Экономическое развитие США в начале ХХ века и Великая Депрессия
Secondary School № 8
The Ministry of Defence
Of the
The Economic Development
of the
Research paper by
Tsarev Dmitri
Grade 10”A”
Scientific adviser (teacher)
Nadezhda Prokosheva
2006
The outline
Introduction. p.2
Chapter I: The rise of industry. p.3
1. The rapid expansion of the railroads
2. The growth of big business and government’s control over it
3. People’s struggle for a better life
Chapter II: The wave of the immigration and its influence on the social and economic life in the country. p.6
1. The growth of the cities
2. The great inventions and a new way of life in cities
3. Trade unions and the era of fight for rights
Chapter III: World war I and its
consequences for the
1. Labor unrest
2. Racial unrest (ku-klux Klan, anti – immigration laws)
3. The new era (jazz age)
Chapter IV. The Great Depression and The New Deal.:
p.13
1. The beginning of the Great Depression and its reasons
2.
F. D.
3. Government’s efforts to reduce the immigration
4. The opposition to the New Deal
5. The role of the New Deal in coping the depression
Conclusion. p.17
Introduction
The modern
The 1920s were called the New Era in American life. This decade was the
time of unprecedented social, economic and political change. It was the time
when
There are a lot of problems in the national economy of
So, the main aim of this research paper is to understand how
In my research I would like to find out:
how the life of
how
the processes in American life that preceded the Great Depression and
how they influenced social and economic
life of the
if the Great Depression was an inevitable, or predictable phenomenon;
how the
Chapter 1
The Rise of Big Business.
Life in
As a result of new inventions, economic
activity increased. By the time Americans celebrated their first hundred years
of independence in 1876, the
The driving force behind the industrial
growth of the
Some railroaders were laying tracks in
the West; others were making lines in the East and the
Also railroads made life better for different merchants who could now deliver goods across the country, shopping by the mail again. In 1872 Aaron Montgomery Ward, a young salesman had an idea for giving farmers a greater selection of goods than they could find in local stores. That year he sent out one – page list of items for sale. By 1874 his single sheet had grown to a 72 – page catalog.
Ward soon had a competitor which rushed after the pioneer into this new field of work - Sears, Roebuck and Company. Their catalog including more 1000 pages of items was called “the Great Wish Book”.
Madame C. J. Walker created a national market for her hair – care products both by sending them through the mail and by hiring young women to sell these products door to door. Starting her company in the early 1900s with $1.50, she was the first African American women in the nation to become the millionaire.
Of course, such a big system as the railroads
of the
As the
When
Among them there were such people as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. Piermont Morgan and Henry Ford.
Andrew Carnegie was an immigrant from
Andrew Carnegie pioneered many of the changes in American business. He followed a simple formula for success: “Adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most” about your business. That formula made Carnegie into what admires called a “captain of the industry.” Carnegie’s first venture was building iron bridges. In 1865 Carnegie and four partners formed the Keystone Bridge Company.
Carnegie knew that steel was better than
iron for large construction projects because it was stronger and more flexible.
However, making iron into steel was expensive. But salvation of this problem
came to him during the visit to the
Carnegie’s main wealth started in the
period between 1870s and 1890s, in the period when steel production was growing
rapidly. Competition for customers was fierce. Carnegie was determined to win
only by selling a better product at a lower cost than other companies. He hired
scientists to improve his steel and the best managers he could find to produce
it. He also set out to control every step in the steelmaking process. He did
not want to pay outsiders for work his own company could do at a lower cost. By
the 1890s Carnegie’s company was mining all the ore it needed from its own
mines. His own ships and railroad transported the ore to his
Carnegie was also gaining control of the steel industry through consolidation. In the 1870s and 1880s he bought out several rival companies. In 1892 he combined them to form giant Carnegie Steel Company. It produced 25 percent of the nation’s steel.
