History 479B

Devine

Fall 2012

Study Questions – 1920s

Peter Fearon, “The Economy During the 1920s”

1. The 1920s have been called the “prosperity decade.” Is this an apt name?

2. How did Hoover’s views on government’s role in managing the economy differ from Harding, Coolidge, and Mellon’s?

3. What were the arguments for high wages? What other policies did high wage advocates usually propose?

4. Why was there an increase in investment during the 1920s? Where was the money coming from?

5. Why was there an increase in the rate of production? Who benefited (and who benefited the most) from increased productivity?

6. How did the boom in auto manufacturing affect the broader economy?

7. Why was there a construction boom (both residential and non-residential) during the 1920s? Why would a collapse in the construction sector have a widespread negative impact on the economy?

8. Even though there was a growth in total employment between 1920 and 1929, why did many workers still feel insecure? Why does the author argue that in evaluating labor’s situation we must look beyond aggregate statistics?

9. Why did union membership decline during the 1920s? To what extent was this the result of conditions beyond organized labor’s control? To what extent does the AFL leadership bear part of the responsibility?

10. How would you characterize the distribution of income during the 1920s?

Lizabeth Cohen, “Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots”

1. Why does Cohen take issue with the “embourgeoisment thesis”? How does shifting the focus from the national scene to specific local neighborhoods enable historians to improve their understanding of how workers responded to mass culture?

2. To what extent were unskilled and semiskilled workers in Chicago buying their way into the middle class on the installment plan?

3. What do scholars mean when they refer to “the homogenizing power of mass consumption”?

4. What evidence does Cohen cite to show that workers who bought phonographs were not necessarily abandoning their ethnic cultures and “becoming middle class”?

5. Why didn’t white ethnic working class shoppers patronize chain stores?

6. How did the shopping experience in the more working class Goldblatt’s Department Store differ from that in a more upper class store such as Marshall Field’s? Why did these stores evolve in such different ways?

7. Why did workers prefer to go to the movies in their own neighborhoods? How did neighborhood movie theaters reinforce community values and prejudices?

8. What evidence does Cohen give to show that radio listening was “active” and “far from isolating”? How did early radio actually hinder the process of “cultural homogenization”?

9. How did Chicago’s African Americans respond to mass culture? How did “mainstream mass culture” offer them “the ingredients from which to construct a new urban black culture”? (21)

10. What were some of the features of the “black economy”? Why was the black economy only moderately successful?

11. Why did African Americans prefer to shop in chain stores?

12. What factors contributed to the decline of grassroots control over mass culture at the end of the 1920s?