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1920s Ethnic Groups

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Why were some people better off than the others in the 1920s?
There are many factors that affected why some ethnic groups were better off than others but the main aspect is the economic issues and booms. In “The Lean Years” Irving Bernstein agrees as he said “The Twenties were, indeed golden, but only for a privileged segment of the American population”. Also the LA times released a cartoon in 1928 displaying that the Wall Street boom is racing ahead the “bandwagon” which displays American prosperity.
The Economic boom created jobs, increased wages and caused the innovation of lots of new products. The impact of world war one boosted the economy because America lent money to western European countries and sold munitions to them, they sold …show more content…
The coal, leather and textiles industries did not benefit much from the boom. Coal suffered due to technological advancements in the oil and electricity industries. Leather and textiles were protected from foreign competition due to the import/export tax but they were not protected from domestic competition: They suffered from both the development of new manmade fibres and the cheap labour in the southern states. As Eric Foner said in “give me liberty” said: even if workers in these industries got a pay rise it was not at the same rate that the owners of business did. In fact most Americans wages stayed below this figure with 42% of Americans living below the poverty …show more content…
One thing that was the same no matter their class or race was that before the war that they had to wear restrictive clothes and behave politely. They were not expected to wear makeup, their relationships with men were strictly controlled: they had to have a chaperone with them whenever they went out with out with their boyfriend. Pre war most women were expected to be housewives as very few paid jobs were open to women and those that had jobs were cleaners, dress makers and secretaries. In the 1920s many of these things began to change, especially for urban women and middle class women. When the US joined the war in 1917 some women were taken into the war industries, giving them experience of skilled work for the first time. In 1920 all women got the vote in all fifty states 8 years before it took the UK to allow all over 21 year olds to vote. Throughout the 20s they were allowed to use things like cars and their domestic work was made easier by the invention of new electrical goods such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines. For urban women many of the traditional rules of behaviour were eased as well: women wore more daring clothes, smoked in public and drank with men in public without a chaperone. There were 10 million women in work in 1929 which is 24% more than in

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