Theme 4 Timeline

  • 1913 The Federal Reserve Board (The Fed) was set up to regulate banking

  • 1928 the Rose Bowl baseball stadium seats were enlarged from 57,000 to 76,000

  • 1935 Roosevelt set up the Rural Electrification Administration to get electricity to rural areas. In 4 years they ran over 100,000 miles of new power lines

  • 1937 Roosevelt wanted to balance the books so cut federal spending which led to unemployment rising by 3.4 million in a year

  • 1938 Labour legislation passed in 1938 which stopped children under 14 from working in most non-agricultural jobs

  • Fair Labor Standards Act set a legal maximum of 40 hour work week and set a minimum wage and overtime rules

  • 1939 Average wage was 1100 dollars

  • Farmers earned around a quarter of the average white man’s wage at $298.32 a year

  • 1940 There was the first pressurised compartment aeroplane

  • 50% people cooked by gas, 5% cooked by electricity and 0.5% Americans had no way of cooking at all

  • 42% had central heating, 11% had no way of heating their homes at all

  • 44% had an electric fridge, 27% didn’t even have an ice box

  • A flaw of the New Deal was that pensions and unemployment insurance only became available in 1940

  • 2.6% had no toilet but 70% had running water in their house. Non white renters were the least likely to have this

  • Post WW2 There was an increased demand for child centred goods like nappies and toys

  • 1946 The Office of Price Administration sut down which caused an initial 25% rise in prices for 2 weeks

  • The USA were the world’s wealthiest nation

  • 1952 $169 billion dollars was in circulation

  • 1953 29% of the world’s manufactured goods export

  • 1954 There were 3800 drive ins

  • 1955 Disneyland opened in Anaheim Southern California

  • The birth rate was at 4 million and only dropped in 65

  • Davy Crockett caps made $100 million from the television character

  • 1957 Nappy sales were at $50 million

  • 1958 56,000 motels around the country

  • 60s The age between the rich and the poor became more marked

  • 1960 Amount of people without a car 21%

  • White man’s family income 5800 a year, black family income 3230 income a year

  • $215 billion dollars in circulation

  • 1963 Inflation was stable, corporation profits were high, the stock market had bounced back but unemployment was still at 5.7%

  • 1969 Average wage 7000

  • 1970 5 million Americans went abroad

  • Economic Stablisation Act gave Nixon the power to act on wages, prices, rents and interest rates to stabilise the economy

  • 1973 Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries supported Palestine so when US supported Israel it put up prices by 70% and this caused an oil crisis in US with rationing, long queues and speed limits

  • 13% of the world’s manufactured goods export. They were becoming more of a borrower nation

  • 1978 The National Consumer Co-operative bank. Set up to give low interest loans to small local groups

  • The Airline Deregulation Act ended the federal control over airlines which meant that airlines could lower their prices and cut services

  • 1980 Amount of people without a car 12%

  • The Rural Development Fund was set up by Carter and provided help to farmers by giving low interest loans

  • The attendence at baseball games shrank as people could both watch it on tv and even the poorest could listen on the radio rather than pay for a ticket

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