Consumerism In The 1920's

1810 Words8 Pages
The 1920’s was a very interesting time in history to study. There are many controversial subjects and many improvements during this decade. The main parts that affected America back then and now are: Prohibition, The Ku Klux Klan, the Scopes or “Monkey” trial, consumerism especially around cars, and a change in gender roles. These pieces all go together in shaping society as it sits today, some good some bad, but America has come a long way. The 1920’s was a splitting time in history that created many differences in America that we still have today. The first big thing that happened was consumerism and Henry Ford played a huge part in this. Henry Ford created the assembly line. Before this, there were only around 7 million automobiles in the entire nation. The assembly line allowed the mass production of one type of car that everyone fell in love with and had to have. But this idea went to use in every production line shrinking the labor time of items around 21 percent in 10 years. Around this time if you did not have a car you were looked at as weird and different. This created many different things for the economy. It made jobs for building the cars and then created a money flow of people wanting to buy these cars for the luxury and ease of travel. But cars were not the only thing people spent money on during this time. With interest rates being low during the decade of the 1920’s this was one reason that people had more money readily available to spend on things they