AMSCO 7.7 1920s: Innovations in Communication and Technology

Overview

AMSCO Topic 7.7, "1920s: Innovations in Communication and Technology," covers the economic boom of the 1920s and the new technologies that drove it: the assembly line, electricity, the automobile, radio, and the movies. The chapter explains why the economy grew so fast after World War I, who got left out (farmers and labor unions), and how mass media created a shared national culture for the first time. For the AP exam, the big takeaway is cause and effect. New technologies and manufacturing techniques pushed the U.S. economy toward consumer goods, raising standards of living and personal mobility, while radio and cinema spread national culture and exposed people to regional cultures.

The decade has a clear shape: a brief postwar recession in 1921, prosperity from 1922-1928, then the worst stock market crash in U.S. history to that point in October 1929. During the boom years, unemployment was usually below 4 percent, two-thirds of homes had electricity by 1930, and real income rose for the middle and working classes. But prosperity wasn't universal. As many as 40 percent of U.S. families lived in poverty, struggling on less than $1,500 a year.

Causes of Economic Prosperity

Manufacturing output rose a spectacular 64 percent between 1919 and 1929. Four big factors explain the boom.

Increased Productivity

Companies leaned hard into efficiency. They expanded Frederick W. Taylor's time-and-motion studies and scientific management, and they copied Henry Ford's assembly line. Ford perfected the assembly line in 1914: instead of workers walking around a factory, each worker stayed in one spot and repeated the same simple task rapidly all day. In the 1920s, most major industries adopted assembly lines and saw major productivity gains.

Energy Technologies

Oil and electricity replaced coal as the engines of growth (though coal still ran railroads and heated homes).

• Oil powered factories and fueled the exploding number of cars. By 1930, oil accounted for 23 percent of U.S. energy consumption, up from just 3 percent in 1900.
• Electric motors in factories and new home appliances drove electrical generation up more than 300 percent during the decade.

Government Policy

Government at every level favored big business. That meant corporate tax cuts, almost no enforcement of Progressive Era antitrust laws, and large tax cuts for higher-income Americans, which fed income inequality and market speculation. The Federal Reserve overheated the boom with low interest rates and relaxed bank regulation, then tightened the money supply as the economy declined, which economists today consider exactly the wrong move.

Consumer Economy

Home electricity let millions buy the decade's new consumer appliances: refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines. Three other forces supercharged consumer spending:

• Advertising expanded by appealing to desires for status and popularity, not just product features.
• Buying on credit ("easy monthly payments") boosted sales of appliances and cars. Later, overextended consumers cut back on buying, which helped collapse the boom.
• Chain stores like Woolworth's and A & P spread fast, offering more variety at lower prices and threatening neighborhood stores.

Impact of the Automobile

No technology changed society more than the car. Americans owned 1.2 million automobiles in 1913 and 26.5 million by 1929, almost one per family. Auto production replaced the railroad industry as the key promoter of economic growth, since steel, glass, rubber, gasoline, and highway construction all depended on car sales.

Socially, the automobile reshaped commuting, travel, shopping, and even dating. Downsides included urban traffic jams and road deaths. Many adults disliked the independence cars gave young people, blaming the automobile (called "a bordello on wheels") for a breakdown of morals.

Farm Problems

Farmers missed out on the prosperity. Their best years were 1916-1918, when wartime European demand and government price guarantees for wheat and corn kept crop prices high. When the war ended, so did farm prosperity.

• Farmers who borrowed heavily to expand during the war were stuck with crushing debt.
• New technologies like chemical fertilizers and gasoline tractors increased production, but that made things worse: surpluses meant falling prices.

This is a pattern worth remembering for essays. For farmers, more productivity equaled less money.

Labor Unions Struggle

Wages rose in the 1920s, but union membership fell 20 percent. Why unions lost ground in a pro-business decade:

• Most companies insisted on the "open shop", keeping jobs open to nonunion workers.
• Some practiced welfare capitalism, voluntarily offering better benefits and higher wages so workers had less reason to organize.
• In the South, companies used police, state militia, and local mobs to violently resist textile unionization.
• Strikes usually failed. The United Mine Workers under John L. Lewis suffered setbacks in violent, unsuccessful strikes in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
• Conservative courts routinely issued injunctions against strikes and struck down labor protection laws.

Technology and Culture

The Census of 1920 reported a milestone: for the first time, more than half of Americans lived in urban areas (communities of 2,500 or more). City residents' tastes, morals, and habits of mass consumption increasingly clashed with the religious and moral codes of rural America. That tension sets up the cultural battles in AMSCO 7.8 on the 1920s culture wars.

Architecture and Industrial Design

The fusion of art and technology created a new profession: industrial designers. Influenced by Art Deco and streamlining styles, they made functional products, from toasters to locomotives, that also looked good. Skyscrapers like the Chrysler and Empire State buildings used Art Deco style, combining modernist simplified forms with machine-age materials.

Mass Media: Radio

Newspapers had been the only mass communication medium. Then radio appeared almost overnight.

• The first commercial radio station went on the air in 1920, broadcasting music to a few thousand listeners.
• By 1930, more than 800 stations broadcast to 10 million radios, about a third of all U.S. homes.
• Networks made it national: NBC (organized 1924) and CBS (1927) let people coast to coast hear the same news, sports, soap operas, quiz shows, and comedies.
• Networks also exposed regional cultures nationally. The National Barn Dance show, later renamed the Grand Ole Opry, featured southeastern music that evolved into today's country music.

That last point is the exam connection in miniature: mass media spread national culture AND raised awareness of regional cultures.

Movie Business

The movie industry, centered in Hollywood, California, became big business. Going to the movies became a national habit, and stars like Greta Garbo and Rudolf Valentino were idolized by millions. Elaborate movie "palaces" went up for the general public. Talking pictures arrived in 1927, and by 1929 more than 80 million movie tickets sold weekly.

Popular Music

Young people rebelled against their elders' culture by dancing to jazz, brought north by African American musicians. Jazz became the symbol of "new" and "modern" urban culture. Phonographs, like radio, put this music in front of a huge, youthful audience. Blues, classical, and "American standards" by composers like Irving Berlin also spread.

Aviation

Better airplane technology let aviators set speed and distance records, and crowds threw huge parades for them. The most celebrated hero was Charles Lindbergh, who thrilled the world in 1927 by flying nonstop across the Atlantic from Long Island to Paris. His ticker tape welcome home was larger than the one given to returning World War I soldiers.

Popular Heroes

Earlier generations admired politicians like William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. In the radio and movie age, Americans shifted to larger-than-life sports and screen personalities: boxer Jack Dempsey's knockouts, Gertrude Ederle's swimming records, Jim Thorpe's touchdowns, Babe Ruth's home runs, and Bobby Jones's golf wins.

Increasing Tension

The chapter ends with a warning sign: prosperity and technology came with growing conflicts over immigration, Prohibition, and the roles of science and religion. Those fights are the subject of the next chapter.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair this chapter with the Topic 7.7 course study guide on 1920s innovations for the College Board framing of the same material, and browse all the APUSH AMSCO notes to keep moving through Unit 7. Coming from World War I? Review AMSCO 7.6 on the home front for the wartime context that set up the 1920s economy.

To check your understanding, drill multiple choice with guided practice questions, get instant scoring on writing with FRQ practice, and look up unfamiliar vocabulary in the APUSH key terms glossary.