J. Piermont
Morgan was another man to start new era of the
American economy. In the late 1880s he was the most powerful investment banker
in the
Next Morgan decided to merge his railroads with steel companies into a single large corporation. Only Andrew Carnegie stood in his way. Instead of challenging Carnegie, the wily Morgan offered to buy him out. The idea appeared to Carnegie who was now 66 years old. He sent Morgan a scrap of paper with his paper with his price on it: $480 million. Morgan agreed on the spot.
In 1901 Morgan formed the United States Steel Corporation. The largest corporation in the world at that time, it made three-fifths of the nation’s steel.
John D. Rockefeller was a person that started his work in the unknown field of business – oil.
In
In 1859 the nation’s first oil well was
drilled in
One of the early visitors to
Henry Ford was another person who began to restore American economy. One of the greatest business successes of the 1920s – the “Automobile Boom” is closely connected with the name of Henry Ford. Automobile had been produced since 1890s but only the wealthy could afford them.
By the 1920s, however, automobile
factories were using a less expensive production method. Developed by Henry
Ford in 1913, the assembly line (conveyor
belt) is a system which is used in different kinds of production all
over the world even now. This system made the production of automobiles much
cheaper and faster, so almost every American had an opportunity to buy a model
of Ford’s production. The popularity of automobiles helped fuel the economic
boom. Industries essential to auto manufacturing, such as steel, glass, rubber,
oil refining, and road construction, experienced rapid growth and created
thousands of new jobs. Gas stations and tourist courts (motels) – unknown in
horse-and-buggy days – lined the roadsides.
So, Henry Ford made his contribution into economic development and
changing of the
Chapter 2
The wave of immigration
1. The role of the immigrants and their life in the cities.
One of the characteristic features of
the immediate post-Civil War years was the tidal wave of immigration washing
across the
The immigrants that were arriving from overseas were, for the most part, the landless, the unskilled, the poor. Part of their problem was that without money and job skills most of them were trapped in the great eastern sea cities that simply couldn’t handle them.
So, most of the people who came to the
Many families were able to survive in
Despite this, millions of immigrants helped
build
2. The great new inventions change life of American citizens.
The great technical advances in American
industry owed much to American inventors. After the American Revolution there
were no machines to make people’s life easier. There were no cars, telephones,
or electric lights. The new inventions that were made in the 19th
century helped to transform
Alexander
Graham Bell was
an immigrant from
Thomas Alva Edison was the greatest inventor in the world’s history. He
made more than 3000 different inventions:
the “ballot machine”, quadruples, he upgraded the
Jan Matzeliger was an African American who simplified the process of making shoes. He invented a special machine that could make shoes of many different sizes easily. Today most of the factories work using the same technology.
In this respect, special
attention should be paid to Henry Ford.
He was not only a great businessman, but he was also an inventor. For many
years people in
He started a factory, the “Ford Motor Company” that made
cars. He wanted his cars to be cheap and available for every American. .He used
a conveyor belt in his factory. Thank to it, the cars were put together
quickly, in less than two hours, and
were not expensive. With the help of the
conveyor line, it was also much easier and quicker to make different products.
Conveyor lines are still used in many factories of
All these inventions changed American way of life greatly. People began to live better with the help of different machines. The inventions like the electric bulb, the traffic light (made by Garrett Morgan in 1923), the telephone, the car and the conveyor belt changed the way Americans lived..
3. Immigrants are restrained in rights.
The beginning of the XX
century was marked with the beginning of the company of social minorities for
their rights. Immigrants, workers, women and children were those people who
felt bad in the beginning of the XX century As it has been mentioned in one of
the previous chapters, the living conditions of immigrants were very poor. They
often knew English badly, they lived in small crowded houses, and many of them
had to work at factories, being endangered by different diseases. Sometimes
immigrants had to make their children work at factories to feed their families.
Taking into consideration these problems, Government accepted a program about
building many free schools where children of immigrants could study and some
night schools where their parents joined. After few years the child labor was
prohibited in the
Immigrants played an
important role in the history of the
4. Women fight for their rights.
Four women were founding ways to make life of the simple Americans better.
