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1920's Lifestyle

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The 1920s is notorious for being a good time, with its reputation of being full of fun parties and extravagant living. Those wealthy enough were able to enjoy that along with all the other changes in American culture. In the 1920s the use of installment buying, credit, and stock market investments became a typical part of life. Technology that improved home life, like vacuums and radio, were desired, and these shifts in culture added to the stigma that good times would continue forever. The American people were not aware that common habits in the 1920s would lead to the Great Depression in the 1930s, during which unemployment reached over 25%, the economy struggled, and the fun times ended. The Great Depression was caused by experts that encouraged …show more content…

Frederick Lewis Allen published The Big Change in 1952, and in it there was a table of the U.S. Family Income Distribution of 1929. 32% of American families earned an annual income of $2,000-$5,000. In an advertisement for Gar Wood speedboats, released the February of 1930, it said their stock model speed boat would cost $10,000. A majority of Americans could not afford this boat at this time, but expensive purchases like this were made using installment buying. William E. Leuchtenburg said in The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932, published 1958, “...consumers bought goods on installment at a rate faster than their income was expanding, but it was inevitable that a time would come when they would have to reduce purchases…” People not being able to pay for goods due to their income led to less purchases, which caused surplus in …show more content…

In the political cartoon Current History published in St Paul Daily News in April of 1930, it shows the effects overproduction had on the farming industry. The cartoon depicts a large sack labeled overproduction and a farmer, holding eggs, tripping over it. The eggs labeled prices are cracked, representing the decrease in the value of crops. Other industries also faced this issue of overproduction once consumer purchasing decreased. Elmer Davis wrote in If Hoover Fails, published in Harpers Monthly in March of 1929, that “In past times… (w)hen people had bought up all they could afford they stopped buying; production slackened, workmen were laid off, until the… surplus was used up.” He continued to say this was not the case in the 1920s, and that the continuation of purchases despite the lack of money would lead to a complicated problem to face once it arrives. Harry J. Carman and Harold C. Syrett wrote A History of the American People, published 1952, and said “Security prices were forced up by competitive bidding rather than by any fundamental improvement in American (business).” The overproduction and price increase left a surplus once consumers stopped buying things, and the surplus caused companies to fire workers, which increased the unemployment rate and allowed less people to purchase items that would support the damaged

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