American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  510 [Lindbergh]: Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis (Scribner’s, 1953); Kenneth S. Davis, The Hero: Charles Lindbergh and the American Dream (Doubleday, 1959)

  [Allen on Lindbergh]: Allen, p. 183.

  [Ward on Lindbergh’s flight]: John W. Ward, “The Meaning of Lindbergh’s Flight,” American Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1 (Spring 1958), pp. 3–16, quoted at p. 14.

  [Coolidge on “this silent partner”]: quoted in ibid., p. 14.

  The Workshop of Education

  511 [Elementary school curriculum]: Robert Lynd and Helen Lynd, Middletown: A Study in American Culture (Harcourt, Brace, 1929), p. 189. See also, Edward A. Krug, The Shaping of the American High School, 1920–1941 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), pp. 55–59.

  [Lynds on the regimented classroom]: Lynd and Lynd, p. 188.

  [Declining percentage of male teachers]: ibid., p. 206, footnote 1; see also, Ernest C. Moore, Fifty Years of American Education: 1867–1917(Ginn, 1918), pp. 60–61

  [Education and social status of teachers]: Lynd and Lynd, ch. 15; Krug, pp. 147–54.

  [High school enrollment, 1920s]: U.S. Office of Education, “Biennial Survey of Education, 1930–1932,” Bulletin, 1933, no. 2 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934), pp. 46–47, in Robert H. Bremner, ed., Children and Youth in America: A Documentary Survey (Harvard University Press, 1970–71), vol. 2, parts 7 and 8, p. 1101.

  511–12 [Krug on high school buildings]: Krug, pp. 42–43.

  512 [Two of every three teenagers not enrolled]: ibid., p. 7.

  [Wild one on the “older generation”]: John F. Carter, Jr., “These Wild Young People,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 126, no. 3 (September 1920), pp. 301–4, quoted at p. 302.

  [Search for scapegoats]: Krug, pp. 21–24, University of Minnesota strictures against improper dancing quoted at p. 23; Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920’s (Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 18–25; Joseph F. Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (Basic Books, 1977), pp. 258–61; Jerome Leon Rodnitzky, “David Kinley: A Paternal President in the RoaringTwenties,”Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, vol. 66, no. 1 (Spring 1977), pp. 5–19, esp. pp. 15–16.

  [Van Waters on institutions in flux]: quoted in Kett, p. 259.

  [Educator on the “aim of today”]: Charles A. Prosser, quoted in Krug, p. 4.

  [“Americanization” in American schools]: Bremner, vol. 2, parts 7 and 8, pp. 1324–36.

  513 [The emphases of history and social studies in Muncie]: Lynd and Lynd, pp. 196–201, quoted at p. 199.

  [Mellon on a solid education]: quoted in Krug, p. 19.

  [Ellis’s plea to make “modern life comprehensible”]: ibid., p. 82.

  [New York educators on textbooks’ point of view]: ibid; see also, E. E. Brossard, ed., Wisconsin Statutes, I, 432 (1921), in Bremner, vol. 2, parts 7 and 8, pp. 1330–31.

  [Fass on the “teasing image”]: Fass, pp. 6, 7.

  [College students, 1920s]: ibid., passim:Kett, pp. 261–64; Joan C. Zimmerman, “College Culture in the Midwest, 1890–1930” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1978), pp. 252–56.

  514 [Rise in college attendance, 1920s]: Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), part 2, p. 386 (Series H 751–765).

  [Trinity College editor on “self-centered residents of Main Street”]: quoted in Fass, p. 365.

  [Fraternities, 1920s]: ibid, pp. 141–67, 235–36; Lawrence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 292–94.

  [Student reading, 1920s]: Fass, p. 365.

  [“George F.... is going to college”]: quoted in ibid.

  [Studen tpoll, 1924]: ibid., pp. 343–45.

  [UCLA editor on the “political minded”]: quoted in ibid, p. 355.

  515 [Cornell editor on “the panic”]: ibid., p. 349.

  [“Largest private educational system”]: Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America (Scribner’s, 1965), p. 396.

