1920's Economics
...many of these were new products that had recently been invented. The other aspect of the economy was mass production on assembly lines; automobile manufacturing skyrocketed in part because of the assembly line, these new techniques and inventions to manufacturing led to more production and lower labor cost.
One of the items which would find its way into American households was the radio, in 1921 there was one radio station in the United States but by 1929 there was 606 this in part to the sales of radios which increased from 100,000 in 1922 to nearly 4.4 million in 1929, the same increase could be seen in automobiles, 1920 there was 1.9 million automobiles manufactured and by 1929 this number jumped to almost 4.5 million.
What caused these increases was in part new technology, but also the booming economy in the 1920’s allowed for the common American to purchase these items also which in turn would cause the government to increase spending on certain projects. One of these projects was the federal highway system, with so many people now owning cars and traveling the government started building roads to accommodate these cars, the number of miles created rose throughout the decade.
Within the population there was an increase in school enrollment, from 2.2 million in 1920 to 4.3 million in 1930 and this just in the secondary schools, this caused the government to build more schools to house these students.
During the 1920’s there was less need for foreign workers and this caused action by the federal government, the immigration act of 1921 limited the number of immigrants entering the U.S. by limiting the people coming from a specific nation to 3 percent of that nationality’s resident population in the United States, again in 1924 another immigration act was passed and it limited the number even further to only 2 percent....
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