20's & 30's

Known as the "Roaring" 20's

New prosperity!

More Leisure time -
baseball
Sunday drives
movies (silent)
Jazz music became popular
The Charleston dance became popular

Those under 25 wanted to have fun!
external image flapper.jpg
external image flapper.jpg

songs/ silly dances/wild clothes/ the "Bob" haircut for women/ flappers

Women smoked, drank and danced in public!

Installment plans were first offered for expensive items (household appliances, cars, etc.)

Henry Ford - assembly line

Prohibition was in force, but it didn't stop people from drinking liquor.






external image lostgeneration.jpg
external image lostgeneration.jpg

The Lost Generation - expatriates (Americans who went to live in Europe - esp. Paris, France)
writers, artists
Had lost hope in America

1929 - Stock Market Crash - Beginning of the Great Depression
During the Depression:
High Unemployment
Homelessness (hobos) - "Big Rock Candy Mountain" = hobo heaven
Malnutrition

People were buying on margin (paying a small part of a stock's price as a down payment and borrowing the rest. When the stock is sold, the loan is repaid and the buyer keeps the profit.)

Banks went under - people lost their money

Herbert Hoover president
Hoovervilles - villages of wretched huts that housed homeless people
Bonus Army - WWI vets driven out of Washington D.C.

People blamed Hoover for the Depression. They didn't like the way he had treated the WWI veterans.
He had a philosophy of "working ourselves out of the depression." He didn't want people too dependant on the government.
As time went on in 1932 he softened his stand against government reflief and lent money to states, cities and towns and began public works projects such as the CCC and WPA.

CCC - Civilian Conservation Corp. --- put 2 million men to work fighting forest fires and building roads in the West

WPA - Works Progress Administration - provided creative work for artists during the Depression

Hoover lost to Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election.

Roosevelt came up with the New Deal - programs to fight the Depression
In the first Hundred Days under the new administration Congress passed laws with three major goals:
1. relief (for the hungry and jobless)
2. recovery (for agriculture and industry)
3. reforms (to change the way the economy worked)

deficit spending - using borrowed money to fund government programs

New Deal Programs
1. A National Pension System - Social Security
2. Oversight of Labor Practices - govt. oversaw negotiations between labor and management
3. Agricultural Price Supports - farmers agreed to not grow all that they could to keep prices up
4. Protection for Savings - FDIC established (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) Govt. insured bank deposits up to $100,000.
5. Regulation of the Stock Market - federal govt. made sure laws were upheld

liberal - in politics favors government action to bring about social and economic reform
conservative - favors fewer government controls and more individual freedom in economic matters

Dust Bowl - when a drought hit the Great Plains and lasted for several years, dust damaged farms in KS, OK, TX, CO, NM.
2.5 million people fled the Dust Bowl and made their way to CA and other Pacific coast states.