  [Hudson on decline of Protestantism in 1920s]: ibid., quoted at p. 357; Robert T. Handy, “The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935,” Church History, vol. 29, no. 1 (March 1960), pp. 3–16.

  [Applications for foreign missionary service]: Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (Yale University Press, 1972), p. 899.

  516 [Ahlstrom on the “thinning out of evangelical substance”]: ibid

  [“Merchandising” of religion]: Hudson, pp. 375–76, Zion’s Herald on minister as salesman and Lewis S. Mudge on “the only business of the Church,” quoted at p. 375; slogans and sermon topics, quoted at pp. 375–76. See also Ahlstrom, pp. 904–5.

  [Barton]: Leo P. Ribuffo, “Jesus Christ as Business Statesman: Bruce Barton and the Selling of Corporate Capitalism,” American Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2 (Summer 1981), pp. 206–31; Otis Pease, “Bruce Barton,” in John A. Garraty, ed., Encyclopedia of American Biography (Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 62–63.

  [Pease on The Man Nobody Knows]: Pease, p. 62.

  [Fundamentalist militancy of twenties]: Ahlstrom, p. 909. See also, W. B. Riley, “The Faith of the Fundamentalists,” Current History, vol. 26, no. 3 (June 1927), pp. 434–40, reprinted in Loren Baritz, ed., The Culture of the Twenties (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), pp. 191–201.

  517 [Sunday]: William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Billy Sunday Was His Real Name (University of Chicago Press, 1955); McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (Ronald Press, 1959), ch. 8.

  [“Hireling” ministers]: quoted in McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, p. 410.

  [$2 a soul]: McLoughlin, Billy Sunday, ch. 3, esp. p. 116.

  [McPherson ]: Lately Thomas, Storming Heaven: The Lives and Turmoils of Minnie Kennedy and Aimee Semple McPherson (William Morrow, 1970); Sheldon Bissell, “Vaudeville at the Angelus Temple,” The Outlook, vol. 149 (May 23, 1928), pp. 126–27, 158, reprinted in Baritz, pp. 201–9; Carrie McWilliams, “Aimee Semple McPherson: ‘Sunlight in My Soul,’” in Isabel Leighton, ed., The Aspirin Age (Simon and Schuster, 1949), ch. 3.

  [Rival minister on McPherson]: Bissell, p. 209.

  [Scopes trial]: Ray Ginger, Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (Beacon Press, 1958); James W. Wesolowski, “Before Canon 35: WGN Broadcasts the Monkey Trial,”Journalism History, vol. 2, no. 3 (1975), pp. 76–79, 86.

  [Bryan’s death]: Ginger, p. 192.

  [Scopes as commercial venture]: see R. M. Cornelius, “Their Stage Drew All the World: A New Look at the Scopes Evolution Trial,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 2 (1981), pp. 129–43.

  The Press as Entertainment

  518 [Press coverage of murder trials]: Silas Bent, Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press (Boni & Liveright, 1927).pp. 192—95, quoted at p. 194.

  [Rising costs of newspaper production]: Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism (Macmillan, 1941), p. 674; Robert A. Rutland, The Newsmongers: Journalism in the Life of the Nation, 1690–1072 (Dial Press, 1973), pp. 254–55.

  [Lippmann on the price of newspapers]: Lippmann, Public Opinion (Harcourt, Brace, 1922), p. 321.

  [Proportion of ads in metropolitan papers]: Bent, p. 214.

  [Tripled cost of advertising]: Mott, p. 712.

  518–19 [Ad slogans]: ibid., pp. 505, 712,713.

  [Newspaper features]: Bent, pp. 227–30.

  [Bent on newspaper offerings]: ibid, pp. 197–98.

  [Comic strips] Stephen Becker, Comic Art in America (Simon and Schuster, 1959), ch. 3, quoted at p. 54; Emest Brennecke, “The Real Mission of the Funny Paper,” The Century, vol. 107, no. 5 (March 1924), pp. 665–75.

  [“Only the good have rights”]: Becker, pp. 64–67, quoted at p. 66.