Jane Addams helped people in
a neighborhood of immigrants in
Janie Porter Barrett became
the colleague of the Jane Addams. She was one who has followed the lead of Jane
Addams. In 1890 she started the Locust Street Social Settlement House in
Lillian Wald was one more
woman that wanted other people to be happy. She was a nurse. Her parents were
Jewish immigrant. In 1895 Wald started the Henry Street Settlement House. This
house had a kindergarten, clubs, English classes, and a library. Lillian Wald
also helped sick people. So she started a visiting nurse program in the
Alice Hamilton was a doctor who lived first worked at Hull House. She took care of sick children here. She understood that workers were working at terrible conditions. She understood that workers that worked at paint factories became poisoned because of lead that is in the paint. After the poisoned workers became weak . She showed how to work not to have such poisoning. Alice Hamilton worked also worked to get mew laws for factory workers.
Jane Addams, Janie Porter
Barrett, Lillian Wald, Alice Hamilton, and other women proved that women could
make important changes in
But soon, after World War I,
women began to protest against their discrimination. They helped the country,
working as doctors, workers at factories, but they still had no right to vote.
They couldn’t vote for their country’s leaders. Many years before that time
Susan B. Anthony and later Elizabeth Cady Stanton wanted women to have such a
right. They traveled through all over
Other women were working for
an amendment to the Constitution. And in 1920 their efforts were a success.
Congress accepted the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution which has
guaranteed the right of voting to the American women. Nowadays women work not
only in Congress, they accept such jobs that used to be considered men’s ones.
Now rights of women are written in the Constitution. Now there are many women
who are successful n different spheres of economy of the
5. Unions help the working people.
By 1900 millions of Americans were working in factories. Many of them were immigrants. They spoke little English, some of them used to be criminals, some of them had to make their elder children work, too to feed their family. They could not earn enough money and they were afraid of being fired. Their children had no opportunity to visit school so in future they could join the army of unemployed.
Factory workers decided to start helping themselves. They started labor unions that worked for better conditions and higher salaries for workers. When employers didn’t want to increase salaries, workers started demonstrations called strikes. Often these actions brought losses to the bosses of the factories so they had to accept requirements of the workers. Labor unions have helped workers to improve working conditions.
Samuel Gompers was one of the
most famous leaders of the unions. He was a Jewish immigrant from
There was one more person
that worried about destiny of workers in
By the beginning of the Great Depression millions of workers were joining unions.
6. The politics of the Progressives.
Between 1900 and
On the whole it was a radically
new movement. It differed from the former politics of the
7. The “Jazz Age”
In the 1920s praised morality of the Americans cracked. It was a dizzying time. The nation was experiencing greater prosperity than ever before. With prosperity came change. People began to create new forms of music and literature. New fashions became the rage. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novels and stories captured the spirit of the decade, called it the “Jazz Age.” Others called it the “Roaring Twenties.”
The 1920s was also a time of conflict. Some Americans, alarmed by rapid changes in values and behavior, struggled to hold on to more familiar ideas and ways of life.
Chapter 3
World War I and its influence
on the post-war life of the
In the beginning of World War
I, President of the United States Woodrow Wilson tried to follow the policy of
avoiding involvement in some dangerous conflicts in
Only something extraordinary could make the
Americans were outraged, and
President Wilson lodged a strong protest with the German government. Although
the
After the sinking of the
The National Defense Act doubled the size of the army, and the Naval Appropriations Bill provided money to build warships. The Council of National Defense was formed to direct and control the supply of the nation’s industries and natural resources.
To raise a large army on short notice, Congress passed the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917. The “draft” required man between ages of 21 and 30(later between 18 and 45) to register for military. By war’s end 4 million men were in army, half of whom served overseas.
