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Laissez-Faire Attitude During The 1920's

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Great excitement and success in society precipitated the Great Depression. Deemed the Roaring Twenties, the time-period stood for a laissez-faire attitude, both in government and in everyday life. Such an approach allowed for advancements in technology, banking, and newly constructed tariffs that invoked a positive attitude throughout society. However, in the case of the Roaring Twenties, the goods things that begot the happiness of the time-period also bred its sad end. With tremors of ill-fate for the economy before and after the stock market crash of 1929, the eventual crash of Wall Street precipitated the financial crisis of American society, the Great Depression. Therefore, the “laissz-faire” attitude of Washington and community that made …show more content…

Helping set up the “roaring twenties” included the election of three consecutive Republican presidents; the United States was in a business-friendly, consumer era, encouraging less regulation, lower taxes, and a general “laissez-faire” attitude. Additionally, new application of tech changed the lives of millions: electricity, radios, phonographs, and automobiles, available to masses of middle-class buyers, encouraged advancement in society; radios, in particular, acted as an agent of culturization, uniting the nation together. Politically, the economy was spurred by Mellon’s tax cuts which favored the rapid expansion of capital investment, the Fordney McCumber Tariff of 1922, and the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, where quotas for foreigners were cut from three percent to two percent. Lowering the amount of immigration, the Immigration Act of 1924 marked the end of a period of virtually unrestricted immigration, and over time, the Acts helped Americans obtain jobs in labor at reasonable incomes without the competition of immigrants who would be able to work for less-than-reasonable incomes. All these factors begot a generation of new real …show more content…

Due to consumer credit and capital investment, the concept of buying something “now” and paying “later,” wages were not rising as quickly as they should have been rising, and paying taxes for items took precedence over making purchases. Furthermore, wealthy investors and big business owners invested more in production or supply rather than increasing wages to spur demand. Essentially, they had the same amount of demand but they over-produced their supply. At this time, the economy was dividing; urban manufacturing was strong, but rural agriculture struggled with the new technological developments; this division is present in the relocation of families from rural farm areas to more urban areas, as documented in the census of 1920. Furthermore, the lack of regulation in banks, bank loans, and the stock market that enabled the boom of the economy also caused the economy to bust. Margin buying, the buying of shares of stock at a “marginal” price, became a prominent action on Wall Street. So powerful was the intoxication of quick profits that few heeded the warning raised in certain quarters that this kind of tinsel prosperity could not last forever. Furthermore, The Wall Street crash was so bad because the banks were loaning

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