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You¶ll need to revise all of this for your Paper 1 exam.

- Start with this excellent site«

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/usa/1920srev1.shtml

²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²-

Finally, read through the notes below«

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p uoodrow uilson President of the USA during and after uu1

p USA divided about its role in the world

p uilson felt there would be more chance of peace if USA joined the League of Nations
and involved itself with Europe

p Ñost in the US felt that too many US soldiers had been killed so they wanted a µreturn
to normalcy¶ ± life before the war, alone. They won.

º  

p 4ndustry

-Lots of factories, jobs and therefore money

-Overall the output of American industry doubled in the 1920¶s

p Transport

-Ford motor cars. 4n 1919 9 million Americans owned motor cars but by 1929 26 million did

-passenger aircraft grew so that by 1930 new aircraft companies flew 162,000 flights a year
(as compared with virtually none in 1918).

-Government road building programme µfederal road act of 1916¶ during the 1920¶s the
number of roads in the US doubled, which provided lots of jobs and increased transport links
between cities

-new roads gave rise to a new truck industry 1 million in 1919 3.5 m in 1929

p åities

-Skyscrapers sprung up in many cities in the USA

-There was more building in the boom period of the 1920¶s than at any other time in US
history

p üome life

-4n 1918 only a few homes had electricity but by 1929 almost all urban homes had it

-Radios

-Telephones

-Fridges.

h


p 4n general farmers lost out on the economic µboom¶

p Total US farm income was $22 billion in 1919 but by 1928 was just $13 billion

p Europe imported far less food from Europe after the war. Europe was poor after the
war and also the USA had imposed heavy taxes on imported goods.

p Population of the USA was falling so there was less demand for food

p åanadian Farmers could produce foods such as wheat much more cheaply that US
farmers

p From 1900 to 1920 the US farming industry had modernized with new technology,
fertilizers and more farmers farming larger areas of land. As a result, by 1920 they
were already producing more than Americans could buy

p No one wanted to buy the foods produced by farmers so hundreds of farms went
bankrupt along with many banks in rural areas

p Some farmers survived or did well during the 1920¶s but ÑOST farmers suffered

p Almost half of all Americans lived in the countryside and most worked on farms in
one way or another.

p Over 60 million people were badly affected by the problems with the Farming
industry

p Three quarters of a million people became unemployed as a result of problems in
farming industry

p Ñany African Americans and other poor workers with no land were forced to travel to
cities to look for work ± most found no work when they got there

º
 

p åinema

Ñovies were silent with the most famous film stars being Buster Keaton, Gloria Swanson,
Douglas Fairbanks and åharlie åhaplin. There were a lot of films made about µit¶ (sex) and
male and female actors and actresses became µsex symbols.¶ The newer µtalkies¶ were made
from 1927 onwards. The üollywood suburb of Los Angeles started to develop a film industry
and the year-round good weather meant that it was possible to produce loads of µmovies¶.
uith the economy prospering and a variety of inventions making life easier in some ways,
people had more time and money to spend on leisure. By the end of the 1920¶s a hundred
million cinema tickets were being sold each uEEK ± the same number are sold each YEAR
nowadays in Britain!

p Ñusic

The popularity of the Radio grew massively in the 1920¶s. 4n 1920 60,000 people owned a
radio but by 1929 10 million had bought sets. Jazz and Blues both became popular during the
1920¶s and 30¶s and the 20¶s became known as the µJazz Age¶ New dances such as the
åharleston were very popular and µflappers¶ young women, with short skirts and expensive
tastes, became more common.

p Sport

Baseball became very popular with teams such as the Boston Red Sox and New York
Yankees making a fortune. Al åapone was famously a baseball fan. Boxing also became very
popular and many went to watch games in cities across the US.

p Leisure time

The average working week dropped from 47.4 to 44.2 hours and so workers had more time as
well as seeing their incomes rise.

u 

p Flappers ± Young, middle class, wealthy, sexy and flirtatious, shorter skirts, drinking
alcohol and smoking, going out without a chaperone, dancing the åharleston to Jazz
music in clubs ± this was the fashionable image of the µflapper¶

p Sex outside of marriage became more common and since the war, sex had become
much less of a taboo subject for everyday conversation.

p There was a divide between rich and poor women as their roles and what was
demanded of them by society had not really changed for most women at this time.

!
 
