America Course

• The USA went through the worst economic crisis the world had seen: a severe economic depression that began in 1929 and persisted until the outbreak of the Second World War.
• The depression led to a major change in US national politics when the Republican Party, which was associated with boom and bust, was replaced by the Democratic Party under FDR as president. FDR was the only president to be elected four times.
• From 1933 until his death in 1945, Roosevelt oversaw the USA's recovery from economic depression and success in the Second World War.
• Following WW2, economic prosperity was maintained, partly through the onset of the Cold War.
• Huge economic changes were mirrored by great changes in US society.
• The 1920s was both an age of indulgence and intolerance.
• Women, who had been given the vote in 1919, began to play an important role in the US economy, outside the home. Their position was greatly improved by opportunities to work on the Home Front created by the Second World War.
• In 1920, black Americans were regarded as second-class citizens and experienced discrimination in employment and housing across the USA. In the Old South (the southeastern US), black Americans faced legal discrimination through segregation.
• By 1955 black America had gone through a transformation. The US armed forces were desegregated in 1948, and in 1954 and 1955 the US Supreme Court issued rulings demanding the end of segregation in schools. A movement towards full equality was beginning.
• The period from 1920 to 1955 saw US popular culture dominate the world. The development of Hollywood meant the USA was the centre of the world's film industry. American film stars were the first global superstars. This dominance also occurred in popular music.
• Jazz, a uniquely American form of music, became the dominant popular music of the 1920s and 1930s.
• The USA had been transformed economically by 1955. This transformation, in turn, helped alter profoundly the role of women, black Americans and other minorities in US society. The period laid the foundations of the modern USA.
• Laissez-faire

  Policy of Coolidge's government, minimum government involvement in economy
• GNP

  The total value of goods produced, and services provided during one year
• Laissez-faire policy was adopted by three, Republican, presidents during the 1920s: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
• Congress passed the Federal Highways Act in 1921, which gave the government responsibility for building roads. Between 1920 and 1929, the overall length of surfaced roads increased from 350,000 miles to 662,000 miles. Major boost to the construction industry.
• The 1920s was a decade of low unemployment and low inflation. Real wages rose 13% between 1923 and 1929 = major consumer boom.
• Hire purchase

  Allowed consumers to buy goods by initially paying a small portion of the price and then paying off the rest in monthly instalments
• Over 75% of cars were bought through hire-purchase schemes. Consumer borrowing rose from just over $2 billion to over $8 billion.
• Mass production

  The technological advances of the 1920s made this period a virtual second industrial revolution for the USA. One of the most important advances was the development of mass production, closely associated with Henry Ford. Ford introduced the production line, which revolutionised car manufacture.
• In 1920, there were 8 million cars in the USA. By 1929, that number had risen to 26 million.
• Mass production led to higher output and lower prices. Cars became much more accessible to the ordinary American.
• Electrification

  Stimulated the development of other advances, such as radios, vacuum cleaners, and toasters. In 1912, there were 2.4 million electrical appliances in the USA. By 1929, there were 160 million.
• However, electrification was centred on towns and cities. By 1929 much of the rural US was still without electricity, though overall 75% of Americans had electricity in their homes.
• The 1920s may have seen the US economy create unrivalled prosperity for many, but several social groups missed out, including farmers and black Americans.
• US agriculture had boomed during the First World War when Europe was devastated by armed conflict. However, once the war was over and European agriculture began to recover, demand for US food exports dropped and so did agricultural prices in the USA.
• Agriculture was also affected by technological advances, such as the combine harvester. This machine greatly increased productivity in cereal production but also led to an increase in unemployment among farm workers.
• By 1929, more Americans lived in urban rather than rural areas for the first time.
• In the southeastern USA in the 1920s, the dominant crop (cotton) was affected by the appearance of a nasty pest – the boll weevil – which caused serious damage to cotton plants.
• Grain demand fell with the introduction of national prohibition in 1920.
• Attempts to aid farmers through legislation such as the McNary-Haugen bill, attempting to stabilise agricultural prices with the government buying up surplus produce, failed in a Congress dominated by laissez-faire ideas on the economy. The McNary-Haugen bill was vetoed by Coolidge multiple times.
• The majority of black Americans still lived in the southeastern USA and suffered legal and social discrimination. Many were sharecroppers who were unable to escape poverty.
• Outside the south-east, black Americans were given the most menial and low-paid jobs and lived in areas of poor-quality housing.
• The 1920s saw the biggest mass migration of black Americans in history. Nearly a million left the poverty-stricken south-east for jobs in the prosperous northern industrial cities, such as Detroit, NY and Chicago.
• By 1929, black Americans were engaged in manufacturing employment in large numbers for the first time.
• From November 1917 the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia created the world's first communist state. Communist ideas were seen as a direct threat to the US political and economic system.
• Immigrants from central and eastern Europe came to be feared in the USA as being susceptible to these 'un-American' ideas. Also, from April 1917 when the USA joined the First World War, Germany and Austria-Hungary were enemy nations and resentment towards immigrants from these countries increased.
• The year 1919 was one of considerable industrial unrest. Inflation caused by the war resulted in widespread strikes. Over 4 million workers were involved nationwide. Extreme left-wing trade unions, like the International Workers of the World (known at the time by the nickname the Wobblies), were seen as causing much of the unrest.
• A General Intelligence Division of the federal government was created in August 1919, in order to investigate the scale of socialist and communist activity in the USA. It was the forerunner of the FBI.
• By January 1920, the federal government began to act. 'Palmer raids' were conducted in an attempt to arrest foreign anarchists, communists and radical leftists, many of whom were subsequently deported. 6,000 were arrested.