With the huge growth in industry working class people had more time and money to spend on entertainment. Goods such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines made long, tiring jobs shorter and easier. With this new society willing to spend more time and money on entertainment. Leisure’s like sport and cinemas became very popular. Sports like boxing, football and especially baseball became multi million businesses. Similarly cinema grew into one of the most popular forms of leisure entertainment in America. Making films became a mass production industry with over 15 new films being released every month. With this came the rise of Hollywood and celebrities. Stars like Charlie Chaplin, Rudolf Valentino and Clara Bow soon became household names and earned millions in the popular film industry.
The new popularity of entertainment in the form of cinema and sport led to the circulation of newspapers and magazines being hugely increased. Newspapers became filled with articles about sport, fashion and film stars. These articles became the most popular and through the 1920 period made up most of the content of any newspaper or magazine. Because of the demand by the public for news and gossip, newspapers and magazines were sold worldwide. However the largest sales were definitely in America. In the early stages of the BOOM a huge amount of newspapers claimed to be selling over 2.5 million copies!
Overall the BOOM affected many people’s lives for the better. It gave people many opportunities to earn more money. This higher income for the working class community funded for film stars and sports star to become the very first celebrities. It seemed to those working in cities that everyone’s quility of living was getting better and better and for a huge amount of people it was, but did the BOOM increase the quality of living conditions for everyone living in America?
However many people did not benefit from the BOOM. Many people grew further into poverty and by 1928 about 42% of the American population were left in poverty by the negative effects of the BOOM. The effects of the BOOM mainly harmed the older industries. Farming is an example of this. Over half of American people lived in rural areas in the 1920’s leaving them to make their money by either farming or supplying farmers, possibly with machinery. The great increase in technological change led to new, faster machines being made and used. However this had many negative effects for farmers. Obviously the machines started to replace people on farms to improve production; this increased the amount of unemployment in the country. Also, the technological change caused the farmers making more product then needed in America. Seeing as this was post war production, America did not need to supply Europe with food. This made the food cheaper because the farmers needed to sell it which led to them getting less profit. A huge amount of farmers’ income dropped. These farmers found paying mortgages impossible and many were forced to sell their land to clear debts. The BOOM caused (for the first time ever in America) the number of farmers to decline. Those farmers that stayed in the business could barely earn enough to live. Farmers suffered great financial losses.
Many of the immigrants that moved to America just before or just after the war faced discrimination. Immigrants were less educated and were forced to take whichever jobs were available. There was a hue building boom during the 1920’s and this was where the majority of immigrants found work. However because all immigrants tried to work in this industry the jobs were very badly paid. Most immigrants were unemployed in the BOOM decade.
Black people were some of the poorest people of the time. Over three quarters of a million blacks lost farming jobs alone during the BOOM. Black people were forced to move to the big cities in the north for a chance of getting a better paid job. The reasoning behind this was that they faced less discrimination in the north then the south. However black women were mainly accepted into jobs as domestic servants and black men had difficulty working because most companies operated in an all white policy. Overall blacks generally had very hard, poor lives with little opportunity to change that.
Many older industries suffered hugely in the BOOM. Particularly those working in the raw material industries. Companies involved in cotton, coal, tin and copper were overproducing; therefore prices fell and wages dropped. The older industries could not compete with the newer industries. Oil, gas and electricity were used as increasingly popular alternatives to coal. Mines were forced to close due to lack of demand from the market. Safety standards fell and miners soon found themselves working long, hard hours for little pay. Striking failed and the coal industry collapsed compared to the booming new industries. Coal was not the only industry that suffered in the 1920’s. New, man made fibres such as rayon started to take the place of cotton and wool. Textile workers were paid some of the lowest wages among Americans. Also, workers in New York were paid over 10 times more then those working in North Carolina. Strikes were made in the cotton industry as in the coal industry but again they failed. The new generation of richer societies wanted only the materials that were most suitable for the jobs, these were usually man made. Consequently the older industries lost profits and lost viability.
The BOOM benefited many people. People in new industries (like electricity and gas) benefited hugely. There was more opportunity for them to improve their production both in the actual manufacturing (using newly created machines) and in their product (by using new man made materials). All of this improved their business by making their product cheaper to create and more desired by the market thus increasing the profits massively. However the BOOM also ruined many peoples lives. People working in older industries suffered because their product was being replaced with better, man made materials demanded by the market. ‘Outsiders’ such as blacks and immigrants also suffered because many Americans refused to employ them. They saw them as outsiders and not as true Americans. Looking at the facts we know that the richest 5% of the population in America shared 32% of the wealth of America – each person in this category had over 6% of the overall wealth in America at the time. However the poorest 42% of people in America shared only 10% of the overall wealth – giving each person around 0.2% of American wealth. Some Americans were 30 times more wealthy then other Americans! This shows the widespread of Americans. Overall the BOOM made some people very, very rich but it also made many more people very, very poor. The BOOM in America did not benefit all Americans, almost half of the American population were living in poverty in the 1920’s.