A Booming Economy

Why was there an increased demand for white-collar working women?

As the number of businessmen increased, the demand for secretaries and typists increased.

What does the shift in job and worker types tell you about American culture and values in the 1920s?

Business was important. Perhaps working with your mind was more valued more than working with your hands.

The Big Bull Market Makes Fortunes

During the 1920s, the stock market enjoyed a dizzying bull market, a period of rising stock prices. More and more Americans put their money into stocks in an effort to get rich quick. By 1929, around 4 million Americans owned stocks.

Cars Early in the Century

Early in the century, only wealthy city dwellers could afford cars. The automobile was often seen as a symbol of the class divisions in the country. City drivers who ventured out onto country roads frightened horses and cows, coated crops with dush, and rutted dirt roads. "To the countryman," said Woodrow Wilson in 1906, cars "are a picture of the arrogance of wealth."

Residential Patterns

Finally, automobiles altered residential patterns. The ability to drive to work permitted people to live farther from their places of employment. This led to the development of suburban communities linked to cities by arteries of highways and roads. Los Angeles, one of the first cities whose growth was influenced by the automobile, developed in a sprawling, haphazard fashion. It became, according to one observer, "a series of suburbs in search of a city."

Ford Pioneers Mass Production

Ford did not originate the idea of mass production, the rapid manufacture of large numbers of identical products. It had been used, for example, to make sewing machines and typewriters. But such products involved only hundreds of parts--not thousands that go into the production of cars. Ford brought mass production to new heights.

Scientific Management

Ford hired scientific management experts to improve his mass-production techniques. Scientific management was a relatively new method of improving efficiency, in which experts looked at every step of a manufacturing process to find ways to reduce time, effort, and expense. Ford also studied the techniques of Chicago meatpacking houses, where beef carcasses were moved on chains past a series of meat cutters, each of whom cut off a specific part of the carcass. Ford reversed the process. He put his car on moving assembly lines. At each step, a worker added something to construct the automobile. In two years, assembly line techniques reduced the time it took to manufacture a Model T--from more than 12 hours to just 90 minutes.

The Suburbs Grow

Improved mass transportation and the widespread use of automobiles caused cities to expand outward. More urban workers moved to the suburbs. Western and southern cities, developed after the automobile revolution, encompassed suburban areas as well as inner cities. Suburbs mushroomed, growing much faster than inner cities.

People Flock to Cities

In the 1920s, the movement of people was toward cities. Immigrants settled in cities. Farmers left their fields for cities. The direction of the African American Great Migration was toward northern cities. Mexican Americans crossing the border relocated to southwestern cities. In addition, the adoption of skyscraper techhnology caused cities to stretch skyward. Steelframed skyscrapers with light coverings of masonry and glass began to dominate the skylines of the nation's cities. New York's Empire State Building, finished in 1931, symbolized the power and majesty of the U.S.

Many Americans Face Hardship

In the cities and suburbs, Americans enjoyed prosperity and the fruits of growth. They participated in the consumer economy and in the joys of automobile ownership. The wealthiest urban residents--owners and managers of businesses--reaped fabulous rewards, which they often pumped back into the bull market. But there were problems looming ahead. America's wealth was poorly distributed. Industrial wages rose at a much slower rate than crporate salaries. Worst yet, farm incomes declined during the decade. Many people living in the country did not participate in the consumer benefits and economic gains of the decade. They formed part of another Americans--poorer and outside the economic boom. In particular, farmers suffered from growing debt and falling farm prices.

A Booming Economy

In the decade after World War I, the American economy experienced tremendous growth. Using revolutionary massproduction technqiues, American workers produced more goods in less time than ever before. The boom fundamentally changed the lives of millions of people and helped create the modern consumer economy.

Bull Market/Stock Prices

In truth, the big bull market stood on very shaky ground. But most people ignored the dangers. By the middle of 1929, economic authorities proclaimed that America and the stock market had entered a "new era." Stock prices would continue their march upward, they said, while boom-and-bust economies would become a thing of the past.

What jobs were open to black women?

Many black women became servants. They also worked in kitches and laundries. Other black women served as teachers and nurses for their own communities.

Where do you think most of these new jobs were likely to be found? What can you infer about the economic boom?

Most jobs were likely in the cities, which implies that the cities were growing.

Henry Ford

Much of this explosive growth was sparked by a single business: the automobile industry. Carmaker Henry Ford introduced a series of methods and ideas the revolutionized production, wages, working conditions, and daily life.

Additional Economic Effects

Other forms of ground transportation, such as railraods and trolleys, suffered a decline in use. With cars, people could go where they wanted, when they wanted. They did not have to travel along set tracks on set schedules.

