Mastering Depth study D: The United States, 1919-41: IGCSE History Study Notes

Picture yourself in 1920s America

Imagine you have just come home from the First World War. The economy is picking up speed, new gadgets fill shop windows, jazz music pours out of every radio, and the stock market seems to climb higher every week. Now fast-forward ten years: banks have collapsed, millions are out of work, and families are living in makeshift shelters called Hoovervilles. How did the richest country on earth swing from spectacular prosperity to devastating depression in barely a decade? That is the central question running through IGCSE History Depth Study D, and understanding the cause-and-effect chains behind it will earn you strong marks on exam day.

Topic 1: How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s?

The foundations of the boom

The economic boom of the 1920s rested on several reinforcing factors. If you can explain how they connected, you are already ahead of most candidates.

• Mass production: Henry Ford's moving assembly line at Highland Park slashed the time it took to build a Model T from over twelve hours to roughly ninety minutes. Lower production costs meant lower prices, and lower prices meant ordinary families could afford a car for the first time. By 1929, there was approximately one car for every five Americans.
• Consumer goods: The same assembly-line methods spread to refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and radios. These products created whole new industries and thousands of jobs.
• Hire purchase (buying on credit): Consumers who could not afford the full price up front could pay in instalments. This fuelled demand but also meant many families were carrying debt.
• Stock market speculation: Thousands of Americans bought shares "on the margin," putting down as little as 10% of the share price and borrowing the rest. As long as prices rose, everyone made money. The danger was that a fall in prices would leave speculators unable to repay their loans.
• Republican government policies: Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover followed a laissez-faire approach: low taxes on business, minimal regulation, and high tariffs (the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922) to protect American goods from foreign competition. These policies kept profits high and encouraged investment.

Industries that did not share in the prosperity

Not every sector boomed, and the IGCSE mark scheme rewards you for showing that the prosperity was uneven.

• Coal and textiles: Older industries faced competition from new energy sources (oil, electricity) and synthetic fabrics (rayon). Demand for coal fell, mines closed, and textile workers in the South earned poverty-level wages.
• Agriculture: During the war, American farmers had expanded production to feed Europe. After 1918, European farmers recovered and demand dropped, yet American farmers kept producing at wartime levels. The result was overproduction: prices for wheat, corn, and cotton collapsed. Many farmers could not repay their bank loans and lost their land. Around 600,000 farmers were forced off the land during the 1920s.

Who missed out?

African Americans, Native Americans, and recent immigrants rarely shared in the boom. Black workers in the South were trapped in low-paid agricultural or domestic work, and racial discrimination blocked access to better jobs in many northern cities. The wealth of the 1920s was concentrated: by 1929, the richest 5% of Americans received roughly a third of all personal income.

Topic 2: How far did US society change in the 1920s?

The Roaring Twenties

You have probably heard the phrase "the Roaring Twenties," and it captures something real. Urban America experienced a cultural revolution driven by new technology and new attitudes.

• Flappers: Young women challenged traditional expectations by wearing shorter skirts, cutting their hair into bobs, smoking in public, and going to jazz clubs. The flapper image symbolised a break from the strict morality of the pre-war years.
• Jazz and the Harlem Renaissance: Jazz music, rooted in African American culture, became the defining sound of the decade. Musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington gained national fame. The Harlem Renaissance saw a flowering of Black art, literature, and music in New York City.
• Cinema: By 1929, weekly cinema attendance reached around 100 million. Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin and Clara Bow became household names, and films spread a shared popular culture across the country.

Prohibition and organised crime

The Eighteenth Amendment (1920) banned the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcohol. Supporters believed Prohibition would reduce crime, poverty, and family breakdown. The reality was the opposite. Illegal bars (speakeasies) sprang up across every major city. Bootleggers smuggled alcohol from Canada and the Caribbean, and organised crime figures like Al Capone in Chicago made fortunes controlling the trade. By the time the Twenty-First Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, most Americans regarded it as a failed experiment.

Divisions in American society

The social changes of the 1920s provoked a fierce backlash from Americans who saw them as a threat to traditional values.

Topic 3: What were the causes and consequences of the Wall Street Crash?

Why did the stock market crash?

The crash did not come from nowhere. Several weaknesses had been building throughout the 1920s, and you should be able to explain each one.

1. Speculation on the margin: By 1929, roughly 600,000 Americans were trading shares on borrowed money. When confidence wobbled, brokers demanded repayment of loans (margin calls), forcing investors to sell shares to raise cash. Selling pushed prices down further, triggering more margin calls in a vicious cycle.
2. Overproduction: Factories had produced more consumer goods than people could afford to buy. Warehouses filled up, orders slowed, and companies started laying off workers even before the crash.
3. Weak banking system: Thousands of small, independent banks had lent recklessly to speculators and farmers. There was no federal deposit insurance, so when banks failed, ordinary savers lost everything.
4. Falling agricultural prices: Farmers had been struggling throughout the decade. Their inability to buy consumer goods contributed to the overproduction problem in industry.
5. Uneven wealth distribution: Because so much wealth was concentrated at the top, the mass market was not large enough to absorb everything industry produced.

