Revision Diary
Revision Diary
The Promised Land? The USA in the 1920s
Mass production (e.g. Ford and the motor industry); consumer boom; hire purchase, purchase of shares; stock market boom. Continuation of poverty (e.g. farmers); Afro-Americans. Ku Klux Klan and racism; Prohibition; organised crime, e.g. Al Capone. Developments in entertainment e.g. Hollywood, jazz. The flappers.
Make sure you have detailed factual knowledge about AND HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT the following issues and topics:
1. The 1920s Economy.
and that you are able to explain: 3. WHY did the American economy boom in the 1920s? 4. WHY did the Americans introduce prohibition? [A CRIME]
HOW FAR DID THE USA ACHIEVE PROSPERITY IN THE 1920s?
The 1920s Economy
Overview In the 1920s the annual Gross National Product of the USA increased 40% and the income per person 27%. Key features of the boom were mass production (e.g. Ford motor cars), a consumer boom (including buying things on hire purchase and buying) a stock market boom. However, at the same time many Americans did not share in the prosperity, especially farmers, coal and textiles workers, and Black Americans. Facts ● Boom [ACCESS] ▫ Automobiles: in the 1920s the number of motor cars owned by Americans rose from 8 million to 23 million; by 1925 Ford were producing a car every 10 seconds. ▫ Cycle of prosperity: more sales = more production = more wages = more spending = more sales…. ▫ ‘Consumer durables’ for the home such as fridges, vacuum cleaners, record players/ electrical goods – number of telephone doubled/ number of radios increased from 60,000 to 10 million PLUS the invention of bakelite (the first plastic), cellophane and nylon. ▫ Entertainment Industry: boomed (Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin, ‘talkies’ and cinemas, jazz clubs and speakeasies) ▫ Stock Exchange: there was a ‘Bull market’ (rising share prices) on Wall Street. ▫ Skyscrapers – e.g. the Empire State Building ● Poverty [FLOP] ▫ Farming - falling prices. In 1929 farmers’ wages were only 40% of the national average, half a million farmers a year were going bankrupt. Rural areas did not have electricity. ▫ Low wage earners - inequalities of wealth; the top 5% of the population earned a third of the income, while 40% were below the poverty line. ▫ Old Industries – declining industries in textiles and coal (being replaced by oil and gas); in 1929 a coal miners’ wages were only 33% of the national average. There were 2 million employed throughout the 1920s. ▫ Poor Black Americans - 1 million black farm workers lost their jobs in the 1920s – Black workers were stuck in low-pay, menial jobs – many people in New York's black Harlem district had to sleep in shifts, going to bed when others went off to work. ‘Rent parties’ on Saturday nights, to raise money to pay the landlord on Sunday.
WHY did the American economy boom in the 1920s?(PAT GOT CASH) a. Population growing rapidly increased demand for consumer goods. b. Abundant raw materials – esp. coal, iron and oil – allowed cheap production c. Tariffs – protected American industry from competition
d. Government –relaxed regulations and reduced taxes (this is called ‘laissez faire’) e. Opportunities of New Technology (e.g. electrical goods, radio, film, nylon) f. Techniques of production– Ford’s Assembly line method, and Frederick Taylor’s time and motion
g. Cycle of prosperity – increased prosperity increased prosperity. h. Advertising (e.g. billboards, radio commercials,) i. Sales methods (e.g. commercial travellers, mail order, chain stores such as Woolworths) j. Hire Purchase – instalments allowed people to buy now, pay later.
'THE ROARING TWENTIES'. IS THIS A GOOD DESCRIPTION OF THE USA IN THE 1920s?
Overview
The 1920s were the time of a great social boom (cinema, jazz,
dances) – especially for women (work, the vote, flappers) and Black
Americans (famous Black Americans, Harlem Renaissance, NAACP).
There were many good things about the 1920s.
