, pp. 110–11, 114, quoted at p. 111.

  [Lodge on probable failure of naval talks]: quoted in John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge (Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 404.

  [Washington Naval Conference]: Thomas H. Buckley, The United States and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922 (University of Tennessee Press, 1970); Glad, chs. 17–18; Smith; Vinson. (The conference met in Continental Hall, not Constitution Hall—see Buckley, p. 69.)

  494 [Hughes’s speech and reaction to it]:Buckley, ch. 5.

  [Black Chamber breaks Japanese codes]: James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (Houghton Mifflin, 1982), pp. 9–10.

  [Hughes on linking political and arms negotiations]: quoted in Glad, p. 280.

  495 [Immigration Act of 1924 ]: Ellis, pp. 14–19.

  [Arms talks in Geneva and London]: ibid., ch. 5.

  [The Senate and the World Court]: Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 9th ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp. 629–31.

  495–96 [Kellogg-Briand Pact]: L. Ethan Ellis, Frank B. Kellogg and America
n Foreign Relations, 1925–1929 (Rutgers University Press, 1961), ch. 7.

  496 [Kellogg-Briand as an “international kiss”]: James Reed, quoted in Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1980), p. 254.

  [Republican economic policy abroad]: Melvyn P. Leffler, “Herbert Hoover, the ‘New Era,’and American Foreign Policy,” in Ellis W. Hawley, ed., Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice (University of Iowa Press, 1981), pp.148–79, quoted at p. 150.

  [Reparations and war debts]: Soule, op. cit., ch. 12; Wilson, chs. 4–5. See also table in Bailey, Diplomatic History, p. 657; Joseph Young Case and Everett Needham Case, Owen D. Young and American Enterprise (David R. Godine, 1982).

  496–97 [Mellon on rescheduling debts]: quoted in Wilson, p. 126.

  497 [Coolidge on war debts]: Howard H. Quint and Robert H. Ferrell, The Talkative President (University of Massachusetts Press, 1964), p. 176.

  [Financial “merry-go-round”]: Bailey, Diplomatic History, p. 664.

  [U.S. trade and investment in Latin America]: Wilson, pp. 169, 199–200.

  498 [American presence in China]: Robert M. Leventhal, “China Marine,” Marine Corps Gazette,vol. 56, no. 11 (1972), pp. 36–44.

  [Relations with Latin America]: Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy, chs. 7–8.

  [Morrow in Mexico]: ibid., pp. 245, 252.

  499 [Smoot-Hawley tariff]: Ray Lyman Wilbur, The Hoover Policies (Scribner’s, 1937), pp. 181–92; Wilson, pp. 93–98; see also Elmer E. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures and the Tariff (Prentice-Hall, 1935).

  [Hoover on international trade]: quoted in Leffler, p. 152.

  [Hoover on Smoot-Hawley]: quoted in Wilson, p. 98.

  The Voices of Protest

  [Republican party “compact majority”]: Randall B. Ripley, Majority Party Leadership in Congress (Little, Brown, 1969), ch. 4.

  [Rise of the “loyal opposition party]: James MacGregorBurns, The Vineyard of Liberty (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), chs. 4–5.

  499–500 [Political developments during the 1920s]: Jonathan Daniels, The Time Between the Wars (Doubleday, 1966), esp. chs. 6–13; Karl Schriftgiesser, This Was Normalcy (Little, Brown, 1948).

  500 [1924 Democratic convention]: David Burner, The Politics of Provincialism (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp. 114–28, McAdoo quoted at p. 114; keynote speaker, Sen. Pat Harrison, quoted at p. 116.

  [Burner on 1924 Democratic ticket as “schizoid”]: ibid., p. 125.

  [Progressive party, 1924 ]: Kenneth Campbell MacKay, The Progressive Movement of 1924 (Columbia University Press, 1947); Belle Case La Follette and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La Follette (Macmillan, 1953), vol. 2, chs. 69–71.

  501 [Wheeler on Democratic party]: Burton Wheeler and Paul F. Healey, Yankee from the West (Doubleday, 1962), p. 249.

  [Left-wing parties and the Progressives]: James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925 (Monthly Review Press, 1967), chs. 7–8; David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (Macmillan, 1955), ch. 7.

  [1924 election]: David Burner, “Election of 1924,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 3, pp. 2459–2581; J. Leonard Bates, “The Teapot Dome Scandal and the Election of 1924,” American Historical Review, vol. 60, no. 2 (January 1955), pp. 303–22; Svend Petersen, A Statistical History of the American Presidential Elections (Frederick Ungar, 1963), pp. 86–88.

  [1924 election results]: Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 2581.

  502 [Roosevelt, Smith, and the future of the Democratic party]: Burner, Politics of Provincialism, ch.5; Alfred Rollins, Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (Alfred A. Knopf, 1962); Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal (Little, Brown, 1954), pp. 201–2; Ruth C. Silva, Rum, Religion and Votes: 1928 Re-examined (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962).

  [Al Smith]: Oscar Handlin, Al Smith and His America (Little, Brown, 1958); Leuchtenburg, op. cit, pp. 230–32.

  [1928 election]: Handlin, ch. 6; Leuchtenburg, ch. 12; Lawrence H. Fuchs, “Election of 1928,” in Schlesinger, vol. 3, pp. 2585–2704 (the Marshall-Smith exchange from the Atlantic is reprinted in this volume, pp. 2649–60); Silva; Earland J. Carlson, “Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Post-Mortem of 1928 Election,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, vol. 8, no. 3 (August 1964), pp. 298–308; see also Allan J. Lichtman, Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 (University of North Carolina Press, 1979).

