Answers
to Section Review questions appear in the Lesson Planner.
the idea that Americans should avoid political ties to other countries—won wide support. It was this feeling that led the United States to reject the Treaty of Versailles and remain outside the League of Nations.
Economically, however, the United States was not isolated at all. Under the Dawes Plan, loans from American banks helped Germany recover from the disastrous 1923 inflation. Other European countries had borrowed heavily from the United States during the war. In the 1920's, American businesses greatly expanded their overseas operations, especially in Latin America. The United States became a major trading partner for countries around the world.
By 1929, the world economy was like a delicately balanced house of cards. The key card that held up all the rest was American economic prosperity. If something happened to the United States' economy, the whole card house might come tumbling down. In 1929, something did happen.
Section Review 2
Define: isolationism
Identify: (a) Albert Einstein, (b) Sigmund
Freud, (c) Franz Kafka, (d) fames Joyce,
(e) Surrealists, (f) Bauhaus, (g) Harlem
Renaissance
Answer: .
!. (a) What advances were made in transportation during the 1920's and the 1930's? jh) In communication?
(a) What generalization did Einstein set forth about light, space, and time? (b) About matter and energy?
Why were Freud's ideas revolutionary?
How did the changes of the postwar years affect women?
(a) What new trends appeared in art and literature during the 1920's? jb) Give examples of American contributions to world culture during this era.
How did the United States' return to political isolationism contradict its economic position?
Critical Thinking
fa) What features of life in the 1920's suggest a mood of optimism? (b) Of pessimism?
Assignments: Independent Practice Sheet 30-3; Voices fro
Book 30-3
Wall Street’s crash О opened the Depression.
In 1929, a narrow street in New York City near the southern tip of Manhattan Island was the financial capital of the world. This was Wall Street. Coal merchants in Liverpool, factory owners in Berlin, wheat dealers in Winnipeg, and steel importers in Tokyo all paid close attention to events on Wall Street. Along its sidewalks were the offices of banks and investment companies that dominated the world economy.
The stock market fell in 1929.
The heart of Wall Street was an imposing gray building, the New York Stock Exchange. Here optimism about the United States' booming economy showed in soaring stock prices. Between January 1924 and September 1929, the New York Times average of stock prices rose from $110 to $455. Many people began to think stock prices would go up forever.
On Thursday, October 24, the New York Stock Exchange opened for what brokers hoped would be a profitable day of rising prices. Within an hour, their hopes were dashed. Everyone wanted to sell stocks, and no one wanted to buy them. Prices went down and down and down.
Overwhelmed by the record-breaking number of orders to sell, the stock ticker could not display the latest prices. By 1 p.m., the ticker had fallen 92 minutes behind transactions on the floor. Thus, frightened brokers could not get a true picture of what was happening. The wild shouting of the 1,000 brokers and their assistants became what one observer called a "weird roar." Great crowds gathered on the street outside the Stock Exchange. Rumors of business failures and attempted suicides swept through the crowd.
In the week following Black Thursday, as October 24 was soon called, stock prices continued to drop. Billions of dollars in paper wealth simply vanished.
At first, the crash appeared to have hurt only the million or so people who had gambled and lost on the stock market. The United States' vast industrial and agricultural resources were physically unhurt. There seemed to be no reason for
m the Past Resource
Stock prices were recorded on ticker tape, a paper ribbon on which a telegraphic ticker printed information. Brokerage firms generated miles of the tape each day.
prosperity to end. Yet, within a few months of the crash, unemployment rates began to rise. Mcanwliile, industrial production, prices, and wages fell sharply. A long business slump known as the Great Depression had begun.
The Great Depression touched every comer of the American economy. By 1932, factor)’ production had been cut in half. More than 86,000 businesses failed, and 9,000 banks closed. Around 9 million people lost their savings accounts. Un employment soared from 3.2 percent in 1929 to 25 percent in 1933.
America, traditionally the land of opportunity, now seemed to have nothing to offer millions of its citizens. One writer recalled:
The jobless were the most conspicuous feature of that dismal landscape. They clustered about poolrooms and taverns, sat in the parks when the weather was fair, stood in empty doorways to get out of the wind, panhandled for nickels and dimes on the streets, and sat for hours over a nickel cup of coffee in dingy restaurants, staring out the window.