Was there real prosperity during the 20s?
Groups that missed on the prosperity
Farmers
African American Population
Women :
Trade unionists
Native Indian Americans
What was done to help the poor
Why was so little help to the poor?
How had this become to be possible
Final conclusion
Stripped off their land, culture and rights
Squalid Reservations: Endurement of miserable conditions
Difficulties
High rates of alcoholism and crime
Low life expentancy
High infant inmortality
Unequal distribution of wealth
Had no chance of repayin the cheap loans
Poverty, hardship and struggle against debt
Over-production
Increase in farm output (high levels of borrowing to pay for new machinery)
Exacerbated with the fall in demand
Demand
Urban demand: depended on the ability of workers to purchase the food
Economic crash worsened the conditions in the countryside
Farm products sold below actual cost of production
Activism
Because of the economic difficulties
After the war
Wartime production maintained, but the demand feel after war
Unprofitable to harvest croops
Increase in the number of jobs carried by women
Bad quality of their emplyment opportunities
Role: Supplementary wage-earners :
Job: poorly paid, low-status, menial
Absent for most professions
Union membrership declined
Discoraged by big business
Employers forced to sign "yellow dog"
US Supreme Court passed anti-union judgements
Difficult for unions to strike
Difficult to create a minimun wage
Reflection of poverty
Great Migration
Poverty-stricken existence: sharecroppers
Segregation, poor education, lowest economic position
Got the worst paid jobs (racism, poor education)
Menial labour
Massive drift into cities because of lucrative wartime jobs
From rural south to urban north
Forced to live in ghettoes
Only real outlet: jazz, dancing for white people
agrarian lobby
reforming lobby
effort to relieve the suffering of the farmers
failure- aggravated the situation
deepened divisions between
rural areas
urban areas
laissez-faire politics
prevented
government intervention
to help industrial workers that had low wages
Trade unions
were handicapped by legislation
did not have the funds to provide any relieve to workers
states
stablished departments
public or social welfare
to benefit
elderly
young mothers
actions were limited
private charity
the poor were dependent on
social workers
etc
values and attitudes of American society on 1920s
republican administrators
believed that social responsability was not the job for the state
intervention
was not prepared
to direct others
make provision
interfered with the
operation and direction of business
prosperity of the 20s
due to the confident optimism
there was no need for intervention
poverty kept the poor in their place
African americans
Jewish immigrants
catholics
NO real prosperity
Workers received small wages
Policy of individualism
Buying power
Only well-off could afford to buy
Less wealthy took advantage of credit facilities
Borrowed in excess of what they could afford