  [Newspaper consolidation]: Mott, ch. 37; Bent, ch. 10.

  520 [Munsey]: Mott, pp. 637–40; George Britt, Forty Years—Forty Millions: The Career of Frank A. Munsey (Farrar & Rinchart, 1935).

  [Munsey on the “
law of economics”]: quoted in Bent, p. 260.

  [Sinclair on the “Brass Check”]: Sinclair, The Brass Check (Upton Sinclair, 1920), p. 436.

  [Lippmann on the Times’s coverage of the Russian Revolution]: Lippmann and Charles Mertz, “A Test of the News,” The New Republic, vol. 33, no. 296 (August 4, 1920), supplement, pp. 1–41, quoted at p. 3.

  [Lippmann on the press as the “beam of a searchlight”]: Public Opinion, pp. 364–65, quoted at p. 364.

  [Industrialhation of news-gathering]: Cathy Covert, “A View of the Press in the Twenties,” Journalism History, vol. 2, no. 3 (1975). pp. 66–67, 92–96, quoted at pp. 92–93.

  521 [Decline of partisan papers]: Alfred M. Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America (Macmillan, 1937), p. 182. See also, Silas Bent, “Partisanship in the Press,” The New Republic, vol. 56, no. 720 (September 19, 1928), pp. 116–18.

  [Publicity agents]: Michael Schnudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (Basic Books, 1978), pp. 134–41.

  [Lippmann on shaping “the facts of modern life”]: Public Opinion, p. 345.

  [Rise of syndicated columnists]: Schnudson. pp. 150–51; Mott, pp. 689–94.

  [Founding of Time]: W. A. Swanbcrg, Luce and His Empire (Scribner’s, 1972), pp. 52–56. The prospectus is reprinted at pp. 53–54 See also, Schnudson, p. 149.

  [Luce’s proposals for newspaper reform]: quoted in Swanberg, p. 143.

  522 [Reader’s Digest]: Mott, pp. 732–33; John Bainbridge, “Little Magazine,” The New Yorker, vol. 21, part 4 (“Profiles” series, November 17–Decembcr 15, 1945).

  [Foreign-language papers before World War I]:Rutland, p. 291.

  [Measures against Leader, Call, and Tageblatt]: ibid., p. 297; Chaffee, op. cit., pp. 86–92, 247–69, 298–305.

  [Indian publications]: James E. Murphy and Sharon M. Murphy, Let My People Know: American Indian Journalism, 1828–1978 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1981), esp. ch. 3.

  [Black papers]: Frederick G. Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 1922), ch. 3; Richard Bardolph, The Negro Vanguard (Rinchart, 1959), pp. 142–46; Roi Ottley,The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott (Henry Regnery, 1955).

  [“Furniture That Talks”]: quoted in Reynold M. Wik, “The Radio in Rural America During the 1920s,” Agricultural History, vol. 55, no. 4 (October 1981), p. 340.

  [Sarnoff]: Eric Barnouw, A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States (Oxford University Press, 1966–70), vol. 1, pp. 75–81, Sarnoff’s “plan of development” quoted at p. 78; Eugene Lyons, David Sarnoff (Harper & Row, 1966).

  523 [Sales of radio sets and parts]: Barnouw, vol. 1, p. 125.

  [Proliferation of stations]: ibid., p. 91.

  [Content of musical programming]: ibid., pp. 126–31.

  [Radio and farmers]: Wik, pp. 344, 345, 348, 349, and passim.

  [Regulation of radio]: Barnouw, vol. 1, pp. 94–96, 100–101, 121–22, 178–79, 211–19; Wik, pp. 341–42.

  [McPherson’s telegram]: quoted in Barnouw, vol. 1, p. 180.

  Entertainment as Spectatorship

  524 [“A crude toy became an industry”]: Barnouw, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 225.

