So, if we look at America before the Wall Street Crash, had the lives of Americans improved in the 1920s?

• There was the image of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ or the ‘Jazz Age’

• Mass entertainment – the radio, jazz and dancing, the cinema – was a reality

• Sport became incredibly popular as well

• The lives of women changed forever, and would come to effect more and more women

• And these changes would fast spread across the world

• Employment was much more secure for white Americans in the cities

• Wages improved and hours decreased too

• There was a consumer boom

• The car opened up so many more opportunities for people

• But unions were severely restricted

• Workers in older industries suffered

• The Red Scare symbolised political intolerance

• Rural America was in a depression throughout the 1920s

• Black Americans didn’t benefit at all

• Newer immigrants were resented

• The Sacco and Venzetti trial highlighted the intolerance towards Left-thinking people and towards immigrants

• There was the Ku Klux Klan

• Lives didn’t change for most women either

• Prohibition and the Monkey Trial represented the conservative backlash from rural America