USa Flashcards

1
Q

Government structure

A
  • Power divided between federal government and state governments
  • Elected president who sets policy
  • Elected Congress that makes laws
  • Appointed Supreme Court that checks laws are in keeping iwth the constitution
  • Republican party: Wanted governemnt to play a small role allowing busiensses to grow and succeed
  • Democratic Party: Wanted government to play a larger role in the lives to tackle social problems
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

Economic Benefits of WW1

A
  • US offered loans to help Britain and France and sold them goods
  • Created demand for American goods in Europe
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

Economic Benefits of WW1

Industry

A
  • Factory production grew by 25%
  • 26.1m tonnes of steel in 1910 to 42.m tonnes by 1920
  • Industries involved in coal, petrol, gas all grew quickly
  • Shipbuidling increased to replace ships destroyed by submarines and railroads modernised to transport wwartime goods and soldiers
  • American brands became popular in Europe
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

Economic Benefits of WW1

Agriculture

A
  • Many European farmers had to fight in the war and production was dropped creating demad
  • US supplied 30% of the world’s wheat and 55% of its cotton
  • Prices of their goods rose by 25%
  • Average income of a farmer increased by 30%
  • Farmer began to use machines on their farms and tractor sales increased
  • More farmers took out loans to expand their farms
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

Economic Benefits of WW1

Workers

A
  • More workers needed
  • Number of people in work increased by 1.3m during the last 2 years, reducing unemployment
  • Most workers beenfitted from wage increases
  • More opportunities for workers from a range of backrounds - needed to replace the men who had gone to fight in Europe
  • Many women joined the workforce and balck Americans moved from agriculture in the southern states into industrial ones in the north
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

Economic Benefits of WW1

Limitations

A
  • Government contracts cancelled and European farming recovered by 1920 - Demand US goods dropped
  • Returning soldiers re-entered the workforce - many new workers mainly women lost thier jobs
  • Increased number of black workers in some industrial cities caused race riots
  • Farmers who had borrowed money to expand production struggled to pay their loans, as demand began to drop
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

Reasons for Economic Boom in the 1920s

A
  • New production methods that allowed factories to produce at a faster rate
  • Availability of credit to buy newly available consumer goods
  • Advertising that encouraged people to buy newly available consumer goods
  • Increased popularity of investing in stocks and shares
  • Average income of an American rising while number of hours expected to work falling
  • Unemployment low never rising above 3.7%
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

Henry Ford and Mass Production

A
  • Workers lined up along a continuously moving surface called a conveyor belt
  • Each worker stayed in the same place and performed a single job
  • Extremely boring for workers but production time fell
  • A motel T car was produced every 10 seconds in one day
  • Tremendous drop in price - $950 to %290
  • Increase in demand for cars
  • Construction of cars required the products of industries
  • Use of car boosted demand for petrol and roads
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

Hire purchase

A
  • Helped people get products they wanted without having to save up for them
  • Customer hired the product from the business, paying for it in instalments
  • Once paid off the cost in full, the product became theirs
  • Helped economy as it encouraged people to keep buying
  • By 1929, 75% of cars and 50% of electrical devices bought using hire purchase
  • Demand rose and factories had a reason to keep producing
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

Advertising

A
  • Overwhelm consumers with images of brands to change buying habits
  • Big posters and colour pages
  • Some companies went further creating new markets for goods
  • Radio played central role in advertising
  • By 1929, 618 radio stations and msot of these carried adverts or were sponsored by big brand names
  • Americans spent leisure time listening to adverts
  • $2 billion a year spent on advertising and 600,000 people emplyoed
  • New advertising methods helped create a consumer society encouraging people to buy new products or sepnt more brand names
  • Need for increased production
  • More jobs meaning more money to spend
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

Consumerism

A
  • Advertising and marketing companies actively encouraged consumerism
  • Shopping became leisure activity
  • By 1925, there were 1395 department stores to choose from and sales of all sorts of goods rose rapidly
  • 5000 regrigerators sold in 1921 - 1 million by 1929
  • $850 million per year spent on radio equipment
  • People now buying thigs they had not realised they neede a decade before
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

