Studied by 14 people
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
