Chapter 15 : Self-help in Hard Times - The Roaring 20s

Question 1

Striking year: 1919

Recession 1920-1921

Answer 1

• War rhetoric of economic democracy and freedom led to labor demands
• Steel strike: 350,000 workers in Chicago (higher wages, union recognition and 8 hour day)
• Repressed by the police in 1920

Question 2

The Red Scare, anti-communism in 1919-1920

Answer 2

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched raids on radical organizations throughout the country

Fear of immigrants, communists, anarchists, socialists

Question 3

Prohibition (1919, 21st amendment)

Answer 3

• Maine 1850
• The movement was moral
• It involved people from the countryside, middle class, religious, traditionalists, Anglo-Saxon, a sort of reaction to modernity
• Poorly enforced, it was a failure (ended 1933)

Question 4

The Ford revolution

Answer 4

By using conveyor belts to bring automobile parts to workers, he reduced the assembly time for a Ford car from 12 1/2 hours in 1912 to just 1 1/2 hours in 1914

First moving assembly line at Henry Ford’s automobile factory in Detroit, Michigan

Question 5

The cost of a new Ford was reduced to just $290

Answer 5

This amount was less than three months wages for an average American worker

Declining production costs allowed Ford to cut automobile prices six times between 1921 and 1925

Question 6

The 20s

Answer 6

• Culture
  Flappers (young emancipated women)
  Revolt against moral rules
  Spread of mass culture (radio & movies)
• Law
  Speakeasies (clandestine bars)
  Rise of organized crime

Question 7

Exploding economic growth

Answer 7

• New industries (chemicals, aviation, electronics)
• The automobile as the backbone of growth
• Advertizing
• Telephone, vacuum cleaner; washing machine, refrigerator, Coca-Cola
• Film, sports stars (Chaplin, boxer Jack Dempsey, baseball player Babe Ruth, aviator Charles Lindberg)

Question 8

Flappers: personal fulfillment and independence

Answer 8

Freedoms experienced from working outside the home, a push for equal rights, greater mobility, technological innovation and disposable income– exposed people to new places, ideas and ways of living

Question 9

September 29, 1920

Answer 9

Radio goes commercial

Question 10

Movies

Answer 10

• A film with Buster Keaton, 1920s

- Pandora’s Box (1929) with Louise Brooks

Question 11

The refrigerator

Answer 11

Frigidaire eventually added ice cream cabinets to models in 1923, soda fountain equipment in 1924, and water and milk coolers in 1927

By 1929, 1 million refrigerators had been produced

Question 12

May 1927

Answer 12

36 hours to cross the Atlantic: Charles Lindberg

Question 13

Tensions

Answer 13

• Between rural and urban
• Traditional and modern christians
• Young and old
• Natives and immigrants
• Blacks and whites

Question 14

Johnson-Reed Act, 1924

Answer 14

A racist application of immigration laws

Question 15

Establishing quotas, 1924

Answer 15

• A list of approximately 68 different nations
• Immigration was restricted to 155,000 a year
• Temporary quotas based on 2 percent of the foreign-born population in 1890 were established
• Japanese immigration was banned
• There were no quotas for western Europeans

Question 16

The road to 1929

Answer 16

By 1929, 2 out of every 5 dollars a bank loaned were used to purchase stocks

Financial capitalism and speculation

Between 1924 and 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average quadrupled

Question 17

Overproduction in agriculture

Answer 17

Because of accelerating productivity, output was increasing faster than demand, and prices fell sharply

Farmers borrowed heavily to sustain living standards and production

Question 18

Real estate bubble: Sarasota, Florida

Answer 18

Land boom in 1924-1926

By mid 1926, real estate sales began to drop

It was over by the end of the year

Question 19

Stocks, Stockholders, and dividends

Answer 19

Stocks are shares in the ownership of a corporation. The sale of stock raises capital, or operating money, for the corporation

Buying stocks makes the purchaser a part owner of the corporation, a stockholder

When stocks are bought and sold, the transactions are reflected on the New York Stock Exchange

If a corporation is healthy and profitable, it pays a certain amount of money per stock share to the stockholders. These payments are called dividends

Question 20

The Dow Jones Industrial Average

Answer 20

An average overall measure of stock values based on the stock prices of thirty leading U.S. companies, was at an all-time high of 353 on October 10, 1929

It then dropped for the next four years, reaching a low of 41 on July 8, 1933 (back to 353 in 1954)

Question 21

October 28, 1929

Answer 21

the “Black Tuesday”

Everyone wants to sell, no one wants to buy