The Roaring 20s: USA, 1919-29

                                        GCSE History- The Roaring 20's

• When World War One broke out in 1914, USA stayed neutral
• USA Democratic president Woodrow Wilson hated the idea of war
• Loyalty would be divided in America because it was home to many immigrants.
• In 1917 America was forced to enter the war to protect it shipping from Germany's unrestricted submarine welfare in the Atlantic.
• Over 100,000 American soldiers,sailors and airmen were killed when America entered World War One in 1918.
• At the end of World War One Woodrow Wilson wanted the USA to play a leading role in policing the "Treaty of Versailles" with his idea of the "League of Nations" which aimed to solve disputes without war
• The League was not favoured by many American's- they wanted an end to "entanglements" in European affairs.
• Republican's were strongly against Woodrow Wilson and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge led these arguments
• In March 1920 there were not enough votes in favour of the senate for the treaty to be formally ratified in the US and the League was not joined.

                                           GCSE History- The Roaring 20's

• In the 1920 presidential election Woodrow Wilson was replaced as president of the USA by Warren Harding who was a Republican.
• He campaigned in favour of the return of "normalcy" which was the mood in America of people who wanted life to return to the way it was before the war.
• America never joined the League of Nations which ment there would be many consequences for Europe.
• America retained its policy of "isolationism" which was staying out of European commitments.
• During the 1920's America's relationship with other European countries suffered, those who were victorious resented the USA for taking so long to come to their aid during the war.
• Despite the fact they remianed neutral until 1917, over the course of the war American businesses still sold arnaments and food to countries such as Britain and France.
• When other countries were focussed on war, America was exporting to areas in the world controlled by European colonial countries.
• When Europe came to refocus on international trade, they found the USA had overtaken the trading markets.

                                     GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Woodrow Wilson's policy of encouraging free trade with the USA ended in 1922
• The Fordney McCumber Tariff put high taxes (tariffs) on foreign-made good which were sold in the USA.
• American goods were cheaper to buy than imported goods therefore more people were buying American goods.
• This helped American industries
• high rates of goods imposed before World War One were restored but farmers also benefitted
• The act gave President Harding to lower or raise the rate as thought necessary
• In retaliation European countries soon began putting tarrifs on American made goods.

                                     GCSE History- The Roaring 20's

• Mass production was the use of a moving assembly line
• each worker had their own task to do over and over again as a conveyor belt delivered the next item in the production line
• Industries were expanding rapidly and modern production techniques were taking over
• Industrial production almost doubled during the 1920's
• There was an increase in job opportunities
• Many industries used mass production techniques to produce vacum cleaners, washing machines,cookers, typewriters and even motors.

                                            GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Henry Ford built his forst motor car in 1896 and the Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903.
• The famous "Model T" began being produced in 1909 and by 1914 it was being produced with mass production on a moving assembly line.
• Instead of a car taking 14 hours to be produced, mass production meant it only took 93 minutes.
• In the 1920's over 1 million Model T Fords were produced each year.
• The price came down as wages for production-line workers went up
• The price of the car was less than three months wages for an average paid worker.
• The jobs of over 4 million American's depended on the motor industries
• Mass production led to industrial production doubling in the 1920's
• The number of telephones produced doubled, canned fruit/ vegetables more than doubled and sythetic industries transformed the textiles industries with the production of rayon
• Local electric light and power companies prospered  as local companies became interconnected and merged into great utility empires
• The construction industry boomed- especially New York who build bigger skyscapers

                                         GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Mass production fourished because it made goods cheaper, this made industries wealthier.
• There was an explosion in advertising techniques with the increase in American goods being produced.
• Advertisements were featured on billboards, in mail-order catalogues, in newspapers and on the radio
• Chains were developed, such as "Woolworths" which had branches in most towns and cities.
• By the end of the 1920's the largest 200 companies (corporations) possesed about 20 percent of the nations wealth and had almost 40 percent of business wealth
• Big industries and businesses became biger as they bought up smaller businesses

                                      GCSE History- The Roaring 20's

• Goods could often be bought on "hire purchase"
• this meant that people wpuld pay a deposit and then pay off the rest of the money in instalments.
• It was easy to borrow money from banks at relitively low interest rates
• This then led to a "boom" in sales and increased the demand in factories
• This produced more jobs and higher wages
• This created an upward spiral-as wages went up, people could afford to pay back what they owed.

