Boom and Crash Flashcards
USA emerged from WW1
Wealthiest country on earth
1922-1929 = Production of industrial goods rose by 50%
Unemployment = Never higher than 3.7%
1920 Ford + Mass Production
1920 = Ford producing 1,250,000 cars per year
1920 = Ford producing 1 car every 60 seconds
Price of Model T in 1914 before mass production = $950
Price of Model T in 1925 after mass production = $250
Growth of business schools - 1920’s
1928 = 89 specialist business schools educating 67,000 students
Advertising - 1920’s
Companies - psychologists to design campaign + target specific groups - ‘Lucky Strike’ labelled ‘Torches of Freedom’
1929 = Companies spending $3 billion annually on advertising
Electrical Goods - 1920’s
1912-1939 - Number of electrical goods sold per year rose from 1.4 million to 160 million
Mass Production of Automobile - 1920’s
1920-1929 = Number of cars rose from 7.5 million to 27 million
Road Building at rate of 10,000 miles per year by 1929
President Calvin Coolidge
1923-1928
Andrew Mellon
Treasury Secretary 1921-1932
Andrew Mellon’s Tax Cuts
Government reduced taxes in 1924, 1926, 1928
Mellon gave out $3.5 billuon of tax reductions to big coorporations
Child Labour
Textile mills of the south - children worked for 56 hour weeks
1922 Fordney-McCumber Tariff
High tariffs
Protectionism
Hire-Purchase
1929 = $7 billion worth of goods brought on credit
Reasons for declining demand in agriculture
Prohibition reduced demand for grain used in manufacture of alcohols
Growth of synthetic fibres reduced demand for textile crops e.g. cotton
Introduction of more machinery + modern methods meant more could be produced on less acreage
1920’s = 13 million acres taken out of production, but overall production increased by 9%
High Tariffs = no foreign market
Result of declining demand in agriculture
Overproduction
66% of farms operated at a loss
1923 Agricultural Credits Act
Government policy was to lend money, placing small farmers in debt
Black Americans in 1920’s
85% of black americans lived in the south
1930 - Black farmers made up 14% of small farmers while accounting for less than 10% of population
Black americans who moved to industrial cities in the north faced discrimination in housing and unemployment
Ghettoes - Harlem in New York - black american population grew from 50,000 in 1914 to 165,000 by 1930
KKK
Unequal distributionn of the economic boom
Prosperity concentrated in Industrial North and West of USA
1929 - per capita incomes of north = $921
per capita income of west = $881
per capita income of south-east = $365
1929 survey found that 60% of families had incomes less than 2,000
Unemployment unstable - sociologists found that 72% of families surveyed in 1924 Muncie, Indiana had been unemployed at some stage