1920s USA Revision

1. Why did America get rich in the 1920s?

2. Rich White Americans
3. Farming Communities
4. Immigrants
5. Black Americans
6. Women
7. Prohibition
Why did America get rich in the 1920s?
1. Republican Policies – laissez-faire government, high wages, low
taxes, shorter working hours to encourage spending.
2. Tarriffs – Fordney-McCumber Tariff 1924, makes it cheaper to buy
American made goods by making it expensive to import products.
3. Strength in American industry – mass production methods and
assembly lines help with supply and demand
4. Spending power – American attitudes change from saving to
spending, Hire Purchase (buy now, pay later).
5. War loans from WW1 mean more money coming in to America.
Rich White Americans
1. Lots of new businesses starting up in the 1920s, lots of new products
available to buy thanks to mass production.
2. Cars – Henry Ford, Model T. 1 car to every 5 people. 1929 – 4.8 million
cars made, one every 10 seconds.
3. Cinema was a popular past time, 100 million tickets sold a week. Jazz
music, Charleston dancing. Sporting events: boxing, baseball and
football.
4. Investing in companies on the stock market was a way to ‘get rich quick’.
5. Irresponsible investments and bad banking practices contributed to the
Wall Street Crash.
Farming Communities
1. 30 million farmers in USA in the 1920s.
2. Overproduction – continued to produce too much food following
WW1, more than America needed.
3. Price of grain fell so farmers weren’t getting enough money for their
crops.
4. Competition from Canadian farmers and new machinery meant
fewer farming jobs were available.
5. 6 million farmers evicted from their land by the banks when
repayments couldn’t be made.
Immigrants
1. Immigration to the USA from Europe – fleeing persecution, the
opportunity of work and a better life.
2. Red Scare – the fear that Russian/Eastern European migrants were
bringing Communism to America.
3. Some extreme examples of immigrants rebelling against the
government, organising strikes. 1920 – 10,000 immigrants deported.
4. Sacco and Vanzetti – victims of the Red Scare. Wrongfully executed
in 1927 for a crime committed in 1921.
5. 1924 – government restricts the number of people allowed to
emigrate from Eastern Europe.
Black Americans
1. Great Migration – 1 million black Americans move from the South
to the North for job opportunities and ‘escape’ racism.
2. Segregation enforced across America. Poor quality housing, high
rents.
3. KKK – over 5 million members by 1925. 300 lynching's (1919-1925).
Also anti-Communist, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic.
4. Jazz culture developed in Harlem, the centre of black culture.
5. NAACP had 90,000 members in 1919. UNIA (black power group)
had over 1 million members in 1921.
Women
1. Flappers – rich, young, urban women. Social freedom thanks to the
car.
2. More products made for the home – advertising see women as the
decision makers for the first time.
3. Rural life remains the same, still the expectation of traditional roles
for women.
4. More (unmarried, urban) women go in to the workforce - unequal
pay.
5. Twice as many divorces in 1929 than in 1914.
Prohibition – Jan 1920-Dec 1933
1. Prohibition was introduced to try and make America a morally
better place (and to make workers more efficient).
2. Speakeasies – where people went to buy alcohol illegally, run by
gangsters like Al Capone ($60million a year), secret places.
3. Some people made their own alcohol – moonshine, especially in
rural areas.
4. Prohibition Agents had a huge job and were poorly paid. Most took
bribes from gangsters.
5. Lots of corruption during Prohibition Era.