USA test

movies - roaring twenties

movies - roaring twenties

1929 - 100 million tickets sold each week

All films silent untl 1927 - 'talkies'

Stars - Rudolph Valentino

Dance - roaring twenties

Charleston - fast paced jazz dance

Influeced womens dress - flappers

Jazz was popular for blacks and whites

Louis Armstrong - Jazz star

Changes for women - roaring twenties

Jobs - 20% of total workforce were women

Rights - 1920, 19th amendment gave women right to vote

Lifestyle - flappers rebelled against tradition, short hair, smoking, no chaperones

Limit to change for women - roaring twenties

Jobs - only 12% of married women had jobs at the end of the 1920s

Rights - only 2 women in House of Representatives in 1928

Lifestyle - only wealthy women could make changes

Why economic boom? - Effects of WW1

Doesn't join war unitl 1917 - less impact

Average income for farmers increased by 30%

Factory production increased by 35%

Sells goods to Europe such as weapons and medical supplies

Why economic boom? - Advertising and credit

By 1929 - $2bn spent on advertisement - 600,000 people employed

1919 - first credit agency set up

75% of cars bought using hire purchase

problems - roaring twenties

1/3 of pop lived below poverty line

farmers affected - price of goods fell due to overproduction- fell by 50% in 1921
less demand from Europe for farm products

jobs lost - 200,000 jobs lost between 1923 and 1929 for miners

Attitudes and policies towards immigration

1921 Emergency Quota Act - limits immigration outside the West to 357,000 per year
1924 National Origins Act - lowered to 164,000 (reduced again to 150,000 in 1929)

Fear of communism - Russian Revolution 1917

Immigration numbers went from 1.2 million(1914) to 280,000(1929) - no longer an 'open door'

Red scare

Outbreak amongst industrial workers due to communism in 1919

3,600 strikes across USA
40 mail bombs adressed to important polititians - industrialists found by postal services

Palmer Raids - General Palmer

Set up General Intelligence Division(later part of FBI) under John Hoover

Spied on radical groups - 600 radicals deported from USA

2nd January 1920 - raids in 33 cities

Sacco and Vanzetti

15th April 1920 - two italian immigrans commited an armed robbery
Trial held on May 1921 - jurors feared attacks from supporters of S and V

both found guilty and sentenced to death by excecution - 1927

Black Americans

Jim Crow Laws - segregated whites from blacks, only in 'Deep South' (Florida, Tennessee, history of slavery)

Two groups existed in northern states to improve black rights - NAACP and U.N.I.A

De Jure - discrimination through law (south)
De facto - discrimination through attitudes (north)

KKK (Ku Klux Klan)

Shut down in 1871 by government - restarted by William Simmons

More than 5 million members by 1925

Methods: lynching, boycotting businesses, feathering

Monkey Trial

Modernism vs Fundamentalism

Anti-Evolution League of America campaigned against Darwinism
Butler Act in Tennessee in 1925 - made Darwinism illegal and $500 fine

10th July - William Jennings (fundamentalist) vs Clarence Darrow (agnostic) and John Scopes

Prohibition

18th Amendment - 1919, banning making, sale and transportation of alcohol

Anti Saloon league - 1893, led by women

Pressure from employers - Henry Ford against alcohol

Most brewers were German

Prohibition - pros and cons

Pros:
Izzy Einstein and Moe SMith seized 5 million bottles of alchohol in the 1920s

18 states banned alchohol by 1918 - 13 totally dry

Cons:
Government lost $11 billion in tax by 1931

Bootlegging - smuggling of alchohol from abroad

Speaksies set up

Al Capone and organised crimes

Controlled Chicago in the 1920s - owned speakesies and controlled the mayor
Earned $105 million

Seen as 'robin hood' - generous to the community

Valentines day Massacre 1929- 7 killed as Capone tryimg to protect land from Bugs Moran

Cause of depression

Wall Street Crash - Octber 24th, 1929
Impact of Speculation - people panic buying and seeling shares - 13 million shares dumped on Black Tuesday(29 oct)

Overproduction and underconsumption - 70% of Americans living on less than $2500 a year

Too many people 'buying on the margin'

Falling income of farmers - overproduction and falling demand of products - 1/3 of USA population were farmers

Concequences of Depression

Share prices crash - shared had lost $26 billion in value by mid 1929

Banks struggled with liquidity - they had no money in the bank

Hoover's reaction to the Great Depression

Criticised for not doing enough - due to his beliefs of volunteerism (government not involved in people's lives) self-reliance and laissez faire

· created jobs through puplic works
federal funding was very low - around $210 million in 1930, other states - $2billion spent

· Hawley-Smoot Tariff 1930 raised import duties on foreign food by 40% - to encourage americans to buy local products, instead slowed down international trade as other countries imposed their own tarrifs

Impact of Great Depression - People

High unemployment - 1929: 3% of workforce; 1933: 25%

· In 1932, 20,000 children in New York City did not have enough food

· Suicide rate increased by 14% in the years 1929-1931

· Hoovervilles developed - no running water or basic facilities

Impact of Great Depression - Banking

· Of 25,000 banks in the USA, 9,000 closed between 1930 and 1933.

9 million Americans lost $2.5 billion

Impact of Great Depression - Bonus march

1924 = law passed by Congress to give WW1 veterans a bonus of $625 for wages lost during fighting.

· 20,000 Bonus Marchers marched to Washington DC in 1932 and camped outside Congress and waited for their bonuses.

· 5,000 veterans stayed despite having a deadline to leave the camp

· 28th July 1932 = police attempt to move marchers - 2 veterans killed. Hoover sent in the army. 100 injured and one child killed. Hoover reputation destroyed