Summing up the 1920's
By: Caroline Rogers
1. Prohibition
2. The automobile
Model T:
-Developed by Henry Ford ((DIDN’T INVENT THE CAR))
-Used an assembly line to form production
-Divides operations into simple tasks that increased efficiency and decreased total cost
-Allowed ford to reduce cost of model t through mass production
Automobile Impact:
-15% of nations steel
-Increased demand for rubber, glass, nickel, and lead
-RAW MATERIALS
-Increased mining
-Expand petroleum industry
-Created new businesses such as gas stations, garages, and eventually drive in movies and restaurants
-Individual freedom for families expanded the entertainment industry
-Mass production or large-scale product manufacturing, allows for an increase in supply and a decrease in cost.
-Increase workers wages
3. Rise of the arts and literature
Rise of “Artsy Neighborhoods”:
-Young artists and writers moved to Greenwich Village in NY and South Side Chicago
-Promoted the bohemian lifestyle (artistic and unconventional)
Birth of Modern American Art:
-Painters focused on URBAN landscapes of American cities
-Rise of photography because technology takes off
-Unique Abstract art
Rise of Literature:
-Artists and authors deeply influenced by events of WWI and the effects of modernization
-Poetry
-Carl Sandburg
-T.S. Eliot
-Playwrights
-Eugene O-Neill
-Novelists
-Ernest Hemingway
Hollywood and Motion Pictures:
-First talking picture released in 1927, The Jazz Singer
Mass Media:
-Mass Media: radio, movies, newspaper, and magazines aimed at broad audiences helped break down provincialism (narrow focus on local interests)
4: Music
Jazz:
-Creation attributed to Louis Armstrong and combined Dixieland music with ragtime
-Cotton Club was the most famous night club in Harlem and launched the career of great jazz artists such as Duke Ellington.
Blues:
-Bessie Smith
-A soulful style of music
5: The Great Depression
-Prosperity was real
-Wages profits and manufacturing were up but farmers coal industry small businesses were weak.
-Lots of stock speculation
-Wall street crash: oct 24 -à Black Thursday Oct 29, 1929 à black Tuesday
-Bull Market à strong market
-Bear market à weak market
6: Airline Industry
-Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903
-Airmail service begins in 1918
-Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic in 1927 in the Spirit of St. Louis. Flew with no direction, no autopilot (flew blind)
-He became very popular when he returned home. Child was kidnapped and ended up dead