1920s Study Guide

Henry Ford

American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods.

Mass production

A manufacturing process where goods are produced in large quantities using standardized designs, machinery, and assembly line techniques.

Model T

The vehicle that was one of the first mass production vehicles, allowing Ford to achieve his aim of manufacturing the universal car.

Assembly line

A manufacturing process that allows for finished and almost finished parts to be installed in sequence to automate and reduce the time needed to assemble a finished good.

Consumer revolution

An increased supply of consumer goods from England that became available in the eighteenth century.

Installment buying

The process of purchasing an asset over time.

Bull market

A sustained rise in stock prices over an extended period of time.

Buying on margin

Occurs when an investor buys an asset by borrowing the balance from a bank or broker.

Herbert Hoover

The 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933.

Calvin Coolidge

The 30th president of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929.

Dawes Plan

A report on German reparations for World War I.

Modernism

An early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and subjective experience.

Fundamentalism

A form of a religion that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

Scopes Trial

A significant trial in 1925 that debated the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Prohibition

A nationwide ban on the sale and import of alcoholic beverages that lasted from 1920 to 1933.

Eighteenth Amendment

Established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States.

Bootlegger

A person who makes or sells alcoholic liquor illegally.

Babe Ruth

The greatest baseball player in the history of the sport.

Charles Lindbergh

The first man to successfully fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.

Flapper

A young woman known for wearing short dresses and bobbed hair and for embracing freedom from traditional societal constraints.

Louis Armstrong

The leading trumpeter and one of the most influential artists in jazz history.

Bessie Smith

Blues and jazz singer from the Harlem Renaissance known as the Empress of the Blues.

Harlem Renaissance

An intellectual and cultural revival of African-American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s.