1. IMPACT OF WAR

2. Trade and Arms Control

3. Former wartime allies owed the United States more than $10 billion in war debts.
By the 1920s the U.S. was the dominant economic power

4. Isolationism Americans wanted to be left alone to pursue prosperity.
The U.S. was too powerful economically and politically to stay isolated.
U.S. policy to promote peace through agreements with individual countries

5. The Dawes Plan Wartime allies had difficulty paying back war debts
Allies argued that the United States should be willing to bear more of the financial burden because it had suffered far fewer wartime casualties.
An agreement with France, Britain and Germany by which American banks would make loans to the Germans to enable them to pay more war debts.

6. Abolishing War Written agreements could end war all together.
Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand proposed a treaty to outlaw war.
Kellogg-Briand Pact – 62 countries ratified it

7. The Twenties: Business boom or False Prosperity?

8. Return to Normalcy

9. Return to Normalcy Warren G. Harding as President
Slogan: Return to “Normalcy” or Return to “Normal” life after the war

10. Creation of the “Ohio Gang”
Harding would appoint many friends and political allies into high-level jobs.
Some of these people sold government jobs, pardons, and protection from prosecution.
Harding was bothered by what his so-called “Friends” were doing.
Died of a heart attack on a tour of the West.

11. The Teapot Dome Scandal
Secretary of the interior: Albert B. Fall
The first cabinet officer in history to go to prison
Secretly allowed private interests to lease lands containing U.S. Navy oil reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming.
Received over $300,000 in bribes.

13. Coolidge Prosperity Calvin Coolidge – President after Harding dies
“Silent Cal”
Believed that prosperity rested on business leadership and that part of his job as president was to make sure that government interfered with business and industry as LITTLE as possible.

14. Keep “Cool” with Coolidge
Won the Election of 1924
Aligned with Prosperity and Big Business

15. Changing Market Conditions
“Quiet Depression”
Government had encouraged more farm production during the war
Many farmers borrowed heavily to buy land and new machinery to raise more crops
After the war this changed, Americans could no longer sell their outputs overseas.

16. Mass Consumption and the clash of cultural values

17. Standard of Living Rise in the Standard of Living
Per capita earnings soared 22% between
Mass Production: Large-scale product manufacturing usually done by machinery

18. The Assembly Line
Divided operations into simple tasks that unskilled workers could do to cut unnecessary motion to a minimum
“Model T” In 1908 sold for $850.
In 1914 it reduced its price to $490
By 1917 it was $360

19. Consumer Durable Goods
Electric Razors
Disposable Facial Tissues
Frozen Foods
Home Hair Dye

20. Appliances

21. Easy Consumer Credit Growth of individual buying
Gave Americans the confidence to go into debt
SPEND SPEND SPEND!!!!
“Buy now and pay in easy installments”
Family car, radio, furniture, washing machine, vacuum cleaner