From the very
beginning of the American military action in
The government also raised money by selling liberty bonds. Politicians and movie stars gave speeches urging people to buy bonds. Some 21 million Americans bought bonds – in effect, loaning money to the government. Through these measures, and by increasing taxes on corporations and on goods such as alcohol and tobacco, the government raised $10.8 billion.
The war also placed extraordinary demands on American industry. Almost overnight, factories began producing great quantities of tanks, airplanes, guns, and other war materials. The dramatic increase in production would not have been possible without the dedication of factory workers. Samuel Gompers and other labor leaders pledged their support, and union members did the rest. During the war, union membership rose from 2.74 million in 1916 to 4.05 million in 1919.
More than 1 million women entered the work force, often taking the jobs of men who had joined the military. They drove trucks, delivered mail, and made ammunition.
The war also brought many more African Americans into work force. Northern industries sent agents to the South, looking for workers. By 1917, responding to promises of good salaries and fair treatment, as many as half a million black workers had moved north to take factory jobs.
Although most Americans threw
themselves into the war effort, a few held back. Some people firmly believed
that the nation should stay out of
Afraid that the opposition would hurt the war effort, Congress passed the Espionage Act in June 1917. The act set strict penalties for anyone who interfered with recruiting soldiers or made statements that might hinder the war effort.
The Sedition Act of May 16, 1918, made it illegal to utter disloyal statements about the Constitution, the government, the flag or the armed forces. In 1919 the Supreme Court ruled that the government had the right to suspend free speech during wartime.
Labor unrest
During the war, American industry had focused on producing weapons and supplies. With the war over pent – up demands for goods, and for better wages and working hours were unleashed.
However, factories that had been producing war materials could not immediately change to making clothing, shoes, cars, and other goods that a peacetime population demanded. Prices for these scarce products rose. Meanwhile, returning soldiers, looking for places to live, drove up the cost of housing. By 1920 prices were twice as high as in 1914.
As rents and prices rose, however workers’ wages remained low. During the war American workers had not gone on strike so as not to hurt the war effort. It was now time, they believed, to push for higher wages and workdays shorter than 12 hours.
In 1919 union leaders across the nation led workers out on strike. While early strikes succeeded, workers faced growing opposition as the year wore on.
When shipyard workers in
In
After four months the striking steelworkers gave up. This failure dealt a crushing blow to the union movement.
Racial unrest
The tense mood of the nation
was seen in racial violence as well. In 1919 white mobs terrorized black
communities from
Faced with such attacks, and thousands of lynchings since 1890, African Americans launched an anti-lynching campaign. In this campaign, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called on Congress to make lynching a federal crime. The Senate, however, refused.
Despite its failure in
Congress the National Association continued to bring attention to the issue of
lynchings. It won several victories in the 1920s, as when a court struck down
an
Chapter 4
The Great Depression
1.The beginning of the Great depression and its reasons.
Business began to slow in the fall 1929. The value of stocks drifted down. The decline prompted some people predict that the economic boom was coming to an end.
The greatest
economic depression in the world’s history started in 1929. The stock market – source
of the profit for the biggest part of the population of the
Herbert Hoover was the
President of the
Three problems were main causes of the Great Depression.
The first problem was that farmers grew more crops than could sell them. They sold crops for less money than they spent to plant it. So many farmers didn’t earn enough to pay for their farms.
The second problem was that
factories were making too many products. Americans had no money to buy all the
products that were being made in the
The third problem was that workers were not earning enough money. Prices for everything became lower and lower. Soon almost everyone was losing lots of money.
All these problems caused different consequences: hunger, poverty, unemployment and closing of many factories and companies.
2.
Just before
1. Gold ceased to circulate as money, and paper dollars were issued. People could repay debts more easily with the new paper money.
2. The Securities Act of 1933 provided for government supervision of the issuance of new stock. An act passed in 1934 created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the sale of the stock.
3. A new farm program was created by the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). The AAA raised prices for farm produce to pre – World War I levels. In return for price supports farmers had to agree to reduce production.