Stock Market Popularity

A
  • 1.5 ordinary Americans became involved in buying shares in the stock market
  • Involved borrowing money from a bank or broker to invest in shares - pay back loan from shares sold - ‘Buying on the margin’
  • Turned ordinary people into shareholders
  • Helped the economy grow
  • Led more companies to sell shares which would give them investment to develop their busienss
  • 500,000 shares available in 1925 to 1.1 million by 1929
  • Able to hire more people providing them with money to invest in sahres or buy goods with resulting in greater profit
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

Social impact of the roaring twenties

A
  • Cinemas
  • Jazz and Dancing
  • Sports
  • Radio and advertising
  • Motoring
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

Position of women in 1918 - Jobs

A
  • WW1 helped improve position of women in the workforce
  • 20% of the workforce in work places such as weapons factories and steel mills
  • Most women worked in jobs seen as female mainly in low paid service work
  • Also expected that women unless they were from a poor backround, would not continue to work after marriage
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

Position of women in 1918 - Rights

A
  • Women’s political rights begun to improve
  • Some states gave women the right to vote in local and state elections
  • Many did not have the right to vote or the same employment opportunities, equal pay, and legal rights as men
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

Position of women 1918 - Lifestyle

A
  • Most thought that women should do the household jobs, follow their husbands instructions and behave respectably
  • Many women spent their days doing household work
  • If they went out, peopel expected them to be accompanied by a chaperone and not to drink or smoke
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

Women in 1920s - Jobs

A
  • More women workers
  • Access to different types of jobs
  • More married women worked - 1.9m to 3.1m
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

Women in 1920s - Rights

A
  • 19th amendment gave right to vote
  • Government began to pass mroe laws that reflected interests of women
  • Sheppar Towner Act of 1921 provided healthcare services with the money needed to support pregnant women through local health centres
  • Some women became politicians
19
Q

Women in 1920s - Lifestyle

A
  • Women’s freedom increased in the 1920s
  • Divorce rate rose from 10 to 17&
  • Birth rate fell
  • Increasing number of electrical appliances made household jobs easier
  • Fewer women felt they had to stay in failing relationships, look after several children, and spend hours in the house
  • Had more leisure times and some even rebelled against tradition - flappers
20
Q

Women in 1920s - Limitations

A
  • Most women still in traditionally female jobs
  • Only 12% of married women had jobs
  • Racial minority women remained in the lowest paid jobs
  • Most women did not use their vote to gain more power but followed husband’s decision
  • Only 2 women in the house of representatives
  • WOmen did not achieve equal pay
  • Still expected to look after the home and her children
  • Proportion of women who attended higher education fell in the 1920s
21
Q

Flappers

A
  • Some women decided to become flappers
  • Challenged traditional image of a woman by cutting their hair short, colouring it, putting make up , and wearing short skirts and stockings
  • Drove themselves to clubs and dancehalls where they smoked and danced
  • Rejection of the values of their parents
  • Helped change the position of women
  • More women going on dates without chaperones
  • Greater emphasis on appearance with more moeny spent on perfume and makeup
  • Increase in the number of women who had premarital sex
  • Flapper lifestyle left out many ethnic and racial minorities and it was short lived
  • Many gave up their freedom and followed more traditional pattern as they aged
22
Q

Problem industries

A
  • Demand for goods fell at the same time as their production rates rose
  • New man made materials such as rayon along with fashion for shorter skirts meant less demand for cotton
  • Prohibition reduced demand for wheat
  • Mechanisation involved replacement of horses with tractors - farmers needed fuel instead of food
  • US government introduced measures such as the Emergency Tariff Act on 1921 - other countries placed similar tariffs
  • Recovery of Europe meant demand for US goods fell
  • Farm production still rose - WW1 - Easy access to credit to run and improve farms - Mechanisation - Scientific advances
  • Farmers produced 9% more
  • Price dropped and many farmers went bankrupt and their workers lost their jobs
  • By the end of 1920s, farm workers now made only a fifth of labour force
23
Q

