Chapter 11 Section 2
Consumer Economy
 Incomes rise during & after WWI
 Consumer economy: economy that depends on a large amount
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of buying by consumers
Developed rapidly in the 1920s
Pre-1920s – borrowing money to pay for anything besides a house
or land was unthrifty or even immoral
1920s – now customers arranged payments on an installment
plan
 Customers made partial payments or installments over a
period of time until it was paid off
Encouraged people to buy, even though they had to pay interest
 Why save? Get it now!
Consumer Economy
 New demand for electricity
 In most cities, slower getting to countryside
(expensive)
 New appliances (toasters, ovens, sewing machines,
coffee pots, irons, vacuum cleaners)
 Americans want it & the electricity to operate them!
Ford & the Automobile
 Invented in the 1890s
 Mass produced in the 1920s
 Henry Ford brought assembly line to auto making
 One work does simple task over & over
 Ford’s assembly line moved, workers stayed in one spot;
more effective
 Cars used interchangeable parts
 Thousands of new businesses arose from the automobile
 Garages, dealerships, motels, gas stations, restaurants
Chapter 11 Section 3
Flapper
 Flapper: a new type of woman: young, rebellious,
fun loving, & bold
Changing Women’s Roles
 Really the flapper was only a small
number of American women
 But wide impact on fashion &
manners
 Stood for the longing to make a break
from the past
 Hemlines rose, dresses & blouses
became simpler, hair shorter, wore
makeup (used to be a sign of
immorality)
 Drinking & smoking in public
Women Working
 Generally only single
women could get jobs,
quit when married, or
pregnant
 Therefore hard to get
higher positions or better
jobs
 Why waste time
training
Cities & Suburbs
 1920’s saw change in demographic – statistics that
describe a population
 6 million people move from rural areas to the cities
 Many African Americans moved North
 Jim Crows laws & economic booms are reason behind
it
 Still not always welcomed
 With immigration quotas in place, employers turned to
immigrants from Mexico & Canada for low paying jobs
(did not apply to nations in the Americas)
Cities & Suburbs
 Causes city populations to grow as well
 Develop distinct neighborhoods (barrio – Spanishspeaking neighborhood)
 Suburbs grew too
 Automobiles
American Heroes
 With all the change of 1920’s, people looked to heroes
that had the virtues of the past
 Brutalities of the war, smoking, drinking, “revealing”
clothes, bright make-up
 Charles Lindbergh first nonstop flight from New York
to Paris
 May 20, 1927
 33 ½ hours
 Spirit of St. Louis was his plane
American Heroes
 Amelia Earhart
 1932 – also flew across Atlantic
 1935 – flew from Hawaii to California
 1937 – attempting to fly around the world, she
disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean
 George Herman “Babe” Ruth “Sultan of Swat”
 Gertrude Ederle – first woman to swim 35 mile English
Channel in 1926
 Beat men’s record by nearly 2 hours