The Federal government did little to manage the national debt after WWI.

In 1921, the Republican Congress created the Bureau of the Budget to help the president submit an annual budget to Congress.  It was designed to prevent haphazardly extravagant appropriations.

Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's belief was that taxes forced the rich to invest in tax-exempt securities rather than in factories; this hurt business. Mellon helped create a series of tax reductions from 1921-1926 to help rich people. Congress also eliminated the gift tax, reduced excise taxes, the surtax, the income tax, and estate taxes.  Mellon's policies shifted the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle-income groups.  Mellon reduced the national debt by $10 billion.

Modernism: philosophical movement during the 1920s; a key component of this movement was the questioning of social conventions.

H.L. Mencken attacked marriage, patriotism, democracy, and prohibition in his monthly American Mercury.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise in 1920 and The Great Gatsby in 1925.

Earnest Hemingway was among the writers most affected by the war.  He responded to propaganda and the overblown appeal to patriotism.  He wrote of disillusioned, spiritually numb American expatriates in Europe in The Sun Also Rises (1926). 

Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922).

Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919).

Harlem Renaissance: a black cultural movement that grew out of Harlem

Architecture also became popular as materialism and functionalism became popular.

 

Margaret Sanger led a birth-control movement.  Alice Paul formed the National Women's Party in 1923 to campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

The Fundamentalists lost ground to the Modernists who believed that God was a "good guy" and the universe was a friendly place.

Sex appeal in America grew in the 1920s. Flappers: young women who expressed their disdain for traditional women behavior by wearing short skirts, drinking, driving cars, and smoking.

Dr. Sigmund Freud argued that sexual repression was responsible for a variety of emotional problems. 

Jazz thrived in the 1920s.

Racial pride grew in the northern black communities.  Marcus Garvey founded the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to promote the resettlement of blacks in Africa.  In the United States, the UNIA also sponsored stores and other businesses to keep blacks' dollars in black pockets.

Motion picture was used extensively in WWI as anti-German propaganda. 

The spread of motion picture led to increased assimilation of immigrants.

 

In the 1920s, the first voice-carrying radio broadcasts were transmitted. Automobiles drew Americans away from the home, but the radio brought them back.  The radio made significant educational and cultural contributions.