                                      GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Companies could sell shares on the "Stock Exchange" to raise money for investment.
• Shares were bought by eager investors who hoped to sell them at a higher price than they bought them in order to make money.
• In the 1920's the prices of shares went up by an average of 300 percent
• Many ordinary Americans started to invest in shares-it seemed like an easy way to make money.
• With more people buying shares the demand for them was going up therefore so did the prices.
• Investors were convinved that the boom would continue and bought shares "on the margin"
• This was when they borrowed money to pay for their purchase of shares as they were confident that the money would be payed back when the value of shares increased.
• Banks often loaned money to people by using the borrowers house as a guarantee
• Banks loaned more money than they had in their deposits because they were confident the loans would be paid back before people withdrew their savings.
• The government encouraged these policies with their "Laissez-faire" attitude of letting business owners be responsible for themselves with "rugged individualism"

                                           GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• In the 1920's many people (mainly whites) were better off and had more leisure time
• A lot of money was spent in entertainment which stimulated the industry
• Jazz became popular- this new type of music was developed out of ragtime and blues among black people in souther USA.
• It provided black musicians such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong with admiration and self-respect
• Jazz clubs were developed such as the famous "The Cotton Club" in new york, they attracted young people and those who wanted to shake off old traditions
• Jazz music spread easily in the 1920's because of the availability of radio and early gramophone records
• By 1929 more than 10 million homes had a radio and national stations were set up
• These  helped to increase the popularity of sports such as baseball, American football and boxing. Some became sports heroes such as boxer Jack Dempsey.
• New dances became fashionable such as the Charleston, the Tango or the Black Bottom became popular- these were sexually suggestive and frowned on by older generations
• New crazes developed such as dance marathons,dangerous stunts & record attempts

                                            GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• The cinema industry was the most glamorous aspect of "the Roaring 20's"
• By 1929 going to watch movies became a national habit and 110 million people were visiting the cinema each week
• This is because people were better off and had more money to spend on leisure
• Before the late 1920's filmsn were silent and captions in the film would tell the storyline.
• Actors would need to convey emotions through body language and facial expressions.
• Some who excelled in the industry include : Charlie Chaplin , Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Rudolf Valentino who had many femal fans
• Many films used slapstick humour and some had romantic storylines
• Cinema's would emply piano players to provide appropriate background music for each scene
• Most film studios were centred in Hollywood- a suburb of Los Angeles which had a mostly dry and sunny climate and was close to mountain and desert scenery
• companies such as MGM, Warner Brothers and Paramount developed
• In 1927 the first "talkie" was introduced when Al Jolson starred in the Jazz singer. Many silent stars failed to make these films because their voices were unnatractive

                                           GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

RICH:

• About one third of the nations wealth was shared by just 5 percent of the population in early 1929.
• The national income of the USA was bigger than that of Britain,Germany,France, Japan and 18 other countries put together.
• The rich had better living conditions
• Some had tremendous wealth compared to the extreme poverty of others

POOR:

•  Farmers struggled becaus of overproduction and consequent low prices.
• During the First World War the demands for food had been high however the 1920s policies of isolationalism and tariff barriers ment many farmers fell into debt and lost their land.
• The demand for cotton was reduced with new synthetic industries producing fibres such as rayon

                                          GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

POOR:

• Blacks made up about 10 percent of the population, they were generally seen as an inferior race and often lived in squalor, poverty and misery
• Many blacks lived in the south- mainly the states of Mississippi and South Carolina were mostly black
• Living conditions in these remote cotton-growing areas were appalling
• Many blacks suffered from the acts of the "Ku Klux Klan"
• Poor immigrants who were not white North Europeans were seen as a threat to American  culture and living standards
• Workers in old industries of northern USA did not benefit from the boom, shipbuilding,textile and coal mining industries suffered. The workers were exploited to bad working conditions and low wages.
• In 1929 71 percent of American families had an annual income of $2,500.
• Children were exploited in textile mills and in agricultural work. In 1929 up to 2 million 14-15 year olds worked in these occupations for up to eleven hours a day on very low wages

                                         GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Before the First World War the USA had no restrictions on immigrants coming into the country, the USA was the "melting pot" of races and nationalities and there were more religions and languages in the USA than in any other country
• Some Americans became alarmed at the growing number of immigrants in cities
• 25 years before the First World War broke out the majority of imigrants were coming from Southern and Eastern Europe
• Many were catholics and spoke languages that could not be understood by the eastern states who mainly spoke English or German
• There was a growing feeling in America that these recent immigrrants were inferior and less educated
• This was a form of racial prejudice
• It was reflective of the overall mood of isolationism among many Americans in the 1920s

                                            GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

Literacy Tests

• In 1917 a law was passed that imposed literacy tests on immigrants
• It favoured those from Northern and Western Europe who were mostly whites and Protestant (protests against roman catholics)
• This law was fairly uneffective
• After the war ended there were fears that millions of Europeans would flood to the USA.