 
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p The Ku Klux Klan was formed in the 1850¶s by ex soldiers of the American åivil
uar ± they wanted to maintain µwhite supremacy¶, control over African Americans.
Their film µ The birth of a nation¶ was made in 1915 and made them look popular and
heroic ± president uoodrow uilson said that he thought it was really excellent in
public which meant that the KKK got more popular support

p Lynching was commonplace ± angry mobs of whites would kidnap, attack and then
execute black men and sometimes black women and children to µkeep them in their
place¶ and make sure that black people felt scared and therefore didn¶t try to demand
human rights and equality

p By 1924 the KKK had 4.5 million members

p Ñany African Americans moved from the south to the northern cities to get away
from all the abuse and race hatred, although many found that in the northern cities
they were forced into all black areas called ghettos ± they were unable to live
elsewhere because of violent racism and harassment by whites.

p uEB Du Bois set up the National Association for the Advancement of åoloured
People (NAAåP) in 1909 and by 1919 it had around 90,000 members. 4t campaigned
to end segregation laws, end lynching and achieve greater political and social equality
between blacks and whites.

p After 1925 the KKK went into decline ± its µGrand uizard¶ David Stephenson was
convicted of a violent sexual assault and in order to avoid harsher penalties he
cooperated with police to tell them about the corruption of many other KKK members
± this destroyed the Klan¶s reputation

p Ñarcus Garvey set up the Universal Negro 4mprovement Association (UN4A) which
gave honours to individuals promoting, setting up and supporting black businesses.
UN4A had over 1 million members at its height in 1921.

p NAT4 E AÑER4åANS ± forced to live on reservations of poor quality land with few
if any services, Native Americans were marginalized by white America. Ñost Native
Americans were living in extreme poverty and had much lower life expectancies than
whites.

p Special boarding schools for Native American children tried to µassimilate¶ them so
that they forgot their own culture, beliefs and heritage.

p 4n 1924 Native Americans were given US åitizenship and allowed to vote

p 4n 1928 the Ñerrian report said that there should be a widespread improvement to
laws governing Native Americans and these were finally introduced in 1934 as part of
Roosevelt¶s µNew Deal¶

ÿ" c  

p America watched in fear as Russia became åommunist after the Russian Revolution
of 1917

p There were lots of immigrants coming to American from Eastern Europe and Russia
at the time and it was feared that these immigrants would bring their åommunist ideas
with them. People were scared of the µreds¶ or µcommunist immigrants¶ which was
called the µred scare¶

p 4n 1919 400,000 workers went on strike and there were race riots in 25 towns ± many
felt that this was µproof¶ that the µreds¶ had been stirring up revolution and communist
ideas

p 4n 1919 many bombs were sent to prominent (rich) Americans and some went off in
various places by radicals

p 10,000 people known to have radical political beliefs, most of whom were
immigrants, Trade Unionists, åatholics, Jews, were rounded up and threatened with
deportation with very little evidence or proof that they supported or were responsible
for the bombings or strikes

p J. Edgar üoover was the clerk responsible for this round of arrests and threats (he has
become famous as a very evil character) and he was under orders from Ñitchell
Palmer the US Attorney General

p Palmer eventually lost popularity after he predicted a red revolution in 1920 that
didn¶t happen ± only 556 cases of the hundreds of thousands of people arrested on
suspicion of being µred¶ had any basis in fact

 $% 

p Anarchists arrested in 1920 for armed robbery as part of the µRed Scare.¶ The
evidence against them was very shaky and a lot of racist slurs were used against them
as µevidence¶ in the trial because they were 4talian Americans and because they were
anarchists who didn¶t believe in the capitalist system

p They were eventually executed in 1927 to a storm of protest across the US and the
world because of the unjust nature of the trial

p The Sacco and anzetti trial became a public demonstration of anti-immigrant
feelings

ÿ" &' (ÿ



p A court case. On one side the anti evolution lobby argued that åharles Darwin¶s
theory of evolution shouldn¶t be taught in all schools. They believed that it
contradicted their åhristian beliefs (that God had created the world in 6 days and that
he created man in his own image). They had managed to pass a law in six states of the
µbible belt¶ such as Tennessee which banned the teaching of evolution in their
schools. On the other, it was argued that it was nonsense and fundamentalist to ban
the teaching of such a commonly held fact that humans had evolved over millions of
years from monkeys. A biology teacher called John Scopes got himself arrested and
then took the opportunity to bring the issue to the courtroom. 4n 1925 in a Tennessee
courtroom the traditionalists (anti evolution) battled with the modernists (pro
evolution). The traditionalists ended up losing badly and looking pretty foolish. The
anti-evolution lobby never really recovered.

