The Roaring Twenties

• Melting Pot

  A place where different people, styles, or theories mix together
• Anarchist

  Someone who believes in self-regulation over government
• WASP

  Acronym for White Anglo Saxon Protestant
• Palmer Raids

  Police raids targeting individuals with radical, anti-governmental views
• Sacco and Vanzetti

  Two Italian immigrants executed for armed robbery
• The Red Scare

  The fear of communism that spread in America during the 1920s
• Jim Crow Laws


  Laws segregating society based on skin colour​
• Ku Klux Klan (KKK)


  White supremacist group who used violence and intimidation against African Americans, Jews and Immigrants​
• Ghetto

  The poorest part of a neighbourhood with the worst housing and amenities​
• Speculation

  buying shares in hope that their value will rise so that they can be sold at a profit.​
• "Buying on the margin"

  Borrowing money to buy shares with the intention of selling them when they rise in value to pay back the loan and make a profit​
• Hooverville


  nickname given to towns built by homeless after the crash​
• Bonus Marchers

  Ex- soldiers who marched demanding their pensions to be paid early.​
• Suffrage

  The right to vote​
• Suffragists


  campaigners for the right to vote.​
• Smilette

  not sold, created by democrats (1932) to ridicule Hoover/Republicans. "smile us into prosperity"
• Prohibition

  Ban on alcohol sale
• Volstead Act

  Legislation enforcing prohibition
• Temperance Movement

  Campaign against alcohol consumption
• Dries

  Prohibition supporters
• Wets

  Prohibition critics
• Speakeasies

  Illegal bars during prohibition
• Bootlegger


  Illegal alcohol distributor
• Moonshine

  Illegally brewed alcohol
• Republican policies


  • Lassez-faire
  • Protective tariffs
  • Low taxation
  • Powerful trusts
• Lassez-faire


  • Republicans believed that the government should interfere as little as possible in the everyday lives of the people
  • They felt that they should leave businessmen alone to do their job, and that was where prosperity came from
  • Related to the idea of "rugged individualism" - the admiration of the way Americans got on with solving their own problems
• Protective tariffs


  • Made it expensive to sell foreign goods in the country
  • Protected businesses against foreign competition and allowed US companies to grow rapidly
• Low taxation


  • Republicans kept taxes as low as possible
  • They thought that if people kept their own money, they would spend it on US goods and the rich would reinvest their money in industry
• Powerful trusts


  • Huge corporations that dominated industry
  • Democrats fought against it because they thought that it was unhealthy for billionaires like Andrew Carnegie (steel) and John D. Rockerfeller (oil) to have almost complete control over one vital sector of industry
  • Republicans allowed trusts to do what they wanted, believing that these "captains of industry" knew better than politicians what was good for US business
• Factors responsible for the economic boom


  • World War One
  • Resources and transport
  • Cars
  • Mass consumption
  • Confidence and consumerism
  • Wall Street and the stock market
• Factors responsible for the boom - WWI


  • The US made money supplying weapons to Britain, France, and the Allies
  • US banks made a fortune loaning money to other countries
  • The USA benefitted from the war damaging trade and exports of the nations involved in the fighting
  • The war stimulated the aviation industry
  • By 1930, about 162,000 commerical flights were operating a year
• Factors responsible for the boom - Resources and transport

  • Exploited the USA's vast natural resources
  • Inustries were dominated by powerful trusts
  • Rockerfeller (oil), Carnegie (steel) and Mellon (banker) were examples
  • The USA had a relatively young population, providing a strong workforce for these industries
  • The Republican government initiated a major road-building programme, doubling the road network and employing more people than any other sector
  • The new road network, along with the well-established rail network, helped businesses to transport goods effectively
• Factors responsible for the boom - Cars

  • Henry Ford revolutionised the car industry
  • More than 15 million Model T cars were produced between 1908 and 1925
  • Cars made it possible to buy a house in the suburbs, which further boosted house-building
• Factors responsible for the boom - Mass consumption


  • Big industries used marketing tactics to get the public to buy their products
  • Mass nationwide advertisinng was used by advertisers who learned from wartime propaganda
  • Mail order meant people across the USA could buy goods from catalogues, which greatly expanded the market
  • Credit meant that consumers could easily borrow money for things they couldn't afford, or take advantage of "buy now, pay later" schemes
• Factors responsible for the boom - Confidence and consumerism


  • People in the USA trusted business leaders
  • Republican policy - "business knows best"
  • Most Americans believed that they had a right to prosperity
  • There was a lot of confidence
  • Businessmen had the confidence to invest in industries, and ordinary Americans had the confidence to buy goods, sometimes on credit, because they were sure that they could pay for them
• Factors responsible for the boom - Wall Street and the stock market


  • In the 1920s, many Americans began to invest in the stock market (Wall Street) with their own savings
  • By 1929, there were 20 million investors out of a population of 120 million
  • People could make more money buying and selling shares than they could in an ordinary job
• Problems faced by farmers

  • Declining exports - Europe was importing less food from the US
  • Competition - They were threatened by highly efficient Canadian wheat producers
  • Overproduction - There was a surplus of agricultural products by 1920
• The government were unsympathetic to farmers because of their lassez-faire policy, which farmers were critical of
• Problems faced by traditional industries


  • As coal was replaced by oil and electricity, the industry suffered
  • The cotton industry in the south virtually collapsed
  • It was difficult for unions to get rights for workers, since big businessmen and newspapers didn't trust them
• Republicans tried to protect traditional industries by putting tariffs on foreign goods, but they did not help since these industries were not growth industries like electronic goods