Emergency Quotas Act

• In 1921 this act was passed by congress (representative assembly like parliament)
• They were based on nationality
• The number of people admitted to the USA in one year was limited to three percent of all the emigrants from that country who were resident in the USA in 1910
• This favoured countries in Northern and Western Europe as these were the people who had emigrated in the largest numbers in the previous 200 years.

                                            GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

National Origins Act

• This act was passed in 1924 and put further restrictions on immigration
• The three percent figure was reduced to two percent
• The year of residency was moved back 20 years from 1910 to 1890
• This was significant because in the quarter century before the First World War there was a huge increase in immigrants from countries such as Italy,Turkey,Russia and Greece
• The overall number of European immigrants was to be restricted to 150,000

                                           GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Despite the fact that blacks gained freedom from slavery in the 1860's they still suffered from racial discrimination
• They were seen as an inferior race by the whites
• Segregation was legal in southern states were most blacks lived
• Blacks were kept apart from whites
• Black people usually had the worst jobs and houses
• They could not be expected to be treated fairly in courts with white judges
• They could not eat and travel with white people
• In some states marriage between blacks and whites was forbidden
• In the industrial expansion in the USA nearly 1 million people left the south of the USA to migrate to the north were jobs were available in expanding cities.
• Conditions were a little better than in the south but blacks still suffered from racial discrimination.
• Blacks were the lowest paid and the first to lose their jobs
• Black neighbourhoods which were known as ghettos grew in some citites such as New York.

                                            GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Jim Crow law were legally approved by the US Supreme Court in 1896
• It was a way of making segregation legal
• It was claimed that blacks would have to use separate facilities to the whites however they would be equal
• "separate but equal"
• Whites and blacks would hav segregated schools,transport and washing facilities
• Facilities were not equal- the whites would receive cleaner and better facilities than the whites
• The laws treat blacks as inferior people
• White southeners could protect their way of life and continue to exploit those who they believed to be racially inferior

                                                GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• The Ku Klux Klan preached intolerance and spread fear among blacks
• The Klan was made up of many white Americans
• The Klan was originally formed in 1866 just after the American Civil war and became a focus for racist whites
• It was disbanded but was reformed again in 1915-it opposed Catholics, Jews and foreigners but its main target was blacks
• Between 1920 and 1925 the Klan had about 5 million members including judges,policemen and local politicians
• Some people ignorantly believed they were defending the traditional American way of life by joining the clan, othes feared the consequences of not supporting whites
• Klansmen met in secret at night and sometimes paraded during the fay in white sheets and hoods
• Blacks feared them because they often suffered acts of violence such as ****, beating and lynching at the hands of the clan
• The Klan's membership decreased when involved in a scandal in 1925. One of the leaders David Stephenson was found guilty of kidnapping,****** and murdering a woman on a Chicago train and was sentenced to life in prison

                                           GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• The drinking of alcohol was prohibited by law in the USA in the 1920's
• These moves against alcohol started in the late 19th century because many poverty-stricken homes suffered through the father of the houses activities
• Alcohol was said to cause absenteeism on the work place
• In January 1919 an amendment to the constitution was passed saying alcoholic drinks would be forbidden
• The law was enforced on the 17th January 1920's and the consumption, buying or selling of alcohol was illegal. Alcohol was defined as any drink that contained 0.5 percent of alcohol or more.
• Prohibition took place from 1920 until 1933 and was known as a "noble experiment"
• Groups such as theb Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League campaigned against alcohol for many years
• Two of the leading firm of beer (Pabst and Busch) were German and Americans were told to avoid buying them because it was unpatriotic
• Most of the American public was either happy with this new law or resigned to it.

