1920 Lecture 1: Politics and Economy
The Roaring Twenties actually began with an economic sob; the transition to peace after World War II was an adaptation of labor unions difficult, that had grown stronger during the war fought to maintain their power by The largest series of strikes in 1919 a general strike hits of all workers in Seattle and strike all of American industry of steel touched hundreds of thousands of workers and consumers, and the radical rhetoric used by some leaders of the workers seemed the prospect of a fully fledged class warfare from just two years after a successful communist revolution in Russia, fighting the wave of strikes in 1919 proved deeply alarming for most Americans; employers have stood firm against the demands of workers, and most major strikes, including strikes in Seattle and large steel collapsed when workers returned to work under heavy threat of violence.
The labor unrest and the difficulties of the transition to production in peacetime recession caused a short but strong 1920-1921, the unemployment rate exceeding 11 percent briefly 12 However, the situation soon became around, thanks in large part trade Secretary and future President Herbert Hoover's success in convincing major industrial leaders to voluntarily raise wages and production to take the entire economy of its slump in 1922, the economy was more robust, a pattern he would follow more or less continuously until the great crash of 1929.
An important result of the wave of strikes failed in 1919, however, was a strong reaction by the government and businesses against radicals in the labor and political militancy of unions attribute the post-war communist plot, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer encouraged J. Edgar Hoover aggressive young officer of the Office of the FBI investigations s today to stop thousands of radicals in the country These police actions combined with private vigilante attacks such as the deadly attack 1919 American Legion against the industrial workers of the world dining Centralia, Washington has decimated the radical groups of American and made the safe decade for free-market capitalism.
The 1920s reputation as the epitome of wretched excess may have been unduly biased by the memorable devastating portrait of life among the plutocrats provided by the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Roaring Twenties but were, in fact, great time to be rich Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, himself a very large investment banker successfully lowered the tax rate on the marginal income for the wealthiest Americans from 73 to just 25 as investors enjoyed one of the greatest bull markets in US history.
Meanwhile, the explosion of new mass production industries fueled by the spread of technologies such as electricity and the assembly line provided many opportunities for profitable investment and the stock market began its ascent famous Industrial Average peaked in 1929 Dow Jones to a six times higher value in 1921 for less than one percent of the American people owned shares, fabulous returns in the stock market directly benefited the rich as a result, share the wealth of America controlled by the richest of the rich has grown rapidly perhaps the highest level in US history We say maybe because good statistical measures of inequality of wealth gift t exist for the period before the First World war; it is possible that income inequality at the top of the Golden Age at the turn of the 20th century was higher than that of the Roaring Twenties, and income inequality 1920 may also soon go hand in hand with that of today In all cases, the Roaring Twenties offered a classic case of the rich getting richer much richer.
However, the fantastic wealth accumulated by the rich over the decade should not obscure the real gains and sustained efforts by the city and working middle class despite the near collapse of the labor movement 1919-1921, real wages for workers urban rose about 20 in the 1920s Their wage gains have been stretched even further because of the lower costs of wonderful new mass production of products of new technologically advanced products such as cars, washing machines and radios have become much more affordable that manufacturers have mastered the assembly line technology developed by Henry Ford car factories in Detroit Ford Model T by far the best-selling car in America in the first three decades of the 20th century, cost nearly 1,000 when it was introduced in 1908 eventually cost model T dropped cha that year, so that in 1927 the year he was replaced by the more modern model A costs less than $ 300 Ford eventually sold more than 15 million Model Ts; in the 1920s, the car ownership rate increased by a car five Americans to five.
While the automotive industry remains the emblematic example other mass production goods industries have followed a similar trajectory during the crazy years at the time of the great crisis of 1929, ordinary people in cities and villages America could reasonably be able to own a car, a washing machine, a refrigerator, a radio and a host of other modern amenities which considerably reduced household work and improve the quality of life goods that an earlier generation would have been affordable only to the very wealthy or who has not even exist widely disseminated by the company the 1920s were a great time to be middle class, too.
The demand of the multitude of new products that have emerged in the 1920s was pumped by a new industry, advertising has developed new methods to entice buyers want new products through new media such as radio the minstrel-show radio sitcom, Amos n Andy became a smash hit around the country sponsored by Pepsodent toothpaste through these sponsorships, the advertising industry has grown in harmony with emerging industries of mass culture in particular network radio and Hollywood movies the emergence of distribution and proliferation networks linked rendering studio cinemas possible the development of a mass culture in a robust nationwide for the first time, a worker of Detroit factory, docker San Francisco, and a domestic Birmingham could expect to receive the same radio programs and watch the same s films and smoke the same cigarettes and use the same toothpaste promoted on screen and radio.
However, the prosperity of the 1920s was not universal In 1920, nearly half the nation's population still lived in rural areas, depend on agriculture for survival and the Roaring Twenties were derogatory to farmers of America the decade began with the end of a period of great prosperity world war, disrupting agricultural production of much of Europe, had created a huge demand and high prices for agricultural products in the world full of farmers in America, as other areas that hadn t been transformed into lined trench combat zones, increased production accordingly and reaped great profits However, the end of the war led to the resumption of normal production in Europe and suddenly the world is facing a huge glut of agricultural products, without buyers market.
From 1920 to 1921, agricultural prices fell at a catastrophic rate The price of wheat, basic culture of the Great Plains, fell by almost half; the price of cotton, still the lifeblood of the South, fell by three-quarters of farmers, many of whom had taken out loans to increase the area and buy new efficient agricultural machinery such as tractors suddenly could not make their payments; throughout the decade, farm seizures and failures of rural banks increased at an alarming rate farm income remained stable, with the wealth of rural Americans fall far behind their urban counterparts Rural electrification has increased at a pace snail, with over 90 percent of US farms power still missing in the 1930s, the proportion of farms with access to a phone fell into reality during the Roaring Twenties.
There is no great exaggeration to say that for rural America, the Great Depression began in 1929 but not in 1920, and continued a generation The roaring prosperity of America's cities in the 1920s is deprivation of rural life all the more painful, however the gap between rich and poor in the 1920s was the gap between city and country, and economic resentments generated by this division has helped fuel a powerful traditionalist reaction against modernity, most menacingly by the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan nationwide.
boom End The Great Depression and the Great Depression.
Urban America has started a long time to share the pain felt in the countryside at the end of 1929, when the stock market crash suddenly caused billions of dollars of assets to evaporate so that the crash itself directly affected the small minority wealthy Americans who owned stock at the time, reductions that result in industrial production caused a slowdown in the unprecedented nationwide in its depth and length of the descent of the Roaring Twenties in the Great depression was stiff.
Economy in 1920, economy of the 1920s, the Great Crash of 1929.