Good Times and Bad
5-4.1 Summarize daily life in the post–World War I period
of the 1920s, including improvements in the standard of
living, transportation, and entertainment; the impact of the
Nineteenth Amendment, the Great Migration, the Harlem
Renaissance, and Prohibition; and racial and ethnic conflict.
We’ll look at:
- Improvements in the standard of living
- Improvements in transportation
- Improvements in entertainment
The Boom Economy
• Factories started making new things
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Vacuum cleaners
Washing machines
Radios
Other appliances
• People bought lots of consumer goods
– Products made for personal use
• Installment buying
– Take home and pay for it later
• Agriculture busted
– Too many crops…not enough buyers
The Automobile
• Most important new industry
• 1890 1st gasoline powered automobile
• Henry Ford
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Lowered cost by using mass production
Moving assembly line
More than one made at a time
1 worker = one task
Could make 6 cars instead of 1 CHEAPER
Life Changes and the Car
• Could travel farther and faster
• Could live further from work
• Could shop at stores and attend events
farther from home
• Could go on vacations to distant places
Domino Effect
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Other Industries grew because of the Car
Tires…Rubber industry
Gas…Oil industry
Roads…labor needed
Gas stations…labor
Suburbs
• Community or neighborhoods outside a city
grew because of the cars.
• People could move out of the crowded cities
to raise their families because they could get
to work more easily because of the car.
The Automobile Industry
Aviation
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Air transportation
Orville & Wilbur Wright
1903 Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
Used planes in World War I
1927…used for personal travel
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New York
Spirit of St. Louis
Goal was to fly across the Atlantic alone
134 hours later landed in Paris, France
National hero
Led to commercial flights
– Run to make a profit
– 1926 – 1930 People who flew went from 6,000 to over
400,000
Entertainment
• Radio
• By 1929…800 stations…10 million families
• Listened to Babe Ruth hit his 60th Homerun in
1927 season
• Sports…football, basketball, and baseball drew
huge crowds
• Tennis and Golf became popular
• Swimming pools
Music
• Jazz
– African-American
heritage
– Known as “The Jazz
Age”
Movies
• Silent films
• 1927 Sound was added
Everyone didn’t enjoy the roaring
20’s.
• Some groups such as sharecroppers, farmers and
underpaid factory workers were not able to enjoy
the rising standard of living. They could not afford
to buy the automobiles and appliances that they
helped to manufacture.
• Only wealthy Americans were able to take
advantage of air travel. American culture came to
be more standardized as people embraced the mass
culture offered by the movies and radio.
Impact of
th
19
Amendment- 1920
Impact of
th
19
Amendment
- Gave women the same rights as men
- Gave women confidence that they
could accomplish more
- women got jobs outside the home,
they started playing sports, they
shortened their dresses and bobbed
their hair--and had fun!
The Great Migration
• We discussed this in our last
unit, but didn’t call it the Great
Migration.
• So, any guesses??????
The Great Migration
• The Great Migration of African Americans from
southern rural to northern urban areas was the
result of push and pull factors. Jim Crow laws and
lynchings as well as the economic hardship of
sharecropping, the effects of the boll weevil and
lack of alternative economic opportunities
prompted many to leave the South.
• Job opportunities in the factories, especially
during World War I, brought African Americans
to the cities of the North and Midwest.
The Harlem Renaissance
• was a result of the Great
Migration
• As African Americans
migrated, they took their
culture with them!
The Harlem Renaissance
• Writers, artists,
musicians, Jazz music- all
flourished!
The Harlem Renaissancebackground information
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New York City neighborhood
Center for African-American artists
Great interest in art
Poet, Langston Hughes
Claude McKay, Counter Cullen, Zora Neale
Hurston
Louis Armstrong, jazz musician
Billie Holliday
Duke Ellington
Paul Robeson - actor
Racial and Ethnic Conflict
• Although segregation was not enforced “by law”
in northern states, it was widely practiced.
– African Americans were often last hired, first fired
– Riots targeted at African Americans
– Anti- immigrant feelings got worse
Prohibition- this is review!
• Prohibition outlawed the production and
distribution of alcohol and was intended to control
the immigrant population. (Americans thought
immigrants drank too much) However the law
was widely ignored and speakeasies and bootleg
liquor gave rise to crime. The amendment was
repealed in the early 1930s.