limits of the boom

farmers

During WW1, farmers’ profits rose due to increase of demand from Europe. However, during the 1920s, problems arose for farmers like: overproduction, pests, machinery replacing workers and unhelpful government policies

  • 31.6 mil living in rural farming areas in 1920

  • Prohibition cut demand for grain

  • Synthetic fibres cut demand for cotton

  • Use of tractors cut demand for horses and their food

  • Mechanisation improved crop yields but meant farms started producing too much food

  • 65% of farms were operating at a loss

  • Geographical divide

    • N.E and far W. had higher average incomes in 1929 than S.E

    • Industrial development concentrated in N.E (New York, Pennsylvania) and mid west (Michigan, Illinois)

    • Few large cities, mines and travel networks outside of industrial areas

Overproduction:

  • WW1 lead to agricultural demand from Europe that dropped afterwards

  • Pests damaged cotton

  • Prohibition caused wheat and barley to be overproduced, causing farms to suffer losses

Technology:

  • Machinery like combine harvester increased productivity but decreased employment

Government policies:

  • Fordney-Mccumber act didn’t fix overproduction problems and farm products fell in price

Sharecropping and great migration:

  • 90% of African Americans living in the South, 83% in rural areas

  • Sharecroppers farmed on land and received a portion of the harvest, 75% of black farmers were tenants like sharecroppers

  • Sharecroppers were usually indebted to farm owner and stayed each year to pay it off

  • WW1 created employment opportunities and black population began to move north to seek out new places with farming and manufacturing opportunities, to escape poverty and discrimination

women

  • More women employed than before, in clerical, sales and domestic roles (25% increase in women working)

  • Number of college attendants fell by 5%, women still expected to be at home

  • 1928 — senate: no women, house: 2 women

It is important not to consider women as one group, some experienced changes in the 1920s that others did not and lived very different lives to each other. E.g rich women vs poor women, urban vs rural women and black vs white women. However, overall changes and improvements to women’s lives could be seen.

  • Social:

    • Divorce was made easier, number of them doubled

    • New work opportunities (e.g secretary, typist, telephone operator) allowed for more independent lives for women and shifted perception of working women

    • Sheppard-towner act 1921 gave federal aid to states in order to develop infant and maternity health programmes, especially in rural areas, lead to a decrease in deaths related to childbirth

  • Political

    • Exceptional women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Belle Moskowitz became advisors in politics

    • 1919: 19th amendment gave women the right to vote and have influence over political decisions, it meant that politicians now had to create policies that would appeal to women too

    • New positions in political parties for women, 145 women had seats in state legislature by 1928

  • Economic

    • Cosmetics industry went from $17 mil to $200 mil by 1929

    • Electricity and mass production allowed for labour saving home devices, 160 mil goods sold a year, which helped make housewives’ lives easier

    • Women began buying and selling on the stock market

However, there were also downsides to these improvements/ways in which lives for women didn’t improve as a result of the economic boom.

Social:

  • Women were still expected to focus on family

  • 5% decrease in women getting degrees during 1920s

  • Women’s Christian temperance movement and other organisations promoted prohibition, which did not eliminate problems related to alcohol (e.g addiction and violence, especially in the home)

  • No change resulting from flapper lifestyle was seen in rural areas

Political:

  • Only 2 out of 435 delegates in house of representatives were women in 1928

  • Women never organised voting together or used voting power to influence policies in their favour

Economic:

  • Women worked menial, low paid jobs; 70,000 domestic servants

  • Only 150 female dentists and <100 female accountants

  • Mississippi 1928: $8.34 wage for women (4x less than men) and $5.70 for black women

economic problems

Get rich quick schemes:

  • Ponzi scheme (50% return on investment within 90 days) and others schemes which encouraged investors to find more investors were scams to take people’s money and barely compensate them back

  • Florida investors persuaded to invest in property developments built on swamp land

  • people lost money and were worried to invest in anything, confidence in businesses = high value stocks, so it caused stocks to fall and affected the whole economy

Playing the stock market:

  • People bought shares to sell them quickly for profits

  • Buying on the margin — only having to pay a small percentage of stock value

  • No regulation on who could buy shares, even companies could

Banking:

  • Federal reserve board kept official interest rates low to encourage lending

  • 30,000 small banks, sometimes they didn’t have enough reserves to pay lenders and if they went bust then people lost their money

  • No regulation on what banks could do, could lead to corruption

International debt:

  • Reparations paid by Germany was reduced and time for payment was extended, Us banks were encouraged to over-invest in Germany (e.g Bavarian village that asked for $125,000 loan to build a swimming pool received $3 mil)

  • If international debt wasn’t paid, banks wouldn’t have enough to loan people in the US, due to over-investment

  • Countries in debt also couldn’t afford to trade with the US

immigrants and minorities

American dream — anyone (no matter background or class) can be successful and reach upward mobility through sacrifice, risk taking and hard work. Many people moved to the US in hopes of reaching it, and for many other reasons.

  • During 1880-1914, flood of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe

    • Over 2.3 mil Russian and Polish Jews

    • 4 mil catholic Italians by 1920

  • Old migrants from Britain, Germany and Scandinavia felt threatened because they were mainly protestant and thought immigrant would equal changes to their lifestyle and culture

  • ‘Nativist’ protests against groups, ‘know nothing’ party that attacked Irish immigrants in 1849 who had arrived after potato famine

  • Chinese exclusion act of 1882 due to Chinese labourers in California after civil war

  • Immigrants was favourable to fuel economy with workers but were viewed negatively for being different and thought to want to take over (i.e Bolshevik revolution)

Immigration began being restricted through legislation during the 1900s:

  • 1917 immigration act — introduced literacy test to make sure people entering the USA had a basic grasp of English

    • Reduced the amount of immigrants that could enter the country from non-English speaking places (seen as strange/not trusted for speaking different languages)

  • 1921 emergency quota act — limited immigration to 3% of the number of each nationality in the USA according to the 1910 census (quota was 357,000 per year)

    • Favoured immigrants from Britain and Western Europe

  • 1924 Johnson read act — reduced quota to 150,000 per year and restricted Southern and Eastern European immigration, as well as stopping Asian immigration entirely

    • Bias against certain nationalities

    • Hispanic workers were exempt

Difficulties for African American and Native Americans:

  • Native Americans concentrated on ‘reservations’ far from cities that were growing in industry and wealth

  • African Americans living in poor, rural south

  • Discriminatory laws and KKK violence

  • Northern ghettos in Harlem

  • Poor education, leading to low paid jobs