Why was there a boom in the USA in the 1920s?

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Why was there a boom in the USA in the 1920s?

The 1920s was a decade of extremes. On the one hand there was a booming economy which made cheap, mass-produced consumer goods available to people in a way that had even been before. It was the age of the car and mass-entertainment-radio, cinema, dancing, jazz music and sport-which brought major changes in the American way of life. On the other hand, not far below this surface prosperity lay poverty, intolerance and violence. The 1920s saw prohibition, the rise of crime by gangsters and the growth of the Ku Klux Klan. Changes in industry and the introduction of new technologies left many Americans in a poverty trap from which they could not escape. In the land of plentiful food, farmers could not earn enough to support their families. In this essay I will look at both side of American life and investigate which groups found the 1920s a time of prosperity and indulgence and which groups found it a decade of poverty.

After a short post-war depression the American economy grew rapidly in the early 1920s. In 1926 the government announced that the standard of living in