  [Birth of a Nation]: Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Social History of American Movies (Random House, 1975), pp. 57–61; Fred Silva, ed., Focus on The Birth of a Nation (Prentice-Hall, 1971); Robert M. Henderson, D. W. Griffith: His Life and Work (Oxford University Press, 1972), ch. 9. 54–5

  524–525 [Studios, Zukor, and block booking]: Sklar, ch. 9; Lawrence Kardish, Reel Plastic Magic: A History of Films and Filmmaking in America (Little, Brown, 1972); Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of the Movies (New American Library, 1957), pp. 107–10.

  525 [The Roxy]: Lucinda Smith, “Introduction: Before the Final Curtain,” in Ave Pildas, Movie Palaces (Clarkson N. Potter, 1980), p. 14; sec also, Lloyd Morris, Not So Long Ago (Random House, 1949), pp. 187–90.

  [United Artists]: Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies (Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), p. 121.

  525 [First generation of movie czars]: Mast, p. 119; Lary I. May and Elaine Tyler May, “Why Jewish Movie Moguls: An Exploration in American Culture,” American Jewish History, vol. 72, no. 1 (September 1982), pp. 6–25.

  526 [Mayer]: Bosley Crowther, Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer (Henry Holt, 1960).

  [Zukor to Chaplin]: quoted in May and May, p. 21.

  [“The Home of the Stars”]: Crowther, pp. 92–100; Knight, p. 109.

  [Thalberg]: Crowther, pp. 85–92, 102–4; Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By … (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp. 424–27.

  [Film magazines]: see Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (Harcourt, Brace, 1922), p. 225.

  [Hollywood scandals and censorship]: Sklar, pp. 77–82, 122–32; Raymond Moley, The Hays Office (Bobbs-Merrill, 1945), ch. 1; Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, 236 U.S. 230 (1915); Mutual Film Corporation v. Hodges, Governor of the State of Kansas, 236 U.S. 248 (1915).

  [Hollywood response to censorship threats]: Sklar, pp. 82, 91–95; Moley, ch. 4 and pp. 240–41 (Appendix D); Knight, pp. 112–16.

  527 [Hays]: Moley, ch. 2; Sklar, pp. 83–85.

  [Editor on sports selling papers]: W. P. Beazell, quoted in Wayne M. Towers, “World Series Coverage in New York City in the 1920s,” Journalism Monographs, no. 73 (August 1981).

  [Sports and the elites, nineteenth century]: Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Spectators (Prentice-Hall, 1983), ch. 3.

  [Founding of sports clubs and unions]: ibid., pp. 47, 54.

  [Conflict at the New York Athletic Club]: ibid, p. 50.

  528 [Women and sports]: ibid., pp. 164–69.

  [Sports among the working classes]: ibid., pp. 30–35.

  [Rader on the “sports revolution”]: ibid., pp. 46, 47.

  [“Outsiders” and sports]: ibid., ch. 5, esp. pp. 90, 91–93, 96.

  [The “age of the spectator”]: ibid., pp. 172–73.

  [Grange]: Geoffrey Perrett, America in the Twenties (Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 212; Allison Danzig, The History of American Football (Prentice-Hall, 1956), pp. 259–61; W. C. Heinz, “The Ghost of the Gridiron,” in Herbert Warren Wind, ed., The Realm of Sport (Simon and Schuster, 1966), pp. 315–23.

  [Rockne]: Perrett, p. 212; Rader, pp. 212–13; “ ‘Rock’ Is of the Ages,” New Republic, vol. 66, no. 854 (April 15, 1931), pp. 220–22.

  529 [Tilden]: Frank Deford, Big Bill Tilden (Simon and Schuster, 1976); Allison Danzig, “Tilden, Autocrat of the Courts,” in Wind, pp. 601–5; William T. Tilden, The Art of LawnTennis (Methuen, 1920).

  [Jones]: Perrett, pp. 220–23, quoted at p. 221.

  [Ruth]: Rader, pp. 177–82; Robert W. Creamer, Babe (Simon and Schuster, 1974); Babe Ruth and Bob Considine, The Babe Ruth Story (Scholastic Books, 1969); Red Smith, “Babe Ruth: One of a Kind,” in Smith, The Red Smith Reader, Dave Anderson, ed. (Random House, 1982), pp. 160–65.

