Washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators became everyday household items. First, there was an accelerated rural-to-urban migration. As European production began to recover after the war prices began to fall. The AFL officially opposed any government actions that would have diminished worker attachment to unions by providing competing benefits, such as government sponsored unemployment insurance, minimum wage proposals, maximum hours proposals and social security programs.

In the glass industry, automatic feeding and other types of fully automatic production raised the efficiency of the production of glass containers, window glass, and pressed glass. Unskilled males received on average 35 percent more than females during the twenties. Processed energy in the forms of petroleum derivatives and electricity continued to become more important than “raw” energy, such as that available from coal and water. The energy industries responded to those demands and the consumption of energy materials (coal, oil, gas, and fuel wood) as a percent of GNP rose from about 2 percent in the latter part of the nineteenth century to about 3 percent in the twentieth.Changes in the energy markets that had begun in the nineteenth century continued. For example, the organic chemical industry developed rapidly due to the introduction of the Weizman fermentation process. Craft unions relied upon the particular skills the workers had acquired (their craft) to distinguish the workers and provide barriers to the entry of other workers. With the same rates, low-cost roads should have been able to earn higher rates of return than high-cost roads. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Previously, customers handed a clerk a list or asked for the items desired, which the clerk then collected and the customer paid for. “The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression.” Roose, Kenneth D. “The Production Ceiling and the Turning Point of 1920.” Rosen, Philip T. “Government, Business, and Technology in the 1920s: The Emergence of American Broadcasting.” In Santoni, Gary and Gerald P. Dwyer, Jr. “The Great Bull Markets, 1924-1929 and 1982-1987: Speculative Bubbles or Economic Fundamentals?” Santoni, Gary, and Gerald P. Dwyer, Jr. “Bubbles vs. The problem of lower cost production was solved by the introduction of centralized generating facilities that distributed the electric power through lines to many consumers and business firms.Though initially several firms competed in generating and selling electricity to consumers and firms in a city or area, by the First World War many states and communities were awarding exclusive franchises to one firm to generate and distribute electricity to the customers in the franchise area. In cash-and-carry stores, items were sold only for cash; no credit was extended, and no expensive home deliveries were provided. “An Empirical Analysis of Oil Price Shocks During the Interwar Period.” Parker, Randall and Paul Flacco. A process of consolidation of daily and Sunday newspapers began that continues to this day. During the First World War, thousands of trucks were constructed for military purposes, and truck convoys showed that long distance truck travel was feasible and economical. By the 1920s, as the ownership and use of the car began expanding, population began to move out of the crowded central cities toward the more open suburbs. They also increased output by purchasing more machinery, such as tractors, plows, mowers, and threshers. As a result, all countries on the gold standard had fixed exchange rates with all other countries. (Bishop, 1987) In a number of experiments over a three-year period using students and Tucson businessmen and businesswomen, bubbles developed as inexperienced investors valued stocks differently and engaged in price speculation. For example, in the Columbia River Basin new varieties raised yields from an average of 19.1 bushels per acre in 1913-22 to 23.1 bushels per acre in 1933-42. The United States and Canada did better (output per worker in these two countries rose by 77 percent and 67 percent),In the early 1920s, when there was a 13 percent fall in the normal working week without any compensating adjustment in the weekly wage.But, still faster than many countries such as Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany.I would like to know more about the return to the Gold standard and its relationship to the ‘cruiser crisis’Our site uses cookies so that we can remember you, understand how you use our site and serve you relevant adverts and content. There is a rapid adoption of the automobile to the detriment of passenger rail travel. Giedion (1948) reported that the production of bread was “automatized” in all stages during the 1920s.Though not directly bringing about productivity increases in manufacturing processes, developments in the management of manufacturing firms, particularly the largest ones, also significantly affected their structure and operation.

(Brooks, 1975; Temin, 1987; Garnet, 1985; Lipartito, 1989) Telephone usage rose and, as Figure 19 shows, the share of all households with a telephone rose from 35 percent to nearly 42 percent. In 1928 the ICC called for federal regulation of buses and in 1932 extended this call to federal regulation of trucks.Most states had began regulating buses at the beginning of the 1920s in an attempt to reduce the diversion of urban passenger traffic from the electric trolley and railway systems. “The Political Economy of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.” Research in Economic History 12 (1989): 1-43.Eis, Carl.

However, in the twenties a few states began to permit limited branching; California even allowed statewide branching.—The Federal Reserve member banks held the bulk of the assets of all commercial banks, even though most banks were not members. Railroads experienced increasing competition during the 1920s, and both freight and passenger traffic were drawn off to competing transport forms. A committee was created to coordinate the open market purchases of the district banks.The recovery from the 1920-1921 depression had proceeded smoothly with moderate price increases. In the scramble to beat price increases during 1919 firms had built up large inventories of raw materials and purchased inputs and this temporary increase in demand led to even larger price increases. However, with all of this concern about the growing and developing role of government in economic activity in the 1930s, the decade of the 1920s often tends to get overlooked.