The Roaring Twenties

1. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, when people think of “the roaring twenties,” many images come to mind: girls dancing the Charleston, gangsters carrying machine-guns, Charlie Chaplin playing comical tricks… good times…wild times… This is the period when the United States of America flourished and life here was considered to be a dream. At the beginning of the 1920s, America was very rich. This happened because after the First World War other countries owed it money. It had plenty of raw materials and plenty of factories. Taking into consideration the fact that an apocalyptic war was being fought on European soil, it is understandable that the United States had a very high national income. In fact, it was higher than that of Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, all put together.

American factories started to produce more goods every year. The ones who were the busiest were in the automobile industry. Statistics of the period mentioned that between 1922 and 1927, the number of cars rose from under eleven million to over twelve million. Automobiles, however, were not the only goods produced in the United States. It also made hundreds of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, stoves and radios. This way, the United States became the first nation in history to build its way of life on selling vast quantities of goods that made the ordinary people’s lives easier and more enjoyable. In the 1920s such products, also called “consumer goods,” started pouring off assembly lines of big, new factories. Due to this mass-production, the country’s output doubled.

The growth of economy made many people rich. Millions of them earned good wages and invested their money in successful companies so that they could share their profits. Many bought cars, radios and many other new products. Often, besides making the payment in cash, Americans would pay a small deposit, agreeing to pay the rest through an “installment plan.”

Businessmen became popular every day in the 1920s. People like Henry Ford were regarded as the promoters of national prosperity. “The man who builds a factory builds a temple,” said Calvin Coolidge, the President from 1923 to 1929. “The man who works there, worships there.” Coolidge’s words summarize the main concept in which American governments believed in the 20s. These governments were controlled by the Republican Party. They believed that the central authority ought to look after the interests of businessmen, because by doing so, their companies would take on more workers and pay more wages, which was beneficial for both the businessmen, and the workers.

In order to achieve its goal, the government introduced high import taxes on the goods coming from abroad. The aim was to raise the price for the imported products so that American producers had less competition. More than that, it also reduced taxes on high incomes and company profits, giving rich men more money to invest.

However, there were lots of poor Americans. A survey dating back from 1929 proved that half of the American people barely had enough money to buy food and clothing. In the industrial cities of the North, such as Chicago and Pittsburgh, immigrant workers still worked all day long for little money in steel mills, factories and slaughter houses. In the South, thousands of poor farmers, both black and white, worked from sunrise to sunset to earn enough to manage staying alive. The wealth Republicans thought everybody would benefit from, never reached people like these.

The main reason for poverty was low wages. Farmers and farm-workers had a hard time because of the changing of seasons. Most of the farmers were not even the owners of the land they were administrating, but share-croppers.