Coal mining industry

A
  • Suffered
  • Oil began to replace coal as means of heating homes
  • Miners faced comeptition from electricity and gas as alternative sources of power
24
Q

Textile industry

A
  • Huge drop in demand due to changing fashions and comeptition form silk and rayon
  • Problem the mill workers shared with the cotton farmers who struggled to find a marke
25
Q

Railroad industry

A
  • Growth slowed by the rise in car ownership
  • Decreased passenger numbers
  • Increase in number of roads meant more comercial goods were transported on them
26
Q

Effects of decline

A
  • Workers suffered
  • Not easy to find alternative work because on industry dominated one region
  • Workers would have to leave their homes, find enough money to move, and continue to support family without the guarantee of a new job
  • Would have to overcome the challenge they lacked the skilsl required for new manufacturing industries
27
Q

Problems from declining industries

A
  • Stirke more violent and increased
  • Wages cut
  • Employment unstable
  • Jobs lost
28
Q

Attitudes towards immigration

A
  • Happily accepted as they were cheap source of labour
  • Many were Catholics or Jews so ahd different cultural and religious backround
  • Poor illterate and could not speak English
  • Fear that some brought undemocratic ideas and supported radicalism
  • Many worried that workers from other countries would accept lower wages and take jobs
29
Q

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

A
  • Limited immigration numbers to 357,000 a year
  • Could only send 3% of the number of people from their nation living in the USA in 1920
  • Advantage to gorups who had been in USA for a logne rperiod of time so had larger numbers
30
Q

National Origins Act 1924

A
  • Designed to try and further reduce number of people from southern and eastern European people
  • Lowered quota to 164,000 immigrants per year
  • Each country could now send 2% of the number of people from their nation living in the USA in 1890
  • 1929, quota reduced again to 150,000
31
Q

The Red Scare

A
  • Many feared communism as it threatened to transform society, taking away wealth and power
  • Revolution in Russia led to the idea of a Communist government becoming a reality
  • US government concerned because of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe brought communist and anarchist ideas
  • 1919, concerns increased by outbreak of unrest and anger amongst industrial workers - 3,600 strikes across the USA
  • April 1919, 40 mail bombs addressed to important politicians and industrialists found by the postal service
  • 8 cities experienced bomb attacks
32
Q

Palmer raids

A
  • Alexander Palmer set up the General Intelligence Division headed by John Hoover which later became a part of the FBI
  • Created to spy on, secretly joina nd then arrest memebrs of radical groups
  • Offices of the Union of Russian Workers searched and arrests made
  • Raids continued into early 1920 , reaching peak on 2 Janurary when raids took place in 33 cities on any group Palmer and Hoover believed to be radical
33
Q

Consequences of Palmer raids

A
  • Thousands of arrests made and around 600 radicals deported
  • Conditions where radicals held was very bad
  • Increased support for restriction on immigration
  • Weakened the trade union movement because some were communists
  • By mid 1920, situation calmed down
  • Palmer tried to stir up more fear as part of his plan to stand for presidency
  • Caliemd there would be an increase in the level of communist protest and violence on May Day 1920 but never happened
  • Reputation destroyed and Red Scare died out
34
Q

Great Migration to the North

A
  • Black people migrated to northern cities to escape racism and to find employment in factories
  • Most had unskilled jobs, earning low wages, which meant they lived in large ghettos in poor quality houses
  • Black segregated from lack of wealth
  • Anger of white industrial workers who jobs the black migrants competed for led to violent race riots
  • Combination of reduced demand and high number of soldiers returning created atmosphere for race riots
  • Many northerners shared similar attitudes to those in the south
35
Q

KKK

A
  • Formed after Civil War to defend white supremacy
  • Attacked and intimidated balck people because they did not want them to vote or have their own politicians
  • Shut down in 1871 by the government but underground groups continued to work for white supremacy
  • William Simmons restarted organisation
  • Expanded core values - WASPs were superior - Immigration should stop - WASPs should have strong Christian values
  • Simmons gave the Klan a modern organisation structure and each Klansmen reported to their local leader
  • ABle to spread the Klan across the USA
36
Q