Installment Buying

People who did not have enough ready cash could buy what they wanted on credit. Installment buying, in which a consumer would make a small down payment and then pay off the rest of the debt in regular monthly payments, allowed Americans to own products they might otherwise havve had to save up for years in order to buy.

Model T/Oldsmobile

Ransom Olds had introduced a less expensive car, the Oldsmobile in 1901. But it was Henry Ford who truly brought the automobile to the people. In 1908, he introduced the Model T, a reliable car the average American could afford. The first Model T sold for $850. Soon after, Ford opened a new plant on the Detroit River. The Detroit location gave Ford easy access to steel, glass, oil, and rubber manufactured in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

Road Construction/Cars

Road construction boomed, especially when the federal government introduced the system of numbered highways in 1926. The millions of cars on American roads led to the rapid appearance of thousands of service stations, diners, and motor hotels. The growth in all these industries created new and often better-paying jobs, spurring national prosperity.

Blue-collar workers worked in factories using their hands or machines to produce goods. What were the differences between skilled and unskilled blue-collar workers?

Skilled blue-collar workers were often unionized. They were paid well and had a good standard of living. Unskilled blue-collar workers had a lower standard of living and were less likely to be unionized.

The Suburbs Grow Part 2

Slowly at first, but more rapidly as the century progressed, suburbs drained people and resources from the cities. Catering to middle and upper-class residents, suburbs tended to be more conservative and Republican. Meanwhile, the inner cities at the heart of older urban areas began a slow but steady decline.

A Bustling Economy

The 1920s saw what has been called a consumer revolution, in which a flood of new, affordable goods became available to the public. The widespread availability of electrical power supported the consumer revolution. Electric washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and irons made housekeeping easier and less time-consuming. Accessible electricity also contributed to radio and refrigerator sales.

Assembly Lines/Model T

The assembly line allowed Ford to keep dropping the sale price. The cost of a Model T fell to $350 by 1916 and to $290 by 1927. It was slow, dull, and available only in black. But the Model T was the first car that ordinary people could afford. In 1919, only 10 percent of American families owned an automobile. By 1927, 56 percent did.

Mobility

The automobile prompted a new sense of freedom and prosperity. Never had Americans been so mobile. Entire families crowded into their cars for cross-country vacations or Sunday drives to the country. Ownership of an automobile came to symbolize participation in the American dream of success.

The Automobile Changes America

The boom in the automotive industry stimulated growth in other industries related to car manufacture or use. The steel, glass, rubber, asphalt, wood, gasoline, insurance, and road-construction industries all benefited. Oil discoveries in California, Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma brought workers and money to the Southwest.

What type of worker was the hero of the 1920s?

The businessman

Buying on Margin

The desire to strike it riich often led investors to ignore financial risks. As the market soared, people began buying on margin--another form of buying on credit. By purchasing stock on margin, a buyer paid as little as 10 percent of the stock price upfront to a broker. The buyer then paid the broker for the rest of the stock over a period of months. The stock served as collateral, or security, for the broker's loan. As long as the price of the stock rose, the buyer had no trouble paying off the loan and making a profit. But if the price fell, the buyer still had to pay off the loan. Buyers gambled that they wouuld be able to sell the stock at a profit long before the loan came due.

Cities, Suburbs, and Country

The economic boom, did not affect all parts of the nation equally. While urban and suburban areas prospered, rural Americans faced hardships.

Advertising and Credit Build a Consumer Culture

The growing advertising industry also played its part. Using new "scientific" techniques and psychological research, advertisers were able to sell more products to more Americans than ever before. Magazine and newspaper ads often focused on the desires and fears of Americans more than on what people really needed. Advertisers celebrated consumption as an end in itself, convincing people that they could be the person they wanted to be just by buying the right products. From Kleenex to Listerine, Americans bought products that years earlier they could never have imagined they needed.

The Automobile Drives Prosperity

The recession that had followed World War I quickly ended. All signs pointed to economic growth. Stock prices rose rapidly. Factories produced more and more goods and, with wages on the rise, more and more people could afford to buy them.

Why were black workers less likely to unionize?

They were more likely to take any job available because the jobs usually paid much more than jobs in the South. Also, most unions did not accept black members, fearing that this move would attract outside criticism.

Innovation

When it came to managing the men who worked along his assembly lines. Ford also proved that he was not afraid of innovation. In 1914, he more than doubled the wages of his workers, from $2.36 to $$5 a day. He also reduced their workday from 9 hours to 8 house. In 192, he had become the first major industrialist to give his workers Saturday and Sunday off. Beofre Ford, the idea of a "weekend" hardly existd. Ford shrewly realized that if workers made more money and had more leisure time, they would become potential cusotmers of his automobiles. The combination of the Model T and the "five-dollar day, forty hour week" made Ford not only a very rich man but also one of the shapers of the modern world.