In the nineteenth century, in rural areas of the USA there was a very strong “temperance” movement. Members of the temperance movements agreed not to drink alcohol and also campaign to get others to give up alcohol. Most members of these movements were devout Christians who saw what damage alcohol did to family life. In the nineteenth century the two main movements were the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The temperance movements were so strong in some of the rural areas that they persuaded their state governments to prohibit the sale of alcohol within the state. Soon it became a national campaign to prohibit alcohol throughout the country. Leading industrialists backed the movement, believing that workers would become more reliable if they did not drink. A lot of politicians backed it because it got them votes in the rural areas. By 1916, 21 states had banned saloons. The USA’s entry into World War I boosted the movements. Drinkers were accused of being unpatriotic cowards. Most of the breweries were run by German immigrants who were portrayed as the enemy. Saloons were seen as dens of vice that destroyed family life. In 1917 the movement had enough states on its side to propose the eighteenth amendment to the constitution. This “prohibited the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors”. It became law in January 1920 and is known as the Volstead act. Prohibition lasted from 1920 until 1933. Levels of alcohol consumption fell by about 30% in the early 1920s. During prohibition speakeasies appeared around America these were illegal bars were people could go to drink alcohol. There were also prohibition agents which would arrest anyone caught drunk or with alcohol. Two of the most famous agents were Isadore Einstein and his deputy Moe Smith. They made 4392 arrests. Their raids were always very low key. They would simply enter the speakeasies and order a drink. Einstein had a special flask hidden inside his waistcoat with a funnel attached. He preserved the evidence by pouring his drink down the funnel and the criminals were caught. Despite the work of all the prohibition agents, prohibition proved impossible to enforce effectively in the cities. Enforcement was underfinanced. There were not enough agents – each agent was poorly paid and was responsible for a huge area. By far the biggest draw back was that millions of Americans, particularly in urban areas, were simply not prepared to obey this law. So bootleggers (suppliers of illegal alcohol) made vast fortunes. Al Capone made around $60million a year from his speakeasies. His view was that “prohibition is a business. All I do is supply a public demand.” By 1925 there were more speakeasies in American cities than there had been saloons in 1919. Izzy Einstein filed a report to his superiors on how easy it was to find alcohol after arriving in a new city.
- Chicago: 21 minutes
- Atlanta: 17 minutes
- Pittsburg: 11 minutes
- New Orleans: 35 seconds (he was offered a bottle of whisky by his taxi driver when he asked where he could get a drink).
Prohibition roared for gangsters like Al Capone because they made huge profits from their speakeasies. It roared for the campaigners because they got what they wanted for 13 years. It roared for prohibition agents because there were new jobs for people but they were under paid so they also lost out. Prohibition didn’t roar for farmers because all the ingredients they used to grow to sell to the breweries suddenly became worthless so they lost their lively hoods. It didn’t roar for saloon owners because all of their saloons had to be closed down so they had no lively hoods left either. The brewers lost out because they could not manufacture alcohol because it was now against the law. Ordinary American citizens lost out because they were suddenly not aloud to drink in public places they had to risk going to speakeasies to drink. Although it seemed that the campaigners had won a victory, it didn’t roar for them as prohibition failed.
The radio gave much greater access to new music. Jazz music became an obsession among young people. Black people who moved from the country to the cities had bought jazz and blues music with them. Blues music was particularly popular among the black population, while jazz captured the imagination of both white and black young Americans. Such was the power of jazz music that the 1920’s became known as the jazz age. Along with jazz went new dances such as the Charleston, and new styles of behaviour which were summed up in the image of a flapper, a woman who wore short dresses and make-up and who smoked in public. One writer said that the ideal flapper was “expensive and about nineteen”. The older generation saw jazz and everything associated with it as a corrupting influence on the young people of the USA. The newspapers and magazines printed articles analysing the influence of jazz. Only black people played jazz well in the 1920’s and they played it from the heart. Jazz artists became famous across America with bands like King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and people like Louis Armstrong. Jazz and Blues roared for black Americans because it gave them some thing they were better at than white people it also made them rich if they became well known. Young Americans benefited as well because they got a new music genre and dances so they could separate themselves from the old generation. White Americans lost out because they could not play the music like the blacks. Old people lost out because they thought it was a corrupting influence on the young people of USA. It roared for the Black musicians because they could get jobs that made a lot of moneys and they got the respect of not only other black Americans but also the white Americans.
The flapper, whose antics were immortalized in the cartoons of John Held Jr., was the heroine of the Jazz Age. With short hair and a short skirt, with turned-down hose and powdered knees - the flapper must have seemed to her mother like a rebel. No longer confined to home and tradition, the typical flapper was a young woman who was often thought of as a little fast and maybe even a little brazen. Mostly, the flapper offended the older generation because she defied conventions of acceptable feminine behavior. The flapper was "modern." Traditionally, women's hair had always been worn long. The flapper wore it short, or bobbed. She used make-up. And the flapper wore baggy dresses which often exposed her arms as well as her legs from the knees down. However, flappers did more than symbolize a revolution in fashion and mores - they embodied the modern spirit of the Jazz Age. The wearing of what were considered skimpy beach wear in public could get the Flappers, as they were known, arrested for indecent exposure. They wore silk stockings rolled just above the knee and they got their hair cut at male barbers. The President of Florida University said the low cut gowns and short skirts "are born of the devil they are carrying the present generation to destruction".
The jazz age roared for the flappers because they could separate themselves from the previous generations. It didn’t roar for the old people because they were disgraced at the flappers and didn’t like that they showed so much skin and the way they cut their hair. The barbers made a profit because women started to get their hair cut at their barber shops as well as men.