4. The Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA) began constructing dams on the
5. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to aid industry and labor. The program tried to help get higher prices for industry and higher wages for labor. The American people were encouraged to buy from stores that displayed the Blue Edge, a sign which indicated participation in NRA programs. The Public Works Administration (PWA), created by the same act as the NRA, provided jobs by financing the construction of roads and other public works.
6. The Civilian Conversion Corps (CCC) provided government jobs for unemployed youths. Much of their work was devoted to planting trees, protecting, and building parks.
7. The federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) provided direct aid to the unemployed.
In 1935 the New Deal was
concentrated more on reform than on recovery.
In July 1935 Congress passed Labor Relations Act. Known as the Wagner Act – after senator Robert E. Wagner, who introduced it – it strengthened the power of the labor unions.
The Wagner Act helped workers by outlawing unfair practices. Employers could no longer refuse no bargain with union representatives or prevent workers from joining unions. The act set up National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which gave labor unions the opportunity to win better wages.
Probably the hardest battle of the New Deal was fought over the Social Security Act. Many people opposed such a plan because of its costs to businesses.
The New Deal succeeded in putting many people back to work It gave recovery to the farmers and to businesses. But recovery was slow and painful.
3. Government’s efforts to reduce immigration to the
Efforts to limit immigration
had begun early in the decade. In 1921 Congress passed an act limiting the
number of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe – the Europeans most
anxious to come to the
In 1924 and 1929 Congress imposed even more restrictions on immigrants. Thus, the nation’s history of nearly unlimited European immigration came to an end. Meanwhile, most Asian immigration was still banned.
Anti-immigration laws,
however, did not apply to people from
As the anti-immigrant mood gripped the nation, an old organization took on new life. Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, which had terrorized black southerners during Reconstruction, saw a chance to expand the Klan’s strength beyond its base in South.
In 1920 the Klan hired two sales agents to help achieve its goal. In a public campaign boosting “100 percent pure Americanism,” they directed hatred against anyone who was not white or Protestant. White – hooded Klansmen and their wives now terrorized Catholics, Jews, Asians, and immigrants as well as African Americans.
By 1925 the Klan had as many
as 5 million members. They helped elect five
However, the Klan’s increasing violence began to weaken its appeal. When a Klan leader was convicted of murder in 1925, membership began to drop. By 1930 the Klan had only 50.000 members.
4. Opposition to the New Deal.
There were some people that were unsatisfied with the politics of the new
government. Some of them
thought that government was not doing enough. Senator Huey P. Long of
Criticism of the New Deal
also came from those who felt that government was doing too much. The United
States Supreme Court decided that some of the new laws, including the AAA and
the NIRA, were unconstitutional.
There were many objections to
the New Deal. Many business operators resented government interference. Some of
them disliked
5. The role of the New Deal in coping with the Depression.
As a whole, the New Deal was
only partly successful. By 1938, problems still remained high. Unemployment
remained high. As the number of jobs declined, women, blacks, and other
minorities were most often the last hired and the and the first fired. They
found themselves excluded from jobs by employers, unions, and even by
government policies. Only the increased demand for goods and workers caused by
the World War II brought full recovery. But the New Deal did accomplish
something. It held the American people together. Dictators arose in many
countries. However, the
Conclusions
While investigating this theme, I have come to the following conclusions:
1. Life had greatly changed in
end of the XIX-th century, the American economy was
blooming and prosperity was spreading. The centre of social life moved from
farms to cities. Big factories were constructed, big business rose.
2. The new inventions, made in the end of the 19-th and
the beginning of the 20-th centuries, had greatly changed the life of the
3. During the first two decades of the XX century the rise of economy had achieved a very high level. The railroads played a very important role in it. They were covering the whole country that stimulated the industrial rise of the country and intensive use of natural resources. Whatever the industrial revolution needed, the railroads could now deliver it to any place of the country.
