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Partly due to the death of Theodore Roosevelt, conservative Republicans returned; they did not preach laissez-faire economics.
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Warren Harding, a Republican, was elected as president; he was not a very good leader, so he elected strong men to his cabinet: Charles Evans Hughes, Herbert Hoover, and Andrew Mellon.
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Increased productivity led to the business boom, which then led to economic prosperity; Henry Ford invented the assembly line and Frederick W. Taylor made the manufacturing process more efficient by adopting improved methods of mass production.
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Economic growth was also caused by the increased use of oil and electricity; oil powered factories and fueled the newly made cars.
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During the 1920s, government favored the growth of big business; it offered corporate tax cuts, and it did not enforce the antitrust laws.
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Chemical fertilizers and gasoline tractors helped farmers increase production, but farmers still had a huge debt; farmers borrowed heavily during the war to expand.
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Union movement declined in the 1920s and wages rose; companies insisted on an open shop, which meant keeping jobs open to nonunion workers.
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More than half of the population lived in urban areas; culture was based on taste, morals, and habits of mass consumption.
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Dancing to jazz music was a way of the youth rebelling; jazz was now the symbol of new and modern culture.
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Electricity made it possible for new consumer appliances; the price of automobiles became more reasonable and chain stores flourished.
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The switch from newspapers to radios was made when radio stations went on air; the movie industry also flourished and became a habit for most Americans.
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Prior to the 1920s, politicians were the heroic figures, but in the 1920s, people in movies and people that played sports were now the heroic figures.
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In the 1920s, some Protestants defined their faith in new ways; they believed they could accept Charles Darwin's theory without abandoning their religious faith.
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The Protestant preachers in rural areas said that every word in the Bible must be accepted as true; they did not like Modernists.
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There was a common theme for writers in the postwar decade: scorning religion as hypocritical and bitterly condemning the sacrifices of wartime as a fraud perpetrated by money interests.
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Industrial design was new, and it was devoted to making products look as well as they functioned; many architects applied functionalism to their work.
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They expressed disillusionment with the materialism of a business-oriented culture; they took to a life of drinking.
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They expressed disillusionment with the ideals of an earlier time; they also expressed their unhappiness by moving into exile in Europe.
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An impact of the new technology and urban life was also found in the stark paintings by Hopper and O'Keeffe.
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The largest African American community developed in Harlem in New York City; it became famous for its concentration of talented actors, artists, musicians, and writers.
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The leading African American poets included Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Claude McKay; they expressed emotions from bitterness to joy.
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Bessie Smith was a great blues singer, and Paul Robeson was a singer and an actor; the artists and audiences were segregated from the rest of the nation.
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This act was passed in 1919; many people had different views on prohibition, but Congress passed the law due to wartime concerns to conserve grain and maintain a sober workforce.
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Prohibition did not stop people from drinking; mostly in cities, it became fashionable to go to clubs (speakeasies) where smuggled alcohol was sold.
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The war basically stopped immigrants from coming to the United States, but once the war ended, over a million foreigners entered the country.
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Two quota laws were passed, one in 1921 and one in 1924; the first quota law limited immigration to 3% of the 1910 census, and the second law limited immigration to 2% of the 1890 census, which was before "new" immigration began.
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Coolidge was Harding's successor, and he had the nickname of "Silent Cal"; "If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it."
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Because two conservatives were elected by the Republican and Democrat party, a new Progressive Party was formed and elected Robert La Follette; Coolidge won.
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He brought the United Negro Improvement Association to the United States from Jamaica, but he was charged of fraud and deported back to Jamaica.
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Du Bois and other African American leaders did not agree with Garvey's back to Africa idea.
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Coolidge decided not to run a second time, so the Republican Party elected Herbert Hoover, who served three times in administrative roles; Hoover won by a landslide.
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One of the causes of the stock market crash was uneven distribution of income: wages did not rise a lot even though productivity and corporate profits shot up; success was not shared at all because the top 5% of the richest Americans received over 33% of all income.
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This tariff caused a tax increase ranging from 31% to 49% on foreign imports; this caused national and international economies to sink further into depression.
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A major drought in the early 1930s ruined crops in the Great Plains, as if they did not already have it hard enough; high winds blew away millions of tons of dried topsoil.
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The Dawes Plan for collecting war debts was no longer possible because conditions became so bad; therefore, Hoover proposed a suspension on the payment of international debts.
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Of course, the Great Depression was a result of the Stock Market Crash, but it also led to increasing the power of the federal government.
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Roosevelt made no promises but was willing to experiment to end the depression with political solutions to economic problems.
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Roosevelt relied on advisers: Louis Howe, Rexford Tugwell, Raymond Moley, and Adolph A. Berle, Jr.; the people appointed during his presidency were the most diverse in United States history.
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The ratification of the 21st amendment repealed the 18th amendment, which ended prohibition; Roosevelt also raised needed tax money by passing the Beer-Wine Revenue Act.
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This authorized the government to examine the finances of banks closed during the bank holiday and reopen those judged to be sound.
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The FDIC guaranteed individual bank deposits up to $5,000.
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The HOLC provided refinancing of small homes to prevent foreclosures.
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The CCC employed young men on projects on federal lands and paid their family small monthly sums.
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This provided low-interest farm loans and mortgages to prevent foreclosures on the property of indebted farmers.
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The FERA offered grants of federal money to states and local governments that were operating soup kitchens and other forms of relief for the jobless and homeless.
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The PWA allotted money to state and local governments for building roads, bridges, dams, and other public works.
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The TVA hired thousands of people in one of the nation's poorest regions to build dams, operate electric power plants, control flooding and erosion, and manufacture fertilizer.
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The CWA hired laborers for temporary construction projects sponsored by the federal government.
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The SEC was created to regulate the stock market and to place strict limits on the kind of speculative practices that had led to the Wall Street crash.
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Many people from Oklahoma migrated westward to California to find a farm or a factory; John Steinbeck wrote about the hardships in "The Grapes of Wrath".