Through the 1920’s new industries and new methods of production were developed in the USA. Henry Ford was the first person to use the “assembly line”. With an assembly line people would be at different positions down the line and as the product came down the line they would add their part. In 1927 Henry Fords car company “Ford” were producing a new car every 10 seconds. In 1908 a car cost about £850 but thanks to the assembly line and the speed of production by 1925 a car cost £290. Now most Americans could afford a car and it was now no longer a luxury item. Ford paid his workers $5 a day that is almost double the average wage that other companies would pay. In 1909 12,000 cars were sold in the world. In 1920 9,000,000 cars were sold in America and in 1929 26,000,000 were sold in America. With the huge profits Henry Ford made he could have sold his cars for cheaper prices or paid his workers more but he didn’t do either. Automobiles used up 75% of US glass production in the 1920s. Mass production roared for Henry Ford because her made huge profits from his company. Other industries benefited such as glass, leather, steel and rubber because there was suddenly a huge demand for them to build the cars. The people of America benefited because most of them could afford cars and this opened up America to them. Now they could travel to other cities to visit family and go to the country for picnics etc. The workers benefited because they got new jobs and they were well paid. However, Henry Ford did not have any trade unions for his employees. The work was very long, hard and boring. Also Henry Ford was racist so would not employ any black workers or Jewish workers.
While so many Americans were enjoying the boom, farmers most definitely were not. Total US farm income dropped $22 billion in 1919 to just $13 billion in 1928. There were a number of reasons why farming had such problems.
After the war, Europe imported far less food from the USA. This was partly because Europe was poor, and it was partly a response to US tariffs which stopped Europe from exporting to the USA.
Farmers were also struggling against competition from the highly efficient Canadian wheat producers. All of this came at a time when the population of the USA was actually falling and there were fewer mouths to feed. Underlying all these problems was overproduction. From 1900 – 1920, while farming was doing well, more and more land was being farmed. Improved machinery, especially the combine harvester, and improved fertilisers made US agriculture extremely efficient. The result was that by 1920 it was producing surpluses of wheat which nobody wanted.
In the 1920s the average US farmer was each year growing enough to feed his family and 14 others. Prices plummeted as desperate farmers tried to sell their produce. In 1921 alone, most farm prices fell by 50%. Hundreds of rural banks collapsed in the 1920’sand there were five times as many farm bankruptcies as there had been in the 1900s and 1910s.
Not all farmers were affected by these problems. Rich Americans wanted fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the year. Shipments of lettuce to the cities, for example, rose from 14,000 crates in 1920 to 52,000 in 1928 in 1928. But for most farmers the 1920s were a time of hardship.
This was a serious issue. About half of all Americans lived in rural areas, mostly working on farms or in businesses that sold goods to farmers. Problems in farming therefore directly affected more than 60 million Americans. 6 million rural Americans, mainly farm labourers, were forced off the land in the 1920s. Many of these were unskilled workers who migrated to the cities, where there was little demand for their labour. America’s black population was particularly badly hit. They had always done the least skilled jobs in the rural areas. As they lost their jobs on the farms, three quarters of a million of them became unemployed.
The farming industry didn’t roar for farmers because they were losing money on their crops as they were growing to much so had to sell them off cheap. Workers on the farm lost out also because as the farmers began to lose money they did not have enough money to pay the workers salaries. American citizens benefited from farming because there was a large amount of food which was also cheap so they even the poor could afford it.
One way of making money during the 1920s was to buy stocks and shares. Prices of these stocks and shares constantly went up and so investors kept them for a short-term period and then sold them at a good profit. As with consumer goods, such as motor cars and washing machines, it was possible to buy stocks and shares on credit. This was called buying on the margin and enabled speculators to sell off shares at a profit before paying what they owed. In this way it was possible to make a considerable amount of money without a great deal of investment.
In an article entitled everybody ought to be rich, John Jaskob claimed that by investing $15 a month in stocks and shares it would be possible to make $80,000 over the next 20 years. Another investor, Will Payne, stated in 1929 that it had become so easy to make money on the Wall Street Stock Exchange, that it had ceased to become a gamble. He went on to say that a gambler wins only because someone loses, when you invest in stocks and shares, everybody wins.
On 3rd September 1929 the stock market reached an all-time high. In the weeks that followed prices began to decline. Then on 24th October, over 12,894,650 shares were sold. Prices fell dramatically as sellers tried to find people willing their shares. That evening, five of the country's bankers, led by Charles E. Mitchell, chairman of the National City Bank, issued a statement saying that due to the heavy selling of shares, many were now under-priced. This statement failed to halt the reduction in demand for shares. On 29th October, over 16 million shares were sold. The market had lost 47 per cent of its value in twenty-six days.
Although less than one per cent of the American people actually possessed stocks and shares, the Wall Street Crash was to have a tremendous impact on the whole population. The fall in share prices made it difficult for entrepreneurs to raise the money needed to run their companies. Within a short time, 100,000 American companies were forced to close and consequently many workers became unemployed. As there was no national system of unemployment benefit, the purchasing power of the American people fell dramatically. This in turn led to even more unemployment.
The Wall Street crash sent America and the rest of the world into a deep depression. When Wall Street crashed America isolated itself from the rest of the world to try and get itself back on its feet this sent the rest of the world into a depression by not being able to export and import goods to or from America.
I don’t think anyone benefited from the great depression the people who were best off were wealthy people who were not pulled into the depression. But thanks to America isolating itself from the rest of world it dragged the rest of the world down with it so the whole world suffered as a result. Businesses lost out because they could not export or import thing to and from America. Businesses in America had to shut down because of lack of funds so they owners and workers lost their lively hoods. Average American citizens lost out because they lost their jobs so could not afford to pay for clothes, food or shelter. The Wall Street crash caused a chain reaction which lead to the great depression.