The Roaring 20's
Jacob Harris, P. 5
The Red Scare of the Early 1920's
The Prohibition
New Transportation
The Harlem Renaisance
Cultural Liberation
Burdgeoning Economy and the Stock Market
Going into the 1920's, America was doing extremely well financially. New industries like automobile production, oil, rubber, cinema, and sports all provided a large amount of employment opportunities for Americans. The widespread use of automobiles, made popular by Henry Ford, facilitated a mass migration away from rural life and towards urban centers. The new availability of radios allowed advertisements to promote mass consumerism, creating even more jobs and putting even more money into American industries. America was looking to become THE global economic power of the time.
This new "get it now" mentality played a crucial role in the new stock market. Speculators hoped to get rich quick by investing in up and coming corporations, buying into them "on margin" (with a small down payment). This would slowly lead to an accumulation of debt that would one day become too much to handle for America. Along with the frivolous use of easy credit by every day citizens, the economic boom of the 20's would slowly push America towards a much less promising future.