More and more people were buying new products for cash. The people who could not afford to pay up front could now pay on credit. If they want a new car and could not afford it they could pay it over a year in instalments. Also there was now mail order, which also increased the market for goods beyond the towns and cities into the more remote country areas. There was more confidence in America and people had more money to spend so they started to invest in the stock market. Share prices soared as more and more were bought.
Farmers had a hard time in the 1920s and almost half of the Americans were involved in agriculture. New machinery (Combine Harvesters, tractors) was helping the farmers produce more food, but they started to produce too much food and there was a food surplus in America. Then the food prices dropped and the Farmers income dropped and the smaller farms suffered. The farmers found it hard to keep up with the mortgage payments and then got evicted. Some farmers had to sell some of there land and the farm workers soon found them selves without work and drifted towards the towns and cities where the fruit farms promised them work. Black people also suffered, 1,000,000 black farm workers had to move from their homes in the south to the cities in the north. Here they were able to find jobs but they were usually the lowest paid people. Not all industries benefited from the boom, the coal industry suffered as new forms of fuel became popular. Gas, oil and electricity were more widely used and the over production of coal meant wage cuts and loss of jobs as the mines closed down.
The Ku Klux Klan stirred up racial and religious hatred in what they believed was a moral crusade to save America. They would only except true Americans that were people who were white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. They would not except Jews, cahtolics, immigrants and they would especially not let black people in it. During the 1920s the membership of the Ku Klux Klan grew from 100,000 to 5,000,000 members in 1925. Many of the members were poor whites who felt that black people threatened their jobs and immigrants who were willing to work for lower wages.
In January 1920 the USA introduced prohibition, the selling, making or transporting of alcohol was illegal. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union said that alcohol broke up marriages, caused poverty, crime and insanity. By 1917, 18 Americans states had banned alcohol and in 1920 the ban became international.
It was not long before people realised the vast profits that could be made on the selling of alcohol. One day in 1929 AL Capone’s gang machined gunned down seven members of the rival “Bugs” Morgan gang. The gang members bribed the police, judges and state officials to turn a blind eye to what was going on in the streets through the day and the night. Organised crime also bought its way in to the legal business activities and the trade unions.
Jazz music was a popular kind of music usually performed by black jazzmen. Radio gave the Americans a chance to listen to new music such as the Charleston and the black bottom. The cinema brought its own stars, the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and Clara bow. In 1930 the major film companies had studios in Hollywood.
Flappers were women that wore shorter skirts and silk stocking and make-up. They had short bobbed hair, smoked and drove cars. Only a small percentage of women behaved like this.
