The roaring twenties. The rush for wealth. The movies. The bootleggers. Prohibition

Girls dancing the Charleston. Gangsters carrying

machine guns. Ch arlie Chaplin playing comical

trick s. T hese arc some ofthe pictu res that come into

people's minds when they thi nk of the United States

in the 19205. The " roaring twent ies," Good times.

Wild times.

T he United States was vcry rich in these years.

HCl"aUSl' ofthe Fir st World War, o ther co un tr ies

owed it J lot of mon cy. lr had ple nt y of raw ma terials

and plen ty offactories. Its natio nal income - the to tal

earnings ofall its citi zens - was much higher. than th at

of Hritain, France, Ccnuan v and japan pm rc gceher.

American factories produced morc goods eve ry yt"a r.

The busiesr were th ose makin g automobi les.

Bcrwccu 1922 and 1927. the number of car s on the

roads rose from under eleven mill ion to over twenty

million. The elect rical indu st ry also prospered. It

made hund reds ofth ousands of refr igerators.

vacuum cleaners, stoves and rad ios.

The United Sta tes becam e the first nation in history

to build its way oflife on selling vast quantities of

goods that gave ord inary people easier and more

enjo yable lives. These "consumer goods" poured o ff

the assembly lines ofbig new facto ries. Between

1IJ I9 and 1929 such mass-production factories

do ubled th eir output.

The growth of ind ust ry made-ma ny America ns wel loff.

Millions earned good wages. Th ou sands

invested money in successful firms so [hat they could

share in their pro fits. Many bought cars, radios and

ot her new products with their money. Often they

obtained these goo ds by paying a small deposit and

ag reeing to pay the rest ofthe cos t th rou gh an

" instalment plan." T hei r mon o was "Live now, pay

tomorrow" - a tomorrow which most wer t'

convinced would be like today only better, with even

more mo ncy swelling thei r wall ets.

Businessmen became popular heroes in the 1920s.

Men like I Icnr v Ford were widely admired as the

creators of the nat ion's prosperit y. "The ma n who

builds a facrorv builds a te-mple," said Calvin

Cool idge, the President from 1923 to 1929. "The

man who works th ere. worships there."

Coolidge's words help to explain the po licies o f

American government s ill the 19205. T hese

governme-nt s were cont rolled by the Republican

Part y. Repu blicans bel ieved that i f rhc go vernment

look ed after the Interests o f the businessman.

everybody would become richer. Businessmen

W h OSl' firms were doing well. they claimed, would

take on more worker s and p.aymore wagt's. In thi s

way their growmg wealth would benefit cvc rvbod v.

T o help businessmen Congre-ss placed high import

taxes o n goods from abroad. The arm was to nuke

Imported goods more expensive. so that American

manufacturers would have less competition from

foreign riv als. At the same time Congress red uced

ta xes on high incomes and company profits. This gave rich men more money to invest. Yet there were lots ofpoor Americans. A su rn'y in

1929 showed that half the American people had

hardly eno ugh money to buy sufficient food and

clothing. In the industrial cities ofth e Nort h, such as

Chicago and Pin sburgb, immigr ant workers still

labored long hou rs for low wages III steel nulls.

factories and slaug hter houses. In the South

tho usands ofpoor farme rs. both black and wh ite,

worked (rom sunrise to sunset to earn barely enough

to live 0 11. The wealth that Republicans said would

benefit everybod y neve r reached people like these.

The main reason fo r povert y among industrial

work ers was low wages. Farm ers and farm wo rkers

had a hard time for di fferent reasons. In the South

lIlallYfarm,..rs did not own the land the y farmed.

They were sha recro ppers. For rent, a sharecropper

gan' rhc landowncr part ofwhat he grl'w - o ften so

much that he was left wi th hardl y enough to feed his

family.

In the Wcst most farmers owned their land. But they,

too, faced hard times. During the First World War

they had been ab le to sell their wheat to Europe for

high prices. By 1921. however. the cou nt ries of

Europe no longe r needed so much American food. And farmers were finding it more difficu lt to sell

their prod uce at home. Immigration had fallen. so

the number of people needin g food was growing

more slowly. All the new cars didn' t help either.

Cars ran a ll gaso line. not on corn and hay like horses.

Amer ican farm ers found themselves growlllg

products they could not sell. By 192-1, around

600,000 of them were bankrupt.

Bur to Amer icans who owned shares or "s toc k," III

ind ustrial companies the future looked bright. Sales

ofconsumer goods went on rising. T his meant

bigger profits for the firms that made them. T his in

turn sent up the value of shares in such firms.

In 1928 the American people elected a new President.

Herbert Hoo ver. Hoover was sure that American

prosperity would go on growing and that the

poverty in wh ich some Amer icans stilllived would

be remembered as something in the past. HI.' said that

there wo uld soon be "a chicken in every pot and two

cars 111 eve ry garage."

Look ing at the way their standard ofliving had risen

during the 1920s. many other Americans thought the

same.

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