the 'roaring twenties': the age of irresponsibility?

Question 1

What were the four Republican policies?

Answer 1

• Laissez-faire
• Protective tariffs
• Low taxation
• Powerful trusts

Question 2

Explain the republican policy of laissez-faire

Answer 2

• Republicans believed that government should interfere as little as possible in the everyday lives of people. This attitude is called laissez-faire.
• Republicans felt that the government should leave businessmen alone to do their jobs. That was where prosperity came from.
• This was closely related to ‘rugged individualism’, which reflected an admiration of the way Americans were strong and got on with solving their own problems.

Question 3

Explain the republican policy of protective tariffs

Answer 3

• Republicans believed in import tariffs, which made it expensive to sell foreign goods in the country. For example, in 1922 Harding introduced the Fordney-McCumber tariff, which made imported food expensive in the USA.
• These tariffs protected businesses against foreign competition and allowed US companies to grow even more rapidly.

Question 4

Explain the republican policy of low taxation

Answer 4

• Republicans kept taxes as low as possible. This brought benefits to ordinary working people, but even greater benefits to the very wealthy.
• Republicans felt that if people kept their own money, they would spend it on US goods and rich people would reinvest their money in industries.

Question 5

Explain the republican policy of powerful trusts

Answer 5

• Trusts were huge corporations that dominated industry. Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats had fought against trusts because they believed it was unhealthy for millionaires such as Andrew Carnegie (steel) and John D. Rockefeller (oil) to have almost complete control of one vital sector of industry.
• Republicans allowed the trusts to do what they wanted, believing that these ‘captains of industry’ knew better than politicians did what was good for US business.

Question 6

Explain how WWI contributed to the economic boom

Answer 6

• USA did not join the war until 1917, but from the start of the European war in 1914, US industries made money supplying weapons and equipment to Britain, France and their allies
• US banks made a fortune by loaning money to these countries
• USA benefitted further because the war damaged trade, industry and exports of the main fighting nations
• For example, Germany had a leading chemical industry before the war, but by 1918 USA had far overtaken it in the production of chemicals

Question 7

when was the Sheppard-Towner Act?

Answer 7

1921

Question 8

what did the Sheppard-Towner Act do?

Answer 8

provided federal funding of up to $2.6 million to help status improve maternity and health care

Question 9

when was the suffragist movement?

Answer 9

throughout the 1900s

Question 10

when did women gain the right to vote?

Answer 10

1920

Question 11

what is suffrage?

Answer 11

the right to vote, so suffragists are campaigners for the right to vote

Question 12

how many women were in paid employment in 1929?

Answer 12

10 million, 24 per cent more than in 1920

Question 13

when was prohibition introduced?

Answer 13

1920

Question 14

what was prohibition?

Answer 14

the ban on the sale of alcohol

Question 15

when did prohibition end?

Answer 15

1933

Question 16

what was the volstead act?

Answer 16

the law that introduced prohibition in 1920

Question 17

what were the arguments for prohibition?

Answer 17

• supporters of prohibition claimed that 3,000 infants are smothered yearly in bed, by drunken parents
• drinkers were accused of being unpatriotic cowards after the USA’s entry into WWI in 1917
• most of the big breweries were run by German immigrants who were portrayed as the enemy
• after the Russian revolution, the dries claimed that communism thrived on drink and that alcohol led to lawlessness in the cities

Question 18

what were supporters of prohibition known as?

Answer 18

dries

Question 19

what was prohibition known as?

Answer 19

the ‘noble’ experiment

Question 20

how was prohibition enforced?

Answer 20

the government ran information campaigns and prohibition agents arrested offenders

Question 21

what event ended prohibition?

Answer 21

The St Valentine’s Day Massacre

Question 22

when was the St Valentine’s Dat Massacre?

Answer 22

1929

Question 23

outline the events of the St Valentines’s Day Massacre

Answer 23

• In 1929, Al Capone’s men murdered seven of Moran’s gang
• using a fake police car and two gangsters in police uniform to put Moran’s men off their guard

Question 24

explain why prohibition was ended

Answer 24

• the St Valentine’s Day Massacre was a turning point, the papers screamed that the gangsters had graduated from murder to massacre
• prohibition had clearly failed, it had made the USA lawless, the police corrupt and the gangsters rich and powerful
• with the Wall Street crash in October 1929, and the ensuing depression of the early 1930s, there were economic arguments for ending prohibition
• legalising alcohol would create jobs, raise tax revenue and free up resources currently being used to enforce prohibition, prohibition was appealed in December 1933

Question 25

what was the red-scare?

Answer 25

the fear of communism that swept through America in the 1920s

Question 26

what were the palmer raids?

Answer 26

police raids on people suspected of holding radical, anti-government ideas

Question 27

what were the Jim Crow Laws?

Answer 27

laws which segregated African Americans from white people in society

Question 28

who were the Ku Klux Klan?

Answer 28

a white supremacist group who used violence and intimidation against African Americans, Jews and immigrants

Question 29

what was the ghetto?

Answer 29

the poorest part of town or city with the worst housing and amenities

Question 30

describe how farmers did not share in the boom

Answer 30

• after the war, Europe imported far less food from the USA
• farmers were also struggling against competition from the highly efficient Canadian wheat producers
• there was also the problem of overproduction, from 1900 to 1920 more and more land was being farmed
• improved machinery and fertilisers made US agriculture extremely efficient, as a result by 1920 it was producing a surplus
• prices also plummeted as desperate farmers tried to sell their produce, in 1921 alone most farm prices fell by 50 per cent
• there were five times as many farm bankruptcies as there had been in the 1900s and 1910s

Question 31

describe how the unemployed did not share in the boom

Answer 31

• unemployment also remained a problem throughout the 1920s, the growth in the industry did not create many new jobs because companies were expanding by electrifying or mechanising production
• the same number of people, around 5 per cent, were unemployed at the peak of the boom in 1929 as had been in 1920, yet the amount of goods had doubled
• these millions of unemployed Americans were not sharing in the boom, they included poor whites, but an even greater proportion of African Americans, hispanic people and immigrants