America 1920s

• A new wave of immigration occurred from the mid-19th century into the 1920s. These immigrants included Catholics, who came from Ireland and Southern Europe (eg Italy), as well as migrants from Eastern Europe and China.
• In 1922, the Fordney-McCumber Tariff put high taxes on

  imports.This made foreign goods more expensive to buy, so Americans bought more US-produced goods.
• By 1927, 63 per cent of American homes had access to electricity. Electrical power began to replace other older energy sources, such as coal and gas. This stimulated the production and purchase of electrical goods such as refrigerators, radios and vacuum cleaners.
• The first car was produced and sold in 1895, but the Ford Motor Company, led by Henry Ford, revolutionised the motor industry
• Between 1908 and 1927, the company produced 15 million ‘Model T’ cars
• Cut down the time it took to make a single car from 12.5 hours to just 1.5 hours, with a Model T coming off the production line every three minutes.
• The Ford Motor Company Service Department employed security men who intimidated and used force against union organisers. Ford did not recognise unions until 1941.
• Henry Ford held racist and antisemitic views, and he used his power, wealth and influence to spread these views. In 1918 he bought a newspaper that allowed him to promote and publicise these beliefs to a wide audience, as every Ford car dealer had copies of the paper to give to customers
• Farmers struggled to sell all their produce. As a result, prices fell and farmers’ profits dropped dramatically. Roughly 600,000 American farmers lost their farms in 1924, as they struggled to keep up with their debts. By 1928, half of all American farmers were living in poverty.
• The older industries suffered from overproduction and underconsumption.
• African Americans additionally faced racism and injustice, which led to them suffering significantly more than other groups.
• An estimated 70 million out of 110 million Americans lived below the

  poverty line

  in the 1920s.
• Mining companies, the gold rush and Americans wanting to buy the valuable land fuelled the systematic loss of Native American lands
• Immigrants were discriminated against and often forced to take low-paying jobs. The elderly and disabled also suffered as there was no national system of support or

  pensions.
• Herbert Hoover became president in 1929
• Throughout 1927, the number of shares traded had risen to around 577 million.
• on the margin a process where people borrow money in order to be able to buy shares.
• Prohibition was the name given to the period from 1920 to 1933
• Bootleggers smuggled alcohol into America from abroad. Distillers illegally produced alcohol known as moonshine. Illegal bars and nightclubs known as speakeasies grew in popularity. In New York City there were twice as many bars in 1929 than before Prohibition began.
• gangsters such as the notorious Al Capone, in Chicago, had reportedly earned around $60 million (around £700 million today) by the mid-1920s.
• Between 1836 and 1914, around 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States
• In 1917 the Immigration Act used literacy tests to exclude immigrants with low reading ability. It also banned immigration from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
• In 1921 the Emergency Quota Act set a limit of 357,000 immigrants per year.
• The widespread fear of political radicals increased in 1919 when anarchists sent bombs to leading political figures.
• The home of the US Attorney General, A Mitchell Palmer, was bombed in July 1919.
•  Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian-born anarchists. They were charged with robbery and murder.
• Slavery was abolished in America via the 13th Amendment in 1865. African Americans were given citizenship in 1868, and in 1870 African American men gained the right to vote
• There were many Americans who believed in white supremacy

  and refused to see African Americans as equals. Black Americans in the southern states suffered more discrimination than those in the north due to what were known as the

  Jim Crow laws.
• Jim Crow laws - The laws that introduced segregation in the US South (the laws that kept black people and white people apart).
• The

  Ku Klux Klan

  (KKK) was a racist

  terrorist

  organisation. It began in the southern states at the end of the American Civil War to maintain white supremacy
• KKK-Its membership surged after World War One, growing to around 5 million in 1925.
• There had been campaigns against lynching going back to the late 19th century, most notably by the activist and journalist Ida B Wells. She campaigned for a federal anti-lynching bill. This bill was not passed, but she helped to raise awareness of the injustice of lynching through her writings
• In 1960, John F Kennedy was considered to be a young and charismatic candidate for the role of president
• JFK- He encouraged Americans to be optimistic about the future, to look to science and technological innovation, such as setting the ambition for humans to reach the moon.
• When Kennedy became president in 1961, the US economy was suffering a major recession. Farm incomes were decreasing while unemployment was rising. The unemployment rate reached a peak of around 7.1 per cent in 1961.
• Kennedy did achieve some changes:

  he made available millions of dollars to businesses to create new jobs - companies received grants to buy new technology and train their workers to use it

  he increased the minimum wage from $1 per hour to $1.25

  he increased social security

  benefits to give more financial support to the elderly and unemployed

  he got a Housing Act passed that enabled people in deprived areas to access loans to improve their housing

  he established the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity (CEEO) to make sure there were equal employment opportunities within government
• Vice President Lyndon B Johnson became president automatically when President John F Kennedy was assassinated
• The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act allocated money to provide training, development and educational opportunities for the unemployed. It was hoped that this would help to break the cycle of poverty in deprived communities.
• The 1965 Housing and Urban Development Act was designed to combat the decline in city housing standards. The standards in housing had worsened with the increase in the number of people moving from cities to the

  suburbs. The act provided federal funds to cities for urban renewal and established minimum housing standards.
• Mass Production


  Making lots of the same product