Chapter 15 : Self-help in Hard Times - The Roaring 20s Flashcards
Striking year: 1919
Recession 1920-1921
- 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
The Red Scare, anti-communism in 1919-1920
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched raids on radical organizations throughout the country
Fear of immigrants, communists, anarchists, socialists
Prohibition (1919, 21st amendment)
- 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)
The Ford revolution
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
The cost of a new Ford was reduced to just $290
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
The 20s
- Culture
Flappers (young emancipated women)
Revolt against moral rules
Spread of mass culture (radio & movies) - Law
Speakeasies (clandestine bars)
Rise of organized crime
Exploding economic growth
- 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)
Flappers: personal fulfillment and independence
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
September 29, 1920
Radio goes commercial
Movies
- A film with Buster Keaton, 1920s
- Pandora’s Box (1929) with Louise Brooks
The refrigerator
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
May 1927
36 hours to cross the Atlantic: Charles Lindberg
Tensions
- Between rural and urban
- Traditional and modern christians
- Young and old
- Natives and immigrants
- Blacks and whites
Johnson-Reed Act, 1924
A racist application of immigration laws
Establishing quotas, 1924
- 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
The road to 1929
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
Overproduction in agriculture
Because of accelerating productivity, output was increasing faster than demand, and prices fell sharply
Farmers borrowed heavily to sustain living standards and production
Real estate bubble: Sarasota, Florida
Land boom in 1924-1926
By mid 1926, real estate sales began to drop
It was over by the end of the year
Stocks, Stockholders, and dividends
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
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
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)
October 28, 1929
the “Black Tuesday”
Everyone wants to sell, no one wants to buy