Post-WWI essays

Post-WWI essays Following World War I, the United States entered a period of great prosperity. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties kept many Americans from seeing the growing economic problems of the nation. Many said the economy of the 1920s was a house of cards. If one piece fails, the whole thing could collapse. As a result, America entered a deep economic depression. There were quite a few economic conditions in the 1920s that contributed to the stock market crashing in 1929. Economic hard times followed throughout the 1930s, called the Great Depression. After WWI, many tried to forget about the war. (Doc 2) They stopped conserving what they had to provide the soldiers abroad. The production industry turned to new technology, instead of gun manufacturing and such. Products were repeatedly bought with borrowed money, as opposed to their own money. (Doc 5) Americans had started buying unnecessary products on installment plans and credit. (Doc 3) This turned into an economic boom, where mass production took place. Automobiles were manufactured with an assembly line and many products ran on electricity. Markets were expanding greatly during the Boom Times of business, but stopped expanding the late 1920s. This is because most people who could afford cars, large appliances, and radios had already bought them, often on installment plans. There was an unequal distribution of wealth in the United States and most Americans didnt earn enough money to purchase these products. The resulting declining markets left business owners with huge surp luses, much larger than those that usually set the business cycle in motion. Businesses tried to sell their products abroad, but post-WWI was difficult in Europe. Many Europeans couldnt buy the expensive American imports, and could not help expand the declining trade or set the economy in motion. Concerned that we werent selling well in Europe, we set high tariffs and made it difficul...