Introduction

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Chapter 26: The New Era: 1921-1933

Introduction
The Harding and Coolidge administrations of the 1920s were very pro-business. Harding's was also not free from scandal, which revolved around his "Ohio Gang" of cronies and Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall's Teapot Dome deal. The World War I and League of Nations experiences led America to withdraw somewhat from foreign involvements, but economic interests rendered impossible complete disengagement. The United States’s efforts in foreign policy included the Washington Conference (1921), which produced the Five-Power Treaty, the Four-Power Treaty, and the Nine-Power Treaty. The treaties were essentially toothless but regained some moral influence for the United States in the wake of the League rejection. The United States in addition had a strong peace movement, and was instrumental in the signing of the rather utopian Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928. American policy toward Latin America also changed drastically under Harding and Coolidge with the introduction of the Good Neighbor Policy; the United States vowed to treat its neighbors as equals, renounced its self-proclaimed right to intervene at will in the region, and withdrew from Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The inadequacy of the Washington Conference and the Kellogg-Briand pact became apparent in the early 1930s, when Japan occupied Manchuria: neither the United States nor the League of Nations would intervene, though the U.S. did issue the Stimson Doctrine. The Europeans were too preoccupied with quarrels over wartime debt and reparations to worry about Japan. Britain and France owed the United States, and insisted on reparations from Germany to help pay those debts. Germany simply could not pay. The combination of these debts, shaky economic foundations, and lack of governmental regulation in the United States resulted in the Great Crash of October 1929. Although Hoover had been elected in a landslide in 1928, he absorbed blame for the depression, and his attempts to deal with it failed and at times exacerbated the situation. Americans elected Franklin Roosevelt president in 1932.

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