However, at the same time there were many bad things - the
1920s were a time of racism, prohibition and organised crime.
Positives
●
Social Boom
▫ Cinema: by 1930, 100 million
Americans went to the movies every week.e.g. stars such as Charlie
Chaplin and Clara Bow (the ‘It’ girl); the first ‘talkie’ (The Jazz
Singer with Al Jolson); colour films; Disney cartoons (Mickey
Mouse).
▫ Jazz:
The first jazz record was made in 1917 by the Dixieland Jazz Band. Stars
such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Black musicians were seen
as wild and exciting.
▫ Dances: e.g. the Charleston and the ‘Black Bottom’ (first
recorded by Jelly Roll Morton and named after a Black neighbourhood in
Detroit).
●
Women
▫ Work: in the 1920s the number
of working women increased 25%, especially teachers and secretaries.
▫ Vote: In 1920 the 19th Amendment gave women the vote.
▫ Flappers: short skirts and hair, and the flat-chested 'garconne'
look. They wore men's clothes, smoked, drank, used make-up, danced wildly
in jazz clubs and were sexually active.
●
Black Americans
▫ Famous Black Americans such as the sprinter Jesse Owens,
the baseball player Jackie Robinson, the dancer Josephine Baker.
▫ Harlem Renaissance of jazz musucians, but also Black
architects, novelists, poets and painters who believed in 'Artistic Action'
- by proving they were equal to Whites.
▫ NAACP campaigned for Black Rights.
Negatives
●
Racism
▫ Immigration laws: e.g. Quotas, the Red Scare and the
Sacco-Vanzetti case.
▫ Ku Klux Klan:
had 5 million members by 1925. They wore white sheets and
hoods, marched with burning crosses and talked in a secret language called 'Klonversations'.
They tortured and lynched mainly Black Americans, but also Jews, Catholics
and 'immoral' people such as alcoholics, while the police turned a blind
eye.
▫ ‘Jim Crow Laws’ in the southern states prevented Black
Americans from mixing with whites ('segregation'), and denied them civil
rights and the vote.
●
Prohibition
▫ In 1919, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution made the
manufacture, transport or sale of alcoholic drinks illegal. The Volstead
Act declared any drink more than 5% proof 'alcoholic'.
▫ In 1929, 50 million litres of illegal alcohol were
discovered and destroyed.
▫ Selling alcohol ‘went underground’ – speakeasies (illegal
bars), moonshine (illegally-made alcohol), bootlegging (smuggling alcohol to
sell). It is sometimes asserted that there were more speakeasies than
there had been saloons (not true, but there were 200,000 speakeasies in
1933).
●
Organised Crime
▫ Flourished during prohibition – gangsters
ran the speakeasies and
bootlegging, protection rackets, prostitution and drug-running, and bribed
police, judges and even Senators.
▫ The
most famous gangster was Al Capone (had an army of 700 mobsters, and
murdered more than 200 opponents – the most famous incident was the St
Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929, when 'torpedoes' from Capone's gang shot
dead 7 members of Bugs Moran's gang).
▫ The most famous lawman was Eliot Ness (and his
‘Untouchables’ – un-bribable policemen)
a.
Anti-Saloon
League
campaigned that drink hurt families because men wasted money on beer.
b.
Christian
organisations
such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
c.
Rural
Americans were
shocked by flappers and speakeasies.
d.
Isolationists
claimed that most of the beer drunk in America was brewed in Germany.
e.
Madness,
crime, poverty and illness were seen as caused by alcohol – many ‘signed the
pledge’ not to drink.
f.
Easy Street,
a comic film by
Charlie Chaplin, showed how drink damaged people.
|
Revision Focus This is a Paper 2 topic, so you need to have factual KNOWLEDGE IN DEPTH but also a degree of understanding which will allow you in the exam to write MULTI-CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS of the key issues. Links
e-books on the Prosperity and Poverty and the
The Roaring Twenties
|
