Roaring Twenties In The United States During The 1920's

The “Roaring Twenties” profiled the United States as one of the wealthiest countries with a high standard of living, increased personal freedom, liberating cultural changes, and unlimited economic well-being. Nonetheless, this apparent prosperity was exclusive to the consumerist minorities, being agricultural crises, sick industries, poverty, and racism ignored by the government. The aforementioned ignorance took its toll in 1929 as the Wall Street Crash plunged the US into ten years of downturn economic activity jointly known as the Great Depression. During the 1930s, such enervated economic phenomenon seriously affected cities, farms, and families, yielded serious psychological outcomes, and influenced the development of popular culture.

During the 1920s, easy access to credit enabled costumers to purchase goods when they did not actually have the money to pay for them. Thereafter, when stock prices in the market fell, individuals desperately began withdrawing any money they had already invested while that was still possible. Eventually, as banks stopped their respective activities and businesses either reduced wages or laid workers off, incomes decreased significantly and unemployment rose. Without plentiful cash, people were unable to afford mortgage payments and proper food, provoking the appearance of shanty towns (makeshift shelters made by homeless people out of scrap and thrown-way items) and generating wide spread hunger, malnutrition, and disease. Propelled by the need of providing relief, mutalistas (mutual-aid societies formed by Mexican America communities) emerged and religious groups (i.e. Salvation Army), as well as charitable organizations (i.e. the Red Cross), distributed necessary provisions. Long lines conformed by people waiting for free bread and soup, also known as breadlines, were common at the

The instauration of a depressive environment caused suicides to increase as people failed to cope with the shame and guilt of losing their works, businesses or homes and being unable of attaining financial stability and material comfort within their families. As a consequence, young adults moved back in with their parents, the marriage rate and the birth rate declined, and family foresaw changes in functionality. As women became the mainstay of many families, jobless men started carrying out house hold daily chores such as cooking and