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