Boom Time? 10 Facts that say YES!

- America experienced an economic

boom during the 1920’s. We’ll look at

the reasons for this in a minute, but the

evidence is there for all to see:

1) In 1919 there were 9 million car. In

1929 there were 26 million (1 in 5

Americans owned a car, 1 in 43

British and 1 in 7,000 Russians!)

2) By 1925 one Ford car was built

every 10 seconds.

3) In 1920 there were 60,000 radios in

1929 there were 10,000,000

4) In 1915 there were 10 million

radios. In 1930 there were 20

million.

5) For every one fridge that was

around in 1921 there were 167 in

1292.

6) New York doubled in size during the

1920’s

7) Silk Stockings had been a luxury

item in 1900 with only 12,000 pairs

sold. In 1920’s a cheaper substitute

for silk was created (rayon). In 1930

300 million pairs of stocking were

sold.

8) There were no civilian airlines in

1918, but 1930 new companies

flew 162,000 flights each year.

9) Buy 1929 nearly all American

homes were on the electricity grid.

10) During the 1920’s the American

road network doubled.

Boom Time? 10 Facts that say NO!

1) FARMING

2) Total US farm income dropped from

$22 billion in 1919 to just $13 billion in

1928.

3) Less food was being imported by

Europe after the war.

4) Canadian wheat was being produced

cheaper.

5) The population of the US was actually

falling.

6) More efficiency increased the quantity

of food produced which meant that

there was too much available (driving

prices down)

7) In the 1920’s the average farmer would

produce enough to feed his family and

14 others.

8) 1921 saw farm prices fall by 50%

9) In the 1920’s there were 5 times as

many bankruptcies in farming than

there had been in the 1900’s and

1910’s.

10) 6 million rural Americas were forced off

their land. The African Americans were

particularly badly hit (750,000 made

unemployed)

BUT

- Fruit and vegetable farmers did well,

since rich Americans wanted their

produce. Lettuce shipments to the city

rose from 14,000 crates in 1920 to

52,000 crates in 1928.

Reasons for

the Boom

1. America’s wealth.

- America was rich in raw

materials eg. Oil, coal

and iron ore, this gave

it the ability to

manufacture lots of

different goods.

2. New Industries

Total production in American

industry increased by 50%

during the 1920’s. This was

driven by the demand for new

products including radios,

vacuum cleaners and the car.

3. Rising Wages and Stable

Prices

- Wages went up but prices

became the same. The

assembly line, made famous

by Ford was one reason that

prices stayed low.

5. Republican (Government) policies

- ‘Laissez-faire; the president left it to the businessmen to make

money.

- Tariffs; 1922 saw the Fordney-McCumber tariff which made

imported food expensive to buy. This helped American producers

(farmers in this case) sell their products more easily.

- Low Taxes; the Republicans kept taxes low which left people with

more money to spend.

- Trusts; Republicans allowed big trusts to be created where one

company dominated an industry eg. Rockefller (oil) and Carnegie

(steel)

4. Hire Purchase (credit)

- This allowed people to buy

new products (eg radio) with a

small deposit and then weekly

instalments. 8/10 cars and

6/10 radio were purchased on

hire credit.

- Mail order catalogues also

provided this.

August 1921 saw only 1 licenced radio station in

America, but by the end of 1922 there were 508 of

them. This goes to show why so many people bought

me – I was a new invention and frankly, I was the best!

It’s all about the jazz man. In

fact the 1920’s was named after

me – ‘the Jazz age’. New dances

like the Charleston and those

new flappers were all brought

about by my groovy rhythms.

Brrrrrm brrrrm brrrrrm, sorry, nearly didn’t see

you there, you see I’m the new car and I ROCK! I

allowed Americans to get wherever they

wanted (and the young ones wanted to get

away from their parents!) In fact by 1929 4.8

million cars had been built. Gotta

go…..Brrrrrrrrrrrrm

Phew, you’ve heard

of the New York

Yankies right? Well

baseball and boxing

became really

popular

Ah yes, the silver screen, that’s me. 100 million tickets were

being sold each week by 1930! The first talkie was released in

1927…wow, times move so fast. I was busy shocking people

with some provocative (for the time!) movies like A Shocking

Night starring Clara Bow (the first ‘It’ girl. I’ll still remember

the women fainting at the sight of a Rudolph Valentino

naked torso in The Sheik in 1921!

Wore restrictive

clothes and behaved

appropriately

Very few paid jobs

were open to women

1914; only 100,000

divorces (women

remained in unhappy

marriages) By 1929 200,000

women got divorced

each year.

Smoked and drank in

public, went about

without chaperones.

Although there were

some high profile

women (Eleanor

Roosevelt), few women

had been elected by

1929.

1920’s – the rise of the flapper….

The Johnson –Reid Act (1924)

Considering the problems being caused by immigration at the moment;

specifically the way in which different groups are looking down on each

other (Irish American, French Canadians and German Americans in pole

position, followed by the Eastern European and Italian immigrants with the

African Americans and Mexicans at the bottom of the pile., we are

proposing:

- A QUOTA of 150,000 immigrants each year, who are likely to be

entirely European.

- Asian immigration is to stop immediately.

Sacco and Vanzetti

These were two high profile victims of the Red Scare. They were Italian Americans who were self-confessed

anarchists. Their trial was one of racial slurs and very dodgy evidence. However the judge of the trial hated anarchists

and said:

Although this might seem a bit biased to you, it was carried through and both Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to

death. This was what the fear of the Red Scare did to some Americans. Despite massive protests Sacco and Vanzetti

were both eventually executed in 1927. The Red Scare also caused a clampdown on immigration (already noted). By

1929 the number of immigrants arriving each year had dropped from over a million in 1919 to 150,000 (see the

Johnson – Reid Act of 1924).

