america

• The Economic Boom


  • Growing motor industry
  • Stock market boom
  • New ways to buy and sell
  • Colourful advertising
  • Assembly line and mass production
  • Import tariffs
  • Benefit from WW1
• Products that became popular


  • Radios
  • Telephones
• 'Buy now, pay later'

  Paying for goods in small instalments
• Assembly line


  Method of mass production where products are assembled in steps
• Model T car


  Affordable car for ordinary people, invented by Ford
• Advertising methods


  • Colourful advertising
  • Sponsorship
• America staying out of WW1 at first


  Able to sell goods to countries destroyed by the fighting
• The economic boom in America in the 1920s was due to a range of factors
• A new form of music called jazz became popular in the Twenties
• The cinema industry grew rapidly with 100 million people visiting the cinema every week by 1930
• Women before WW1


  • Led restricted lives
  • Could not vote
  • Dressed in a very sensible manner
  • Did not play sport
  • Wore little make-up
  • Were chaperoned on dates
  • Relationships with men were controlled
  • Restricted to low paid jobs
• Prohibition was the banning of alcohol in 1920
• A large number of people had immigrated to America for a better life
• The government began to stop immigration with literacy tests
• African-Americans were treated very poorly, especially in the South
• Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italian immigrants who were executed in 1927 for a crime they did not commit
• The large number of immigrants in America led to a widespread fear of communism called the Red Scare
• Reasons companies began to struggle


  • Other countries put taxes on American goods
  • Limit to how many cars, radios and fridges people would buy
  • Over-production of goods
  • People began to lose confidence with their shares
• Wall Street Crash


  1. Millions of shares being sold

  2. People could not afford to pay back their loans

  3. Hundreds of banks went bankrupt
• Groups affected by the Great Depression


  • Ordinary shareholders
  • The very rich
  • Factory owners
  • Factory workers
  • Bank managers and staff
  • Farmers
• Hoovervilles


  Shanty towns where many people had to move to
• Rugged individualism


  The idea that people can overcome problems with hard work, not government help
• Protests during the Great Depression


  • Farmers in Iowa chasing away government officials with pitchforks
  • The 'Bonus Army' of 25,000 unemployed soldiers marching to Washington
• Hoover believed in 'rugged individualism'
• Many people felt that President Hoover was not doing enough to help during the Great Depression
• The Great Depression led to millions losing their jobs and homes
• Farmers suffered before and after the Wall Street Crash, with many unable to pay their debts and their land becoming known as 'Dust Bowls'
• Hoovervilles


  Shanty towns that many people had to move to as they felt President Hoover was not doing enough to help
• Protests


  • Farmers in Iowa chased away government officials with pitchforks who tried to evict them
  • The 'Bonus Army' of 25,000 unemployed soldiers marched to Washington to ask for their war pension to be paid early
• What happened in the Wall Street Crash
• The Wall Street Crash led to
• Groups affected by the Great Depression


  • Farmers
  • Unemployed soldiers
• Dust Bowl


  A region affected by severe drought and dust storms during the Great Depression
• Banks went bankrupt because
• People did not like Hoover and threw eggs at his cars
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)


  Privately educated from a very rich family, wheelchair-bound from 1921 onwards, Democrat Party, Navy officer during WW1
• FDR's 3 Rs


  • Relief - help for the sick, old and unemployed
  • Recovery - government schemes to provide jobs
  • Reform - to make America better so another Depression could not happen
• FDR called his new ideas a 'New Deal for the American people'
• FDR was an excellent public speaker and took his message around the country
• FDR promised to get rid of Prohibition