                                        GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• The groups of people supporting prohibition seemed to be better organised than their opponents
• Thousands of churched who had campaigned for prohibition held thanksgiving prayer meetings
• congregations (assembled for religious worship) were reminded that the act marked the end of a long campaigne against "the demon drink"
• One of the leading campaigners was William Jennings Bryan who was an ex-Democrat presidential candidate
• He reminded the audience when the law was enforced that two and a half billion dollars were spent annually on whisky and liquor which was three times the amount of money spent on education
• Prohibition agents were appointed however many took bribes and helped illegal trade to continue
• Some went to elaborate lengths to carry out their work such as Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith - They often wore disguises and entered illegal bars as students,labourers and football players. They confiscated 3 million bottles of spirits, arrested 4,900 people and raided 3,000 "speaksies" in the first five and a half years of prohibition

                                       GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Organisations against prohibition only got going in 1918 when the Association against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA) was founded
• Some claimed the benefits of alcohol for medicinal purposes
• There was more support of alcohol in the north than in the south
• The week before prohibition was enforced huge quantities of alcohol was bought from liquor stores for those who wished to drink after the deadline however on the last evening of drinking saloons were less busy than normal.
• "Speaksies" (an old Irish word meaning illegal bars) began to appear in old saloons or basements, sometimes they were disguised as Jazz clubs
• Itb was thought that by the end of the decade there were 200,000 speaksies across the USA and 30,000 in New York alone
• Some people attempted to produce their own homemade illegal liquors, this was known as "Moonshine" which 5,000 a year died from drinking
• Alcohol was smuggled in across the USA's long borders with Mexico and Canada.
• "Bootleggers", who were given their name because they sometimes carred alcohol inside theit knee-length boots, brought in alcohol and sold it at high prices.

                                          GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Selling alcohol became a big business and gangsters who operated in cities controlled much of this trade
• They supplied alcohol, set up speaksies (illegal bars) and ran "protection rackets" which was when they threatened to damage people's property unless they received money to protect it
• The most famous gangster was Al Capone who gained contol of Chicago by bribing local officials, politicians and the police
• He did not fear arrest and opperated openly
• He employed up to 1,000 men in a private gang
• His business activities were reckoned to be worth between $60 and $100 million a year
• There were 227 murders in four years but no one was arrested.
• In 1929 the famous "Valentines Day Massacre" took place and some of Al Capone's gang gunned down six members of the rival Bugs Moran gang dressed as policemen
• Al Capone was never evicted for prohibition or murder but for tax evasion
• It became clear prohibition was not working and in the 1932 presidental election Franklin Roosevelt promised to reapeal the prohibition law

                                        GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• In the 1920's many women gained increased freedom
• Greater wealth meant there were more opportunities for leisure
• Fashions changed and so  the conduct of some young, middle-class girls who were known as "flappers"
• flapers were liberateng women who created an age of frivolity
• They shocked their parents and were frowned on by the older generations
• They cut their hair short, oked in  public,  wore lipstick and short skirts and went out late dancing (the charlston was upbeat and provocative, it was performed in illegal bars)
• They were keen to cast aside all social restraints.

                                             GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• When Herbert Hoover, the successful Republican candidate, became president in March 1929 the economy was still booming
• He promised America a continuation of the boom
• Within six months this situatin  was different
• In June 1929 the effects oofoverproduction were felt and some industries had to cut back on production
• By September some investors began to worry about share prices which led to some people selling their shares
• Banks helped to restore stailityby buying up vaast numbers of shares
• In late October panic set in and on the 24th Ocober 1929 13 million shares were sold on the Wall Street Stocck Exchange in New York
• Banks could no longer afford to buy these shares on a huge scale and share prices plummeted.
• No one wanted to buy and investors sold their shares for whatever they could get.
• This was known as the Wall Street Crash

                                         GCSE History-The Roaring 20's

• Big investors lost heavily
• Smaller investors had often borrowed money from the banks with their homes as security. Banks could now reposses their homes and evict those living there
• Some investor commited suicide
• Over 100,000 companies went bankrupt in the period 1929-1933
• Many banks went out of business and could not repay their investors
• Unemployment rose to 12 million by 1932
• Many homeless people built temporary shelters in parks. These "homes" aquired the name "Hoovervilles" as Herbert Hoover was blamed for the depression
• Herbert Hoover was forced to try and help the economy by cutting taxes and providing soup kitchens for the unemployed and the homeless
• The Great Depression worsened in 1931 and 1932