Although Vanzetti ‘may not have actually

committed the crime attributed to him, he is

nevertheless morally culpable (to blame)

because he is the enemy of our existing

institutions’

Those

anarchist

B******s

The Klu Klux Klan

- This organisation became very

popular again in the 1920’s after

the release of the film ‘Birth of a

Nation’

- At their height they had around 4.5

million members (1924).

- The governors of both Oregon and

Oklahoma were both members of

the Klan.

- Methods included parades,

beatings and lynching.

The Scopes Trial (aka the monkey trial)

- In Tennessee teaching the theory

of evolution had been banned.

- One teacher (Scopes ) taught it

anyway.

- He was put on trial, this was the

conservatives vs the modernists.

- He was found guilty and fined

$100.

- However, the war was won by the

modernists, who were able to

expose the stupidity of this

intolerance and the fact that it

contradicter the right to freedom

of speech. The law was never used

again.

- Supporters of Prohibition were also known as ‘dries’.

- The Anti-Saloon League and Women’s Christian Temperance Union were the two big anti

drinking groups that wanted to see prohibition introduced.

- By 1916 21 states had already banned saloons, this shows us that prohibition had support

from leaders and politicians.

- The ‘dries’ claimed that every year 3000 infants were smothered in their beds by drunken

parents.

- USA’s entry into WWI boosted the prohibition campaign since many big breweries were run

by German’s and anti-German feeling was encouraged by the war.

- The eighteenth amendment was proposed in 1917 and became law in January 1920. It was

known as the ‘Volstead Act’ and ‘prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of

intoxicating liquors’.

- It was repealed by the new Democratic President Franklin D Roosevelt who put it on his

campaign promises.

1921 1925 1929

Illegal distilleries seized

9,746 12,023 15,794

Gallons of spirit seized

414,000 11,030,000 11,860,000

Arrests 34,175 62,747 66,878

- The majority of

Americans weren’t

willing to obey the law.

- Maryland never even

introduced prohibition.

- Al Capone made $60

million each year from

his speakeasies.

- William McKoy made

$70 from his importing

of illegal whiskey ‘the

real Mckoy’

Hi, I’m Issy Einstein and with my deputy Moe Smith I tried to clamp

down on the illegal sale of alcohol in so called speakeasies. In fact, by

1925 there were more speakeasies in American cities than there had

been saloons in 1919. It was pretty easy to find people selling alcohol,

despite it being illegal. In fact it too me just 21 minutes in Chicago, 17

minutes in Atlanta, 11 minutes in Pittsburgh and my personal

favourite, 35 seconds in New Orleans (the taxi driver offered me a

bottle of whiskey)!

This showed that Prohibition wasn’t working, but also shows that we

were successfully catching the law breakers. You could use this

evidence to support either side of the argument!

- This caused corruption to become rife and

led to gang warfare over the lucrative

trade in illegal alcohol.

- Organised gangs made over $2 billion

from the sale of illegal alcohol.

- George Remus bribed officials to allow

him to carry out his illegal practise. He

was so rich that at one party he gave a car

to all of the female guests and a $25,000

pair of cufflinks to all of the men.

- The most famous of all of these gangsters

however, was Al Capone.

- Al Capone was based in Chicago where there were 130 gangland murders in 1926 and 1927 but not one

arrest – the criminals were in control!

- He was a well-known figure in the city since he was bribing nearly all of the officials, he even had the

mayor on his payroll!

- - He was well known for being generous eg.$100 to waiters and spent $30,000 on a soup kitchen for the

unemployed.

- Capone was in complete control of Chicago after 1929 when he carried out the St Valentine’s Day

Massacre murdering 7 members of his rivals (Bugsy Malone’s) gang using a false police car and two

gangsters in police uniforms.

- He committed (or his gang did at least!) over 300 murders during his time in control.

Don’t forget he positives,

levels of alcohol consumption

fell by about 30% during the

1920’s.

With reference to:

OCR modern World History B (978-0435-510-22-0)

Ben Walsh OCR GCSE Modern World History (987-0-340-98183-2)

Google Images

Ask Yourself:

1) Can you give two facts to support the idea that America was booming during the

1920’s?

2) Can you give two facts to support the argument that America was not booming in

the 1920’s

3) Which Republican policies helped the boom?

4) What were the new inventions created in the 1920’s?

5) How many Ford Model T cars were being produced during 1925?

6) What evidence is there for the importance of credit during the boom?

7) Give one film star of the 1920’s.

8) How many tickets were being sold each week by 1930?

9) Give two examples of how life had changed for women by the 1920’s.

10) Which immigrants were at the bottom of the pile?

11) What was the immigration quota act called?

12) When was it introduced?

13) What was the quota set to?

14) What was the Red Scare?

15) Where did these ideas come from?

16) Give one example that shows why people were so worried.

17) How many people were arrested during the Red Scare?

18) How many pof those cases actually had a basis in fact?

19) What was the important about the Sacco and Vanzetti case?

20) What was the Scopes Trial?

21) What happened to Scopes?

22) What was the long term result of the trial?

23) Who were the Ku Klux Klan?

24) Which film restarted their popularity? Why?

25) When did their membership peak? How many people had joined?

26) Give one governor who was also a clan member.

27) Whaich groups campaigned for prohibition.

28) What ‘evidence’ did they use to push their case?

29) When was Prohibition introduced? What was the act called?

30) What evidence was there that Prohibition worked? (give at least 2 examples

31) How many murders were there in Chicago in 1926/7?

32) Name one prohibition agent.

33) How quickly could he find alcohol?

34) How much did Al Capone make from illegal speakeasies?

35) What was ‘the real McKoy?’