!
")

p The olstead act Jan 1920 was nicknamed µprohibition¶ ± it was the 18th amendment
to the US constitution

p 4ntroduced because rural µtemperance¶ movements were very strong and had
convinced much of the population that the banning of alcohol would be the best idea ±
first individual states banned it then it became a national ban

p Drink was linked to German brewers and it was argued that many people who hadn¶t
fought in the first world war had been alcohol addicts

p 4t was claimed that Bolsheviks (people who had led the Russian (åommunist)
revolution drank and that that was why they were evil

p µdries¶ = supporters of prohibition

p µwets¶ = people who were anti prohibition

p 4t failed because a) American people kept going to illegal µspeakeasies¶ b) police were
corrupt and didn¶t enforce the laws or arrest people c) bootleggers kept producing and
supplying illegal alcohol and d) Gangsters who controlled the trade in illegal booze
used violence and had become very powerful

·


p Al åapone became the most notorious gangster

p Ñost gangsters came from immigrant backgrounds (eg: 4talian, Polish, Jewish and
4rish)

p åontrolled liquor trade, prostitution, protection rackets

p St alentines Day Ñassacre was where Al åapone¶s gang killed 7 of the rival Ñoran
gang. üis men were disguised as policemen and driving in a stolen police car when
they pulled over the rival gang members that they wanted to kill ± this massacre was a
turning point ± it proved that prohibition was not working and that the US had
become µlawless¶

ÿ" u
*
"

p As a result of the wall street (stock market) crash in October 1929, America¶s
economy collapsed and caused the µgreat depression¶

p The economic µcrash¶ of 1929 plus the 1930¶s depression affected all countries that
traded with the US. Europe and Germany in particular were very badly affected. The
US had given Germany a lot of loans (Dawes plan) to help it rebuild industry and
infrastructure as well as to pay back the reparations debt written in the treaty of
ersailles. The US wanted all of this loaned money back, which destroyed German
factories and businesses and much more

p The crash was caused by a number of factors

* º

O ERPRODUåT4ON. US factories and farms had been producing so much stuff that they
had saturated the domestic market. This means that everyone in America who could afford to
buy a new fridge, or a car, or enough food had already bought it. The rest of the people in
America who were poor couldn¶t ever afford to buy a car or fridge etc and so there was loads
of stuff that had been grown or made for sale that no one in the USA could buy. Normally a
country would just sell the µextra¶ stuff it had to people in other countries. Unfortunately
people in other countries couldn¶t buy the extra stuff from America because of
4SOLAT4ON4SÑ.

AÑER4åAN 4SOLAT4ON4SÑ (the decision by the US government to try to export lots but
import very little as well as to stay out of the league of nations and to try to keep out of the
problems in Europe) meant that lots of the money created in the US economic boom period of
the 1920¶s did not go to other countries. 4t also meant that many other countries couldn¶t
afford to buy things from the United States because they couldn¶t afford them.

SPEåULAT4ON ± where people bought and sold shares on the stock market without actually
having the whole amount of money to buy them with. Everyone had gone µshare mad¶ and so
people were buying and selling shares without really understanding how the stock market
worked. Ñany people thought they were just making money without really doing anything
and so more and more people started buying shares, just to sell them a few days later at a
higher price. To buy a share, people only had to actually have 10% of the amount of money
eg: a person wanting to buy a £100 share in a truck company only had to prove they had £10
to be allowed to buy it! This meant that share prices kept rising and rising. For example, in
Ñarch 1928 Union åarbide shares were $145 each but by September 1928 they had risen to
$413!!!

åONF4DENåE ± if people thought they could make money out of buying a share in a
company, they would buy shares in it. 4f more people were buying than selling shares in that
company, the share price would go up. 4f more people were selling than buying, the share
price would go down. uhat happened in the wall street crash was that lots of people thought
the share price would fall at the same time (people acting like sheep ± one went then the
others all followed without thinking!) this meant that there were suddenly loads of people
who wanted to sell shares and almost no-one who wanted to buy. This made the whole
structure and system collapse.

*+º
º*º
The big companies and investors lost loads and loads of money; many went bankrupt (lost all
their money and then some!)

p REDUåED SPEND4NG ± The people who had been richest in America, those same
people who had been buying all the goods and services, like fridges and stockings and
cars, were suddenly too poor to buy things.

p UNEÑPLOYÑENT ± Because people couldn¶t buy things, businesses and farmers
couldn¶t sell enough to stay in business and so they closed down or went bankrupt
themselves. This meant that loads of people lost their jobs.

p BANK4NG åR4S4S ± Lots of people had borrowed money in order to buy shares.
Their shares had become worthless because of the crash and so they couldn¶t pay back
the money they owed. This meant that they went bankrupt and so did many banks and
insurance companies.