Social Changes and the Great Depression

Abstract

In the 1920s, the United States of America experienced social changes in mass entertainment, which later contributed to changes in morals, manners, dress codes, and hairstyles (Drake, 2019). Further, mass entertainment causes people to develop new habits, such as going to the movies. In the 1920s, there was also a change in gender roles where women could make choices regarding their education, career, type of job, and marital status. Another social change in the 1920s was an increase in the consumer-oriented economy, where people developed new patterns in goods consumption. There was an increase in the purchase of cars, vacuum cleaners, radios, clothes, and beauty products. Further, the United States increased the production of products such as washing machines, radios, phonographs, and refrigerators to cater to the demand increase (Drake, 2019). There was also an increase in car production because of a rise in car demand. During the 1920s, the desire to reach the rich and own luxury products such as cars, refrigerators and washing machines, made people borrow money from banks (Drake, 2019). The banks also used credits to venture into the stock market. Eventually, banks and people needed more money to pay for the loans. This led to the stock market crash in 1929 because everyone had used credit to buy stocks. The stock market crash was a great contributor to the great depression. Overproduction was another factor that led to the great depression since it made business owners vulnerable to demand changes. Reduction in income caused a decrease in demand for finished products. Eventually, there was a collapse of automobile and electronic businesses. Business owners took more loans to pay loans they had used to purchase production machinery. Fierce competition between...