  503 [Al Smith’s refusal to be other than Al Smith]: Handlin, p. 130.

  [Smith’s refusal to “shut the door” in immigrants’ faces]: quoted in Steel, op. cit., p. 248.

  [Election results, 1028]: Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 2704.

  [Smith on his loss]: quoted in Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (Viking Press, 1946), p. 46.

  [1928 election as refection of politics in the 1920s]: Allan J. Lichtman, “Critical Election Theory and the Reality of American Presidential Politics, 1916–40,” American Historical Review, vol. 81, no. 2 (April 1976), pp. 317–48.

  504 [Civil liberties cases, wartime and postwar]: Zechariah Chaffee, Jr., Free Speech in the United States (Harvard University Press, 1941). chs. 2–4.

  [Oliver Wendell Holmes’s opinions and dissents]: Lerner, op. cit., part 2. See generally, Paul L. Murphy, The Meaning of Freedom of Speech (Greenwood Press, 1972), esp. chs. 3–10.

  504 [Holmes’s opinion in Schenck]: Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), quoted at 52; Lerner, pp. 294–97, quoted at pp. 296–97.

  [Holmes to Pollock on Debs case]: letters of April 5 and 27, 1919, in Mark DeWolfe Howe, ed., Holmes-Pollock Letters (Harvard University Press, 1941), vol. 2, pp. 7, 11.

  [Holmes’s opinion in Debs case]: Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919); Lerner, pp. 300–4.

  [Abrams]: Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919), quoted at 628, 630; Lerner, pp. 307–13, quoted at pp. 310, 312.

  505 [Red scare of 1919–20]: Robert K. Murray, Red Scare, 1919–1920 (University of Minnesota Press, 1955); Stanley Coben, “A Study in Nativism: The American Red Scare of 1919–1920,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 1 (March 1964), pp. 52–75; Paul L. Murphy,”Normalcy, Intolerance, and American Character,” Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 40 (Summer 1964), pp. 445–59; Leuchtenburg, ch. 4.

  [Demands of Sunday, McKellar, and Byrnes for action against radicals]: Leuchtenburg, p. 66.

  [Gitlow]: Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), quoted at 673; Lerner, pp. 324–25.

  506 [Schwimmer]: United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1928), quoted at 655; Lerner, pp.326–28, quoted at p. 328.

  [Holmes and his correspondents]: Mark DeWolfe Howe, ed., Halmes-Laski Letters (Harvard University Press, 1953), vol. 2; Howe, Holmes-Pollock Letters.

  [Brandeis-Frankfurter relationship]: Bruce Allen Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection (Oxford University Press, 1982), esp. ch. 3; Melvin I. Urofsky and David W. Levy, eds., Letters of Louis Brandeis (State University of New York Press, 1971–78), vols. 2–5, passim; Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (Harvard University Press, 1984), passim.

  [Law clerk on Brandeis’s appearance]: H. Thomas Austern, quoted in Strum, p. 358.

  [Differences between Holmes and Brandeis]: Strum, p. 317; see also Alpheus Thomas Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life (Viking Press, 1946), pp. 572–81.

  507 [Hoover on individualism]: Herbert Hoover, American Individualism (Doubleday, Page, 1922), p. 13; see also David Burner, Herbert Hoover (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), pp. 139–42.

  15. THE COMMERCIALIZED CULTURE

  508 [Doubled industrial production]: George J. Stigler, Trends in Output and Employment (National Bureau of Economic Research, 1947), p. 57 (Table A).

  [Consumer spending]: Robert S. Lynd and Alice C. Hanson, “The People as Consumers,” in The President’s Research Committee on Social Trends, Recent Social Trends in the United States (McGraw-Hill, 1933), pp. 857–911. Cf. Richard Wightman Fox, “
Epitaph for Middletown: Robert S. Lynd and the Analysis of Consumer Culture,” in Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980 (Pantheon Books, 1983), pp. 101–41.

  [YOU SHOULD HAVE $IO,OOO]: William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 (University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 9.

  [The Age of Ballyhoo]: Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s (Perennial Library, 1964), pp. 68, 158–62, 186.

  509 [Jazz]: Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (Oxford UniversityPress, 1968); Marshall W. Stearns, The Story of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1956);Lewis A. Erenberg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Greenwood Press, 1981), ch. 8.

  [Mascagni on jazz]: quoted in Mark Sullivan, Our Times (Scribner’s, 1926–35), vol. 6, p. 481.

  [“The day of the saxophone”]: ibid., pp. 483–84.

  [Whiteman on jazz]: quoted in ibid., p. 480.

  [University president on twenties dress as Devil’s work]: quoted in Allen, p. 76.

  [Ponzi’s swindles]: “Mr. Ponzi and His ‘Ponzied Finance,’ ” Literary Digest, vol. 66,, no. 8 (August 21, 1920), pp. 44–50.

  [Blacks in the twenties ]: Louise V. Kennedy, The Negro Peasant Turns Cityward: Effects of Recent Migrations to Northern Cities (Columbia University Press, 1930); T. J. Woofter, Jr., “The Status of Racial and Ethnic Groups,” in Recent Social Trends, pp. 553–601; Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation (Albert & Charles Boni, 1925), esp. part 2.

  509 [The Klan in the twenties]: Arnold S. Rice, The Ku Klux Klan in American Politics (Public Affairs Press, 1962), esp. ch. 2; David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The First Century of the Ku Klux Klan, 1865–1965 (Doubleday, 1965); Hiram W. Evans, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” North American Review, vol. 233 (March 1926), pp. 33–63.

  [Anti-red, anti-radical hysteria]: Zechariah Chaffee, Jr., Free Speech in the United States (Harvard University Press, 1941), pp. 269–354.