A 1926 Cadillac Coupe (from the 2008 Fernie to Victoria Tour - a rally in British Columbia, Canada - www.vccc.com)
The next two lectures will look at 1920s America and the varying interpretations about what they meant for the nation at the time and what they continue to mean today.
Your textbook's author makes a general portrayal of the 1920s as a time when fiscal and social conservatism and corporate greed ran amok - and ultimately ran the country into the Great Depression. Along the way he laments the weakening of labor unions (his pet cause) and the "unequal distribution" of wealth. Yet between today's lecture and the next, we will look at a time in America marked by enormous cultural ferment and the emergence of a modern credit and consumer economy - however weak that economy's foundations were.
A 1920s Radio Ad from an interesting but mostly defunct website on 1920s radio from the University of Virginia.
In particular, we will consider to what degree governmental conservatism and a lack of corporate regulation fed economic disaster, and to what degree uncontrollable market forces and underlying global economic weaknesses were responsible.
Your author also enumerates in particular a fairly concise and accurate list of reasons for the coming of the Great Depression on pages 690-691. Do these square in emphasis and scale with what he sets forth in the rest of the chapter?
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