The Roaring Twenties

Question 1

Benefits of the War

Answer 1

• Industrial: factory production rose 35%, 1910 produced 26.1 mill tons of steel and by 1920 this was at 42.1 mill,
• Agricultural: USA supplied 30% world’s wheat and 55% world’s cotton, good prices rose by 25%, average income rose by 30%, mechanisation & loans, Black Americans went from agriculture to industry in southern states
• Workers: 1.3 mill workforce increase in last two years of war, unskilled income rose 20%, more women
• Limitations at War’s End: European farming had recovered by 1920, new workers lost jobs when soldiers returned, increased black workers lead to race riots, farmers struggled with paying back loans

Question 2

Reasons for the Economic Boom

Answer 2

• Mass Production: 12 hours to produce Model T to 10 seconds (31 October 1925) = led to price drop from $950 to $290 in 1925, demand increased and helped boost industries like steel, petrol, roads, rubber, glass and textile
• Hire Purchase: Alfred Sloan in 1919, 1929, 75% cars and 50% electrical goods bought with it - more buying = more demand = more production and economic boom
• Advertising: Kellogg & Listerine had ads in newspapers, 1929 there were 618 radio stations like 1923 New York City Radio was called Eveready Hour sponsoring the battery company = listening to ads in leisure time, 1929 $2 bill spent on advertising and 600,000 employed - led to consumer society
• Consumerism: shopping became leisure activity, by 1929 there were 1,395 department stores and 1 mill fridges sold compared to 5,000 in 1921, $850 mill a year on radio equiptment
• Stock Market: 1927-1929, 1.5 mill bought shares, General Motors increased from $1.40 (3 March 1928) to $1.82 (3 September 1929), 1925-29 from 500,000 to 1,127,000 shares

Because of this, unemployment never rose above 3.7% until 1929

Question 3

The Leisure Industry

Answer 3

Average income had risen by 30% in 1920s, leading to more disposable income ( roughly $1.8 bill more) to be spent on…

• Cinema: 1924, 40 mill cinema tickets sold a week - doubled by 1929, 1922 Technicolor corporations, 1927 Jazz Singer, 1928 Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willy, $2 bill in cinema tickets each year, Rudolph Valentino and Charlie Chaplin became famous
• Jazz & Dancing: black and white folk music devolved in multi-racial cities like New Orleans, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong became famous - encouraged Charleston (1928 Our Dancing Daughter) and Black Bottom (1919-39 George White’s Scandals)
• Sports: 1921 300,000 watched baseball World Series, Babe Ruth set record of 60 home runs & Jack Dempsey 1927 Long Count Fight took $2 mill in ticket sales
• Radio & Advertising: 60,000 in 1920 to 10 mill in 1929, NBC in 1926
• Motoring: 8 mill in 1920 to 23 mill in 1929, K Model Chevrolet in 1925, more car ownership = 198, 606 in 1910 trips to national parks to 2.7 mill in 1930, suburban shopping centres (Kansas City, 1922)

Question 4

Women

Answer 4

• Jobs: 1918 20% of workforce in weapons factories and steel mills but mostly low-paid service jobs, in 1920s 2 mill woman joined workforce, had 527 of 572 types of job, 1.9-3.1 mill married women worked, still earned average $12 less than a man a week
• Rights: New York passed voting law in November 1917, 1920 19th Amendment, Shepard Towner Act 1921 (pregnancy support), 1928 there were 145 women in state governments
• Lifestyle: chaperones, divorce rates rose from 10 - 17%, birth rte fell to 21.3 births per 1000, electrical appliance meant more free time…
• Flappers: young single working class, middle class college students, free spirted upper class women - short skirts, stocking rolled down, no chaperones, coloured and cut hair, sex before marriage make-up, smoking an dancing - inspired by Clara Bow, but only for those who could afford this lifestyle

Question 5

Problems with Industry (1920s)

Answer 5

• Farmers:

1/3 of labour, wheat bushel went from $2.5 per bushel to >$1, cotton prices dropped by 2/3, and 2/3 farmers operating at a loss, 1924 has 600,000 losing farms, because of…
new demand for man-made materials (rayon meant less cotton), prohibition in 1917 (less wheat), mechanisation (x10 more tractors) meant more fuel needed, Emergency Tariff Act in 1921 (harder to sell products over seas), less demand for European food after agricultural recovery, overproduction (9% more due to Agricultural Credit Act of 1923 and new technology like fertilisers), 1926 cotton crop was large ad price dropped - farmers went bankrupt - only made up 1/5 workforce by 1929, reducing by 1 mill

• Coal-Mining: 1920-30 568 mill - 518 mill tonnes, oil replaced coal (1929, 550,000 homes heated by oil)
• Textiles: changing fashions - competition from silk and rayon, decline in mills of New England, Appalachian regions and rural South
• Railroad: 10% increase, however this was lower than before due to car ownership
• Workers: violent strikes (1929, police chief killed in mills), rail workers cut from $1,807 to $1,749 a year, 862,536 - 654,494 coal miners, 72% jobless at some point on Indiana