  [Technical changes in baseball]: Towers, p. 2; Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Age (Oxford University Press, 1971), ch. 3.

  [Ruth’s 1920 season]: Creamer, ch. 19; Perrett, p. 209.

  [Walsh]: Rader, pp. 181–92, quoted at p. 181; Creamer, pp. 271–74.

  [Yankee attendance with Ruth]: Perrett, p. 209; see also, “What Is Babe Ruth Worth to the Yankees?,” Literary Digest, vol. 104, no. 13 (March 29, 1930), pp. 38–42.

  [Gate receipts and concessions, 1920s]: Steven A. Riess, Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era (Greenwood Press, 1980), p. 76.

  [Yankee Stadium]: ibid., pp. 105–10; Creamer, pp. 276, 277–78.

  [Ruth on “the chance”]: Ruth and Considine, p. 9.

  [Baseball and the “poor man”]: Riess, pp. 30–38; Rader, pp. 128–29.

  530 [Dempsey]: Rader, pp. 186–93; Randy Roberts, Jack Dempsey: The Manassa Mauler (Louisiana State University Press, 1979).

  [Dempsey a
nd “paganism”]: Dr. John Straton, quoted in Roberts, p. 127.

  [Dempsey vs. Wiliard]: Roberts, pp. 50–66.

  [Rickard]: Rader, pp. 186–93; Jack Kofoed, “The Master of Ballyhoo,” North American Review, vol. 227, no. 3 (March 1929), pp. 282–86.

  530 [Dempsey’s non-boxing income]: Roberts, ch. 10, esp. p. 202.

  [Rickard’s denial of a fight to Wills]: ibid., pp. 141–48, 213–19.

  [Tunney]: ibid., pp. 219–23; “Corbett to Tunney on ‘How to Win the Mob,’ ” Literary Digest, vol. 96, no. 2 (January 14, 1928), pp. 54–60; S. G. S. McNeil, “The Real Gene Tunney,” North American Review, vol. 226, no. 5 (November 1928), pp. 282–86.

  [Dempsey-Tunney bouts]: Roberts, chs. 11 and 12; Gene Tunney. “My Fights with Jack Dempsey,” in Wind, pp. 212–18.

  531 [“/ have no alibis to offer”]: Randy Roberts, “Jack Dempsey: An American Hero in the1920’s,” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 8, no. 2 (Fall 1974). p. 422.

  [Fights on the frontier and the plantations and in the livery stables]: Radcr, pp. 33, 35–36.

  [World Series scandal and Landis]: Seymour, chs. 15–17 and ch. 19.

  [Twenties crime wave as mythical]: Perrett, pp. 397–401; Edwin H. Sutherland and C. E. Gehlke, “Crime and Punishment,” in Recent Social Trends, op. cit., pp. 1123–39, 1165.

  [The gangster-hero]: see L. Glen Seretan, “The ‘New’ Working Class and Social Banditry in Depression America,” Mid-America, vol. 63, no. 2 (April–July 1981), pp. 107–17.

  [Capone]: Allen, Only Yesterday, op. cit.. pp. 216–20; Perrett, pp. 393–97; John Kobler, Capone (Putnam’s, 1971).

  The Workshop and the Demos

  532 [Dempsey as symbol]: Roberts, “Jack Dempsey: An American Hero in the 1920’s,” op. cit, pp. 411–26.

  [Mass spectatorship as diversion]: see Joel H. Spring, “Mass Culture and School Sports,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 14 (Winter 1974), pp. 483–99, esp. pp. 492–93.

  [Welfare capitalism]: Leo Wolman and Gustav Peck, “Labor Groups in the Social Structure,” in Recent Social Trends, op. cit., pp. 843–47; Robert H. Zieger, “Herbert Hoover, the Wage-Earner, and the ‘New Economic System,’ 1919–1929,” Business Historical Review, vol. 51 (Summer 1977), pp. 161–89; David Brody, “The Rise and Decline of Welfare Capitalism,” in John Braeman et al., eds., Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America: The 1920’s (Ohio State University Press, 1968), pp. 147–78.