Black Thursday and Black Tuesday

On Thursday 24 October 1929 (Black Thursday), panic selling hit the New York Stock Exchange. Bankers briefly stabilised prices by buying shares, but confidence had broken. On Tuesday 29 October (Black Tuesday), roughly 16 million shares were dumped in a single day. Share prices went into freefall and kept falling for the next three years. By 1932, shares were worth roughly 20% of their 1929 peak value.

Consequences of the Crash

The crash did not cause the Great Depression on its own, but it triggered a chain reaction that destroyed the economy.

• Bank failures: Between 1929 and 1932, over 5,000 banks collapsed. Millions of ordinary Americans lost their savings.
• Unemployment: By 1933, around 13 million Americans were unemployed, roughly one in four workers. Factories closed, shops shut, and construction halted.
• Hoovervilles: Homeless families built shantytowns from scrap metal, cardboard, and old timber on the edges of cities. They were called Hoovervilles as a bitter reference to President Hoover, whom many blamed for doing too little.
• The Dust Bowl: Drought and years of over-farming turned parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas into a dust wasteland. Hundreds of thousands of farming families migrated westward, many to California, searching for work.

Hoover's response

President Hoover believed in "rugged individualism," the idea that Americans should help themselves rather than depend on government handouts. He was not completely inactive: he set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to banks and businesses, and he approved the Hoover Dam project. But he refused to provide direct relief to the unemployed, arguing it would destroy self-reliance. For millions of desperate families, this felt like indifference. By the 1932 election, Hoover had become a symbol of government failure.

Topic 4: How successful was the New Deal?

FDR's election and the First Hundred Days

Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election in a landslide, promising Americans a "New Deal." His energy was a deliberate contrast to Hoover's caution. During his first hundred days in office (March to June 1933), Roosevelt pushed an extraordinary volume of legislation through Congress, creating a series of agencies that became known by their initials: the alphabet agencies.

The alphabet agencies

The Second New Deal (1935 onwards)

By 1935, Roosevelt shifted emphasis toward longer-term reform. The key measures were:

• Social Security Act (1935): Created a national system of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. For the first time, the federal government accepted responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. This remains a landmark piece of American legislation.
• Wagner Act (1935): Gave workers the legal right to join trade unions and bargain collectively. Union membership surged, giving working-class Americans a stronger voice.
• WPA expansion: The Works Progress Administration became the flagship employment programme, reaching millions who had been out of work for years.

Opposition to the New Deal

Not everyone supported Roosevelt, and your IGCSE exam may ask you to explain the opposition. It came from several directions.

• The Supreme Court: In 1935-36, the Court struck down the NRA and the AAA as unconstitutional, ruling that the federal government had overstepped its powers. Roosevelt responded with a controversial plan to "pack" the Court by adding extra judges, which Congress rejected.
• Right-wing critics and big business: Wealthy Americans and the Republican Party accused Roosevelt of spending too much, raising taxes, and expanding government power dangerously. The American Liberty League, funded by major industrialists, called the New Deal "socialist."
• Huey Long ("Share Our Wealth"): The Louisiana senator argued the New Deal did not go far enough. He proposed capping personal fortunes and redistributing wealth so every American family would receive a guaranteed minimum income. Long was assassinated in 1935, but his movement pressured Roosevelt to introduce more radical reforms.
• Father Coughlin: A Catholic priest with a massive radio audience, Coughlin initially supported Roosevelt but turned against him, calling for nationalisation of banks and attacking the New Deal as too friendly to big business.

How successful was the New Deal? Weighing the evidence

This is the evaluative question that IGCSE examiners love, so you need to have a balanced view ready.

Key chronology

Common mistakes IGCSE students make on Depth Study D

1. Treating the 1920s boom as benefiting everyone equally. The boom was real, but it was concentrated in urban, industrial America. Farmers, Black Americans, workers in older industries, and recent immigrants were largely left behind. Always show both sides.
2. Confusing causes of the Crash with consequences of the Depression. Speculation and overproduction caused the Crash. Unemployment, Hoovervilles, and bank failures were consequences. Keep the cause-and-effect chain clear in your answers.
3. Listing alphabet agencies without explaining what they achieved. Examiners do not award marks for a list of initials. Pick two or three agencies, explain what each one did, and evaluate whether it worked.
4. Claiming the New Deal "ended the Depression." It did not. Unemployment was still high in 1939. Full recovery came with wartime industry after 1941. If you write that the New Deal solved everything, you lose evaluation marks.
5. Ignoring opposition to the New Deal. Questions about the New Deal often ask about opposition or limitations. Prepare material on the Supreme Court, Huey Long, right-wing critics, and the treatment of African Americans so you are not caught off guard.

Self-check questions for your revision

1. Explain three factors that made the economic boom of the 1920s possible. Which factor do you think was the most important, and why?
2. "The 1920s were a time of freedom and progress for all Americans." How far do you agree? Use specific examples in your answer.
3. Describe the cause-and-effect chain that led from stock market speculation to the Great Depression.
4. Why did President Hoover lose the 1932 election so badly? Identify at least two reasons and explain how they are connected.
5. Choose two alphabet agencies and evaluate how effectively each one addressed the problems of the Depression.
6. "The New Deal was more successful at providing short-term relief than at achieving long-term recovery." How far do you agree with this statement? Support your answer with evidence.