Julia Schwartz

October 28, 2004

Argument Analysis

“The Rise and Fall of Business,” by Ronald Allen Goldberg from his book America in the Twenties, provides a lucid factual representation of the changing face of the business front in America during the post-war period. His analysis moves progressively through the era, examining the major economic incidents of the time and linking them together so that the reactive nature of the changes in government is understood. By focusing on the change in the economic landscape, it is far easier to understand the increasing socioeconomic disparity of the time which eventually led to extensive social problems in America .

What Goldberg’s essay is to business, George Harmon Knoles’ “ America ’s World Role” from The Jazz Age Revisited: British Criticism of American Civilization During the 1920s is to American foreign policy in the 1920s. Largely focusing on America’s involvement in World War I and the resulting attitudes of Europe toward America, which clashed with America’s new views of itself coming out of the Great War, Knoles provides the same depth of evidence, using historical actions and other historians’ analysis of the time period in a way that presents as clear a picture of new American foreign policy objectives as Goldberg presented of economic objectives.

Both Knoles and Goldberg present arguments that appear sound, perhaps even unquestionable. Their dissections of their respective fields of interest are written in a distinct voice that offers no alternate interpretation. And though it is clear that both authors were selective in the choices they made regarding which data to include in their publications, the two pieces do fit together in a cohesive manner which presents a single, true narrative of the way Americans’ lives were changing in the 1920s.

Goldberg’s main focus in “The Rise and Fall of Business” is not necessarily business as it pertains to the functioning economy, but business as it impacts the fundamental socioeconomic roles of the diverse populations of America . The material Goldberg presents focuses the readers’ attention directly to the impact the changing theories of business management have upon creating a greater gap between the so-called “wealthy” and the undeniably impoverished.

Frederick Taylor’s new theory of management, which transfers virtually all decision-making powers in any industry to an elite group of persons who grow richer far more quickly than their poor workers experience an increase in income was clearly an important development in managerial methodology. However, Goldberg’s presentation of this theory in the context of his other information is important when one considers that he earlier informed his readers of the government’s attempts “to minimize the role of the federal government” in business (Goldberg 126) – in short, a total laissez-faire policy of the government which reached its pinnacle in the 1920s and virtually never existed again.

With the realization that the government stayed away from any type of involvement in the government is important from the economic standpoint, for it demonstrates the key principal of how the changes happened. More importantly, we can infer that the government was aware of the rapidly growing wealth of a few individuals – indeed, the wealth of men like Alfred Sloan and Henry Ford (top guns of General Motors and Ford Motors, respectively) couldn’t be avoided. The government’s conscious decision to continue its non-interventionist policy, to allow “certain groups [to advance] greatly while others declined” (Goldberg 122), identifies a more subtle acceptance by those in charge – Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – of the pushing down of the workers to the dregs of society.

Goldberg does not mention any of the social problems that were being stirred up at the same period as the business expansion he depicts was taking place, but the knowledge of the intense nativist and racist rejuvenations that were becoming common, it makes the argument of these presidents’ racism more apparent. Indeed, the knowledge of President Harding’s involvement in the Ku Klux Klan makes this undeniable in his case. The later establishment of what were known as “Hoovervilles” during the Depression, where Hoover attempted to rectify the housing crises of the Great Depression by providing housing for the unemployed again points to his acceptance of economic separation: Hoovervilles were a place for the poor to be ghettoized, to be separated from the members of society that somehow managed to maintain steady employment or were previously well enough off that, barring investment in the destroyed stock market, they were able to subsist on their prior wealth and assets.

The intense concentration on business described by Goldberg is echoed in Knoles’ “ America ’s World Role.” Instead of focusing on the domestic ramifications of America’s new love affair with business, he explores the motivations for this fascination, and by using an international frame of reference, he more closely addresses the growing sense of American superiority and narcissism that allowed American businessmen and politicians to ignore the lower classes, leading to “perhaps permanently impaired… liberty of minorities” (Knoles 11). This class is composed primarily of immigrants, at this point mainly eastern European Jews, Slavs, and Greeks, as well as the former slave population which is still, at this time, trying to find an equitable and stable position in society.

By using the British perspective on American foreign policy, Knoles presents a somewhat derogatory view of America and its actions (or lack of actions) in becoming involved in the conflict in World War I. One of the most important ideas that Knoles broadcasts to his readers is the sense of betrayal most of Europe (or at least the Triple Entente nations) felt toward America for allowing World War I to rage for four years before beginning legislation that would send troops over to the Western front.

Through Knoles’ estimation on the basis of British criticism, the United States ’ lack of involvement was due to a certain sense of selfishness, a numbness to the travails of their ancestral brothers and sisters. Knoles tells how the general opinion of the European countries was that the European nations had to “bully” (Knoles 12) the United States into joining the war, for without begging and pleading, America would have let the suffering writhe on the battle fields; “America’s delay led to unnecessary slaughter and needless years of war” (Knoles 12) according to the British critics. With the information Knoles presents, it would seem that America was cold and unfeeling, a nation living in a bubble and blind to whatever lurked outside of it.

However, Knoles makes little mention of the policies of isolationism which America had more or less stuck to since their birth as a nation; since President George Washington’s Farewell Address in 1789, in which he warned America to stay out of foreign conflicts for its own good, America had gotten involved in no foreign altercations, a policy which “few Europeans understood or appreciated” (Knoles 6). From the French Revolution from 1789 until 1799 until the beginning of the Russian Revolution in 1905, Americans remained impartial and uninvolved, despite the war cries of certain factions that were designated “war hawks.” America did engage in certain military action, but all three of its altercations – the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War – were all conflicts that directly involved America and American soil. World War I involved neither of these; therefore, America ’s initial decision to stay out of the war to protect its young men was consistent with her prior policy and should not have been so blindly resented.

Clearly, the 1920s in America are an age of much debate. The clashes between varying views of American actions and the validity of so-called improvements present much to consider in forming a true opinion of the age. Goldberg and Knoles’ writings both go far in the field of identifying essential information in support of a distinct thesis that relays a certain attitude of Americanism of the time. By taking their information and going beyond what they say – by analyzing what they leave out of their arguments – one is able to form a truer concept of what this age was to America and the world. In retrospect, Goldberg’s positive appraisal of the American economic boon of the Twenties is perhaps more flattering than it deserves, while Knoles’ criticism of America’s foreign policy is more abrasive than is warranted by history. Yet when taken together, an analysis of the common truths of the age is apparent, and the simultaneous hypocrisy and consistency of the leaders of America in the 1920s can be more fully understood.

Works Cited

Goldberg, Ronald Allen. “The Rise and Fall of Business” from America in the

Twenties. Syracuse : Syracuse University Press, 2003.

Knoles, George Harmon. “ America ’s World Role” from “The Jazz Age Revisited:

British Criticism of American Civilization During the 1920’s.” In Stanford University ’s Stanford Studies in History, Economics and Political Science (Volumes 10-12).  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1955.