The Economic Boom Flashcards
All 12 cards in this deck
What is hire purchase?
Buying goods by paying a deposit and then paying the rest in instalments. It let millions of Americans afford consumer goods like radios and cars.
What was the 'cycle of prosperity' in 1920s America?
Mass production made goods cheaper, so more people bought them, which created jobs and wages, which created more demand.
What production method did Henry Ford use to make the Model T?
The moving assembly line, which made cars quickly and cheaply so prices fell and demand soared.
True or false? All groups in American society shared in the prosperity of the 1920s boom.
False. Farmers suffered falling incomes from overproduction, and workers in old industries such as coal and cotton lost out to new industries like electricity and rayon.
Name two Republican government policies of the 1920s that helped the boom.
Low taxation and laissez-faire (little interference in business); high tariffs such as the Fordney–McCumber Tariff to protect American industry.
What does 'buying on the margin' mean?
Buying shares with only a small deposit and borrowing the rest, hoping to sell at a profit and repay the loan.
How did the motor industry help other industries grow in the 1920s boom?
Car-making used vast amounts of steel, rubber and glass, and motorists needed petrol, roads, garages and roadside services, so the car created jobs far beyond the car factories themselves.
How did the spread of electricity help the 1920s consumer boom?
The share of American homes with electricity roughly doubled, from about a third in 1920 to about two-thirds by 1930, creating a mass market for electrical goods such as radios, vacuum cleaners and refrigerators, and jobs making them.
How did advertising help the 1920s boom?
Adverts in magazines, newspapers, billboards and on the new radio stations made people want the latest products and feel they needed them, which pushed up sales.
How unequally was wealth shared in 1920s America?
Very unequally: the richest 5% received about a third of all income, while around 6 million families (roughly 1 in 5) lived on under $1,000 a year, too little for decent food and housing.
What was a sharecropper, and why were African-American sharecroppers poor in the 1920s?
A farmer who worked a landowner's land and paid with a share of the crop. Many Southern African Americans farmed this way; already very poor, they were hit hardest when farm prices fell in the 1920s.
Give one reason American Indians did not share in the 1920s boom.
Most had lost their best land and lived on reservations with poor farmland, so few could make a living; they had the worst poverty, schooling and life expectancy of any group.