History, Roaring 20's key issue 2

Poor americans:

• 5% of the population had 33% of all the wealth.
• 60% of the population lived below the poverty line

Farmers:

• struggled during the 1920's, half the population was involved in farming.
• farmers produced too much (surplus)
• food prices decreased, so less money
• farmers struggled to pay mortgages and some had to sell their farms
• farm workers lost their jobs and many moved to california to work on fruit farms

Black Americans:

• many blacks were farmers and had lost their jobs
• some moved to the city and had low paid jobs

Workers in other industries:

• Coal suffered because of new forms of power-oil, gas, electricity.
• too much coal produced meant lower prices, which meant lower wages, resulting in job cuts and then mine closures.
• cotton, farming and textiles all suffered.

Immigration (social isolation)

• eighteen fifty till nineteen fourteen, fourty million people moved to America.
• in the nineteen twenties america had hundreds of different nationalities
• Desire to keep america for WASPS White Anglo Saxon Protestants
• there was a fear of immigration, immigrants would take american jobs leading to the spread of communism

immigration law nineteen seventeen:

• all immigrants had to be able to read English

Emergency quota act nineteen twenty one

• limited the number of immigrants to three hundred and fifty seven thousand per year, people coming to america could not exceed the three % of people already there, helped to keep eastern Europeans out.

National origins act nineteen twenty four

• Reduced to two % of people there

nineteen twenty nine immigration limit

• one hundred and fifty thousand allowed and no immigrants from asia.

Red Scare:

• Americans feared communism. feared communists would ruin their 'free' lifestyle.
• red scare was the idea that immigrants were communists
• september 1920, a bomb exploded outside wall street stock exchange. 38 died and 400 injured
• American newspapers called it an 'Act of War' Italian anarchists were blamed.
• 10,000 left wing supporters were arrested during the 'palmer raids'. if any were immigrants they were deported.
• Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927 for robbery, despite suspect evidence, it was just the…