Methods of KKK

A
  • Violence: Klansmen flogged, tarred, and feathered or lynched their targets
  • Controlling education: Klan used their influence to stop the teaching of evolution
  • Protest: Klansmen protested against political candidates they disagreed with
  • Economics: Klan boycotted businesses whose owners diagreed with them
  • KKK had powerful members including senators from Texas and INdiana, the governor of Alabama, and the mayor of Portland in Oregon giving Klan considerable political power
  • Had influence over legal system, because some judges and police officers were members, or were sympathetic to the klan makjing it difficult for victims of Klansmen to get equality before the law
  • Klan’s power began to decline after 1925, an influential Grand Dragon called David Stephonson was found guilty of the rape and murder of a 28 year old woman
  • By 1929, only 200,000 members left
37
Q

Origins of Monkey Trial

A
  • Anti Evolution League of America set up to campaign against the teaching of Darwinism
  • In 1925, their campaign succeeded in Tennessee which passed the Butler Act making it illegal to teach the theory of evolution
  • Few modernists in the small town of Dayton were very angry and approiached John Scopes, a high school teacher, to volunteer to break the law to see it would be enforceable in the courts
38
Q

The Trial

A
  • Prosecution led by Williams Jennings-Bryan, a popular fundamentalist who had run for the prsidency three times and campaigned for anti evolution law
  • Clarence Darrow led the defense - an agnostic was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union
  • Became national event
  • Darrow wanted to challenge the law itself an turn the trial into a debate between fundamentalist ideas and modernist ones
  • Involved Bryan and Darrow arguing
  • Ended with an attack by Bryan on Darrow’s attitude to the Bible while Darrow called Bryan’s idea foolish
39
Q

Judgement

A
  • Judge was a committed Protestant
  • Jury agreed that Scopes had and the fine was set at $100
  • Trial achieved little
  • Butler Act remained in force until 1967 and the Anti-Evolution League convinced more states to pass laws against teaching evolution in schools
  • Trial helped the religious debate get national attention
  • Damaged the cause of fundamentialism - beliefs were mocked by national newspapers and audiences
40
Q

Prohibition

A
  • Drinkers of alcohol and non dirnekrs had argued over the right to drink alcohol
  • In 1919, 18th amendment of the US constitution banend the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic drinks
  • Volstead Act passed which set upa system for enforcing the ban
41
Q

Positive effects of Prohibition

A
  • alcohol consumption dropped
  • NUmber of liver disease deaths fell
  • 40% of the population in favour
  • Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith seized around 5 million bottles of alcohol in the 1920s
  • SUggested that Prohibition was improving lives, well recieved, and properly enforced
42
Q

Negative effects of Prohibition

A
  • Breweries that manufactured beer, farmers who supplied the, and the saloons who sold their products suffered
  • Thousands lost jobs or part of their income meanign they had less to spend on leisure and consumer goods
  • Ban affected government income because of decreased tax
  • Prohibition created enforcement problems turning some into criminals
  • Drinking alcohol became an underground activity hidden from law enforcement
  • Put lives at risk from poor quality moonshine
  • Enforcement division set up but only given 2 million
  • Problem made worse by opposition from five states that refused prohibition
  • Out of 6,904 Prohibition cases between 1921 and 1924, only 20 convicted
43
Q

Gangsters

A
  • Opportunity for organised crime to grow
  • Market for gangs who could produce smuggle and sell it to them
  • Gang bosses ran gambling dens and brothels, coordinated loan sharks and made local businesses pay protection money
  • Al Capone
  • Eliot Ness, a prohibiton agent put together a team to target Capone and raided warehouses and seized illegal alcohol
  • Al Capone arrested after IRS uncovered unpaid taxes
44
Q

Impact of gangsters

A
  • Violence
  • Controlled local politicians
  • Turned ordinary citizens into criminals
  • Work of gangsters made prohibition ineffective
  • Bribed low paid prohibition agents preventing them from enforcing the law
  • Consumption back to around 70% of its 1914 level by 1929
  • National ban on alcohol ended in 1933