People started to pioneer in different fields of
business, such as oil refining, steel industry, electric power stations,
etc. Efficient using of natural
resources, fast exploring of new technologies, professionalism of people
working in American industry soon made the
4. As the
5.
World War I had greatly influenced the life of the
First of all, half of the industrial workers lived in poverty and their dissatisfaction with their life was constantly growing.
The racial climate had become very intensive. Racial violence and hatred were growing. Racial discrimination became the reason of high level of unemployment among minorities. The anti-immigration laws made by the government in order to reduce the number of immigrants in country inspired the immigrants’ dissatisfaction and activated the Unions’. All this resulted in strikes and riots against the government politics.
The economy was unstable: the gross national product declined, some businesses went bankrupt, thousands of farmers lost their land and millions of American workers lost their jobs. As a result, there was a dramatic increase of labor unrest.
6. But during the 1920s it still seemed as if prosperity would go on forever. It was the decade of significant, even dramatic social, economic and political change.
The American economy began to grow again and it developed new forms of organization. The American government experimented with new approaches to public policy. The stock market performed remarkably well.
Salaries rose, and working hours
decreased. Americans had the resources
and the leisure time to pursue new forms of entertainment: going to movies and
sporting events, visiting restaurants and bars, dancing to jazz music and doing
the shopping, gambling, etc. Though alcohol was prohibited, it was smuggled
across state borders. This period of time is called “the Roaring Twenties” or
the “New Era”. It was the time in which
American culture reshaped itself to reflect all the changes in the
society. It was also an age in which
7. The autumn of 1929 began with alarming declines in stock prices and the stock market crash that followed. It was the beginning of the Great Depression.
The causes of this severe crisis were:
-
the
- most families were too poor to buy the goods of the industrial economy;
- the credit structure of the economy was in trouble: farmers were deeply in debt but crop prices were too low to allow them pay off what they owed; when the market crashed, some of the nation’s biggest banks failed;
- late in the 1920s America’s position in international trade was bad-European demand for American goods began to decline as European economy was destabilized after World War I;
-
after WWI all allied with the
8. The
government began working to see how it could end the Great Depression.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had written a plan called the “New Deal”. The main aim was to create
jobs through projects such as building highways, dams, bridges, planting parks,
etc. The men who worked on these projects were paid by the government. But the government
was just as poor as someone else. In a risky move, it began to spend more money
than it had. Printing so much money was causing the inflation, going of the
value of the dollar. This has troubled the American economy ever since. Though
the government helped people temporarily during the Depression, some of the
policies set up than have caused serious problems that are still with Americans
today. Sometimes it seemed as though the Great Depression would never end,
although by the late 1930s things were improving a little. Men found jobs again
and earned money to buy food, clothes and other products. But only in
Appendix
1. Glossary
1. Depression – депрессия
2. Inflation – инфляция
3. Stagnation – стагнация
4. Amendment – поправка
5. Unemployment – безработица
6. Employer – работодатель
7. Railroad – железная дорога
8. Trade Unions – организация рабочих , профсоюзы
9. Racial Unrests – бунты на почве национальной розни
10. Economy – экономия
11. Conditions – условия
12. To sustain – продолжать
13. Policy – политика
14. Predictable- предсказуемое
15. Phenomenon – явление
16. Adequate – адекватный
17. Development – развитие
18. Tendencies - тенденции
19. Immigrant – иммигрант
20. Influence - влияние
21. Supervision – управление
22. Government – правительство
23. Significant – существенный
24. Entertainment – развлекательный
25. Approaches – подходы
26. Sound – нормальные
27. To decrease – уменьшаться
28. To increase – увеличиваться
29. To reflect – размышлять
2. References
1. Bernstein V. America’s story. – Steck-Vaughn Company.: 1995
2. H C. Dethloff & A E. Begnaud. – Steck-Vaughn Company.: 1986
3. Herman J. Viola. Why we remember. Addison – Wesley Publishing Company.: 1998
4. American History. - Beka Book Publications.: 1990