United States in the 1920s-Domestic Policies

1. United States in the 1920s-Domestic Policies

2. Society in the 1920s • Age of excess • Jazz Age • Flappers-women gained more social freedoms • Consumerism-mass media and mass advertising encouraged people to buy more and more consumer goods

3. “The business of America is business” • American Businesses used advertising (magazines, the new medium of radio) to create the American ideal. • However, most could not afford this idea, and higher profits for businesses did not lead to higher wages for workers.

4. The long-term result was overproduction-businesses made too many products that could not be sold, so workers were laid off and the value of such businesses would eventually drop. • The foreign market was generally closed to them-Americans greatly increased tariffs (as part of the isolationism policy) and European nations had responded by raising tariffs against American goods.

6. The one bright spot throughout the 1920s was the automobile-Henry Ford’sassembly line produced Model T was built so efficiently that nearly everyone could buy one.

8. Plight of the Farmers • After WWI the need for American goods dropped • Mechanization of farming equipment led to overproduction of agricultural products. • Result: prices for food product dropped, and farmers were going bankrupt producing more food and trying to pay for new machinery, mortgages, etc.

9. American Ideals • KKK-brief re-birth in the 1920s to keep foreign ideas out of America-Jews, Catholics, African-Americans all suffered from their bigotry.

11. Legislating morality: • Prohibition was meant to make alcohol and the social ills surrounding it go away. • It led to gangster control of alcohol (Al Capone in Chicago).