The New Economy

• The economic boom was a result of many factors.

• An immediate cause was the debilitation of European industry in the aftermath of World War I, which left the United States for the next ten years or so the only truly healthy industrial power in the world.

• More important in the long run was technology and the great industrial expansion it made possible.

• The automobile industry, as a result of the development of the assembly line and other innovations, has now become one of the most important industries in the nation.

• Other new industries benefiting from technological innovations contributed as well to the economic growth.

• Radio began to become a popular technology even before commercial broadcasting began in 1920.

• Early radio had been able to broadcast little besides pulses, which meant that radio communication could occur only through the Morse code.

• But with the discovery of the theory of modulation, pioneered by the Canadian scientist Reginald Fessenden, it became possible to transmit speech and music.

• Commercial aviation developed slowly in the 1920s, beginning with the use of planes to deliver mail

• Trains became faster and more efficient as well with the development of the diesel-electric engine.

• Electronics, home appliances, plastics, and synthetic fibers such as nylon (both pioneered by researchers at Du Pont), aluminum, magnesium, oil, electric power, and other industries fueled by technological advances—all grew and spurred the economic boom.

• Telephones continued to proliferate

• The seeds of future technologies were also visible in the 1920s and 1930s.

• In both England and America, scientists and engineers were working to transform primitive calculating machines into devices capable of performing more complicated tasks

Economic Organization

• Large sectors of American business were accelerating their drive toward national organization and consolidation.

• Certain industries—notably those, such as steel, dependent on large scale mass production—seemed natural to move toward concentrating production in a few large firms; U.S. Steel, the nation’s largest corporation, was so dominant that almost everyone used the term “Little Steel” to refer to all of its competitors combined

Labor in the New Era

• The remarkable economic growth was accompanied by a continuing, and in some areas even increasing, maldistribution of wealth and purchasing power.

• American industrial workers experienced both the successes and the failures of the 1920s as much as any other group.

• On the one hand, most workers saw their standard of living rise during the decade; many enjoyed greatly improved working conditions and other benefits.

• Some employers in the 1920s, eager to avoid disruptive labor unrest and the growth of independent trade unions, adopted paternalistic techniques that came to be known as “welfare capitalism.”

• Henry Ford, for example, shortened the workweek, raised wages, and instituted paid vacations. U.S. Steel made conspicuous efforts to improve safety and sanitation in its factories.

• For the first time, some workers became eligible for pensions on retirement—nearly 3 million by 1926

• Welfare capitalism brought many workers important economic benefits, but it did not help them gain any real control over their own fates.

• Welfare capitalism affected only a relatively small number of workers in any case. Most employers were interested primarily in keeping their labor costs to a minimum.

• Workers as a whole, therefore, received wage increases at a rate far below increases in production and profits.

• Unskilled workers, in particular, saw their wages increase by only a little over 2 percent between 1920 and 1926.

• In the end, American workers in the 1920s remained a relatively impoverished and powerless group.

• Their wages rose, but the average annual income of a worker remained below $1,500 a year when $1,800 was considered necessary to maintain a minimally decent standard of living.

• Only by relying on the earnings of several family members could many working-class families make ends meet.

• And almost all such families had to live with the very real possibility of one or more members losing their jobs.

• Unemployment was lower in the 1920s than it had been in the previous two decades and much lower than it would be in the 1930s

Women and Minorities in the Workforce

• A growing proportion of the workforce consisted of women, who were concentrated in what have since become known as “pink-collar” jobs—low-paying service occupations with many of the same problems as manufacturing employment.

• Large numbers of women worked as secretaries, salesclerks, telephone operators, and in other, similarly underpaid jobs

• Migration after 1914 had few opportunities for union representation

• In the West and the Southwest, the ranks of unskilled workers included considerable numbers of Asians and Hispanics, few of them organized, most of them actively excluded from white-dominated unions.

• In the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the late nineteenth century, Japanese immigrants increasingly took the place of the Chinese

• Mexican immigrants formed a major part of the unskilled workforce throughout the Southwest and California

The American Plan

• Whatever the weaknesses of the unions and of unorganized, unskilled workers, the strength of the corporations were the principal reason for the absence of effective labor organization.

• When such tactics proved insufficient to counter union power, government assistance often made the difference.

