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Germany Allies End World War I
Germany and the Allies sign an armistice to end the fighting in World War I. -
Red Scare Bombing
On June 2, 1919, in eight cities, eight bombs simultaneously exploded. One target was the Washington, D.C., house of U.S. Attorney General, where the explosion killed the bomber, who was an Italian-American radical from Pennsylvania. -
Treaty Creates Conflict
In Paris, diplomats representing the combatant nations of World War I sign the Treaty of Versailles, which promises to sustain peace through the creation of the League of Nations but also plants the seed of future conflict by imposing mercilessly stiff reparations upon Germany. -
Woodrow Wilson Suffers a Stroke
Under heavy strain while on a speaking tour promoting the League of Nations, President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke, leaving him largely incapacitated for the final 18 months of his term. He dies on February 3, 1924. -
The Volstead Act
On this date, Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the National Prohibition Act. Known as the Volstead Act after Judiciary Chairman Volstead of Minnesota, this law was introduced by the House to implement the Prohibition Amendment by defining the process and procedures for banning alcoholic beverages, as well as their production and distribution. -
Seattle Strike
In Seattle, local trade unionists affiliated with both the mainstream American Federation of Labor and the radical Industrial Workers of the World organize a general strike, halting economic activity in the city for five days. The strike ultimately fails when workers, threatened with state violence and undermined by their own cautious labor leaders, return to their jobs. -
More Urban Than Rural
The United States Census reports, for first time, that more Americans live in urban areas than in rural areas. However, "urban" is defined as any town with more than 2,500 people. -
650 arrested, 500 deported
The Palmer raids, the Red Scare, a drive to rid the country of "reds," (communists) began under the auspices of the U.S. Dept. of Justice. On January 3, the New York Times reports that 650 are arrested. -
Steel Strike Ends
The Great Steel Strike of 1919 ends with capitulation by the steelworkers. -
18th Amendment
The era of Prohibition was ushered in on January 17, 1920, when the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol, went into effect following its ratification one year earlier. -
Palmer Raids
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids by the United States Department of Justice intended to capture, arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. -
Senate Rejects League
The Senate refuses to ratify the Versailles Treaty or authorize United States participation in the League of Nations. -
Garvey Conference
Charismatic black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant, convenes the first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World in New York's Madison Square Garden. -
Too Much Cotton
Cotton prices at New Orleans peak at 42 cents a pound, prompting Southern farmers to plant the largest crop in history. The resulting overproduction causes a collapse in prices, with cotton falling to less than 10 cents a pound by early 1921. Cotton farmers will toil in near-depression conditions throughout most of the 1920s and 30s. -
Republican National Convention meeting
On June 8, 1920, the Republican National Convention meeting in Chicago nominated Warren G. Harding, an Ohio newspaper editor and United States Senator, to run for president with Calvin Coolidge, governor of Massachusetts, as his running mate. -
Lambeth Proposals
The Lambeth proposals, which were promulgated by a conference of Anglican and Episcopal bishops from all over the world in August, 1920, provided, in brief, for a reunion of the churches on the basis that priests of the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches would be accepted as priests of the Anglican Church if their own communions would reciprocate, while it was asked of the Protestant Churches that they would allow their ministers to submit to reordination by Anglican or Episcopal bishops. -
19th Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment is ratified, granting women the right to vote. -
Harding Landslide
Republican Warren G. Harding is elected to the presidency by a landslide. Harding wins 60% of the popular vote and 75% of the electoral vote; Democrat James Cox wins only a handful of states in the South. Socialist Eugene Debs garners more than 900,000 votes despite campaigning from prison, where he is incarcerated for violating the wartime Espionage Act by giving an antiwar speech in 1918. -
Woodrow Wilson leaves office
After leaving office in March 1921, Woodrow Wilson resided in Washington, D.C. He and a partner established a law firm, but poor health prevented the president from ever doing any serious work. Wilson died at his home on February 3, 1924, at age 67. -
Immigration Quota
Congress passes immigration restrictions, for the first time creating a quota for European immigration to the United States. Targeted at "undesirable" immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the act sharply curtails the quota for those areas while retaining a generous allowance for migrants from Northern and Western Europe. -
Sacco-Vanzetti Trial
The Sacco-Vanzetti trial begins; immigrant Italian radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti will eventually be convicted of murder and executed. -
Tariffs Up
Congress passes the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, sharply raising tariff duties to protect the American market for American manufactures. The tariff boosts the domestic economy of the Roaring Twenties, but it also worsens the crisis for struggling European economies like Germany's, helping to enable Adolf Hitler's rise to power there on a platform of economic grievance. -
Italian Government Formed
After a number of liberal governments failed to rein in these threats, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy invited Benito Mussolini to form a government on October 29, 1922. The Fascists maintained an armed paramilitary wing, which they employed to fight Anarchists, Communists, and Socialists. -
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia. -
Fitzgerald published Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby. -
Klansmen March
Forty thousand Ku Klux Klansmen march on Washington, their white-hooded procession filling Pennsylvania Avenue. -
Charlie Chaplin in Gold Rush
Charlie Chaplin's popular silent comedy The Gold Rush premieres before enthusiastic audiences. -
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises. -
Mellon Tax Reduction Proposals
The battle for and against heavy tax-reduction, which began November 2, when Secretary of the Treasury Mellon recommended a reduction not greater than $225,000,000, “will be between financial and corporation giants." Mr. Average Citizen, who is found in the lower brackets, will gain only indirectly from whatever slashes may result from the Mellon recommendations. -
"The Outlook" Survey
A large circulation weekly magazine, "The Outlook," ran an 18th Amendment survey among its readers in March 1928, asking them for their opinions both good and bad about prohibition. The results of this survey were written up in an October 1928 edition of the magazine. Two things stood out. A substantial majority were still in favor of this great social experiment and there was a growing conviction that it was chiefly official corruption which had made prohibition work so imperfectly. -
1928 U.S. Election
The U.S. presidential election of 1928 pitted Republican Herbert Hoover against Democrat Alfred E. Smith. The Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s and Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic prejudice. The election held on November 6, 1928 was won by Republican candidate Herbert Hoover by a wide margin on pledges to continue the economic boom of the Coolidge years. -
Stock Market Collapse
The American stock market collapses, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaks in September 1929 at 381.17—a level that it will not reach again until 1954. -
Chicago Mob
In the "Saint Valentine's Day Massacre," the single bloodiest incident in a decade-long turf war between rival Chicago mobsters fighting to control the lucrative bootlegging trade, members of Al Capone's gang murder six followers of rival Bugs Moran. -
21st Amendment
Prohibition lasted until 1933, when it was repealed by the 21st Amendment.