• In 1921, the Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling that declared picketing illegal and supported the right of courts to issue injunctions against strikers.

• In 1922, the Justice Department intervened to quell a strike by 400,000 railroad workers.

• In 1924, the courts refused protection to members of the United Mine Workers Union when mine owners launched a violent campaign in western Pennsylvania to drive the union from the coal fields.

Agricultural Technology

• Agricultural researchers were already at work on other advances that would later transform food production in America and around the world: the invention of hybrid corn (made possible by advances in genetic research), which became available to farmers in 1921 but was not grown in great quantities until the 1930s; and the creation of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which also began to have limited use in the 1920s but proliferated quickly in the 1930s and 1940s.

• The new technologies greatly increased agricultural productivity, both in the United States and in other parts of the world.

• But the demand for agricultural goods was not rising as fast as production.

• In response, some farmers began to demand relief in the form of government price supports

22.1: The New Culture

Consumerism

• Among the many changes industrialization produced in the United States was the creation of a mass consumer culture.

• The automobile affected American life in countless ways. It greatly expanded the geographic horizons of millions of people who in the past had seldom ventured far from their homes

• City dwellers found in the automobile an escape from the congestion of urban life.

• Weekend drives through the countryside became a staple of urban leisure.

• Many families escaped the city in a permanent sense: by moving to the new suburbs that were rapidly growing up around large cities in response to the ease of access the automobile had created.

• The automobile also transformed the idea of vacations.

• In the past, the idea of traveling for pleasure had been a luxury reserved for the wealthy.

• Now many middle-class and even working-class people could aspire to travel considerable distances for vacations, which was a new concept for most men and women in this era.

• Many businesses and industries began to include paid vacations among their employee benefits; and many employers encouraged their vacationing workers to travel, on the assumption that a change of scene would help restore their energy and vigor at work.

• For young people in families affluent enough to afford a car, the automobile was often a means of a different kind of escape.

• It allowed them to move easily away from parents and family and to develop social lives of their own

Advertising

• Advertisers also encouraged the public to absorb the values of promotion and salesmanship and to admire those who were effective “boosters” and publicists

• The advertising industry could never have had the impact it did without the emergence of new vehicles of communication that made it possible to reach large audiences quickly and easily.

• Newspapers were being absorbed into national chains, and wire services were making it possible even for independent newspapers to carry nationally syndicated material.

The Movies and Broadcasting

• At the same time, movies were becoming an ever more popular and powerful form of mass communication.

• More than 100 million people saw films in 1930, as compared to 40 million in 1922.

• The addition of sound to motion pictures—beginning in 1927 with the first feature-length “talkie,” The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson—created nationwide excitement

• The most important communications vehicle was the only one truly new to the 1920s: radio.

• The first commercial radio station in America, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began broadcasting in 1920; and the first national radio network, the National Broadcasting Company, was formed in 1927.

Modernist Religion

• The influence of the consumer culture, and its increasing emphasis on immediate, personal fulfillment, was visible even in religion.

• Theological modernists taught their followers to abandon some of the traditional tenets of evangelical Christianity

• Most Americans, even most middle-class Americans, stopped well short of this view of religion as a vehicle for advancing “man’s abundant life” and remained faithful to traditional religious messages.

• But many other middle-class Americans were gradually devaluing religion, assigning it a secondary role (or at times no role) in their lives.

• They no longer devoted much time to teaching their children the tenets of their faith; they seldom prayed at home or attended church on any day but Sunday.

• Even the Sabbath was becoming not a day of rest and religious reflection but, rather, a holiday filled with activities and entertainment.

Professional Women

• In the 1920s, college-educated women were no longer pioneers.

• There were now two and even three generations of graduates of women’s or coeducational colleges and universities; many such women were making their presence felt in

• Although there were notable success stories about female business executives, journalists, doctors, and lawyers, most professional women remained confined to such traditionally “feminine” fields as fashion, education, social work, and nursing, or to the lower levels of business management.

• Some middle-class women now combined marriage and careers, but most still had to choose between work and family.

• The majority of the 25 percent of married women who worked outside the home in the 1920s were working class.

• The “new professional woman” was a vivid and widely publicized image in the 1920s.

• In reality, however, most middle-class married women did not work outside the home.