"The Roaring Twenties" was more superficial than substantial. Discuss.

Essay by zuraskA-, January 2006

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"The Roaring Twenties" is the label for the decade after the ending of the First World War. In this decade United States (US) was transformed into an economic giant creating the world's first consumer market. In this "Age of the Excess", as writer F. Scott Fitzgerald calls it, the people of the US were lucky to have found themselves in that period but not all shared in the prosperity. In this essay I shall examine this rich period of American history showing that while most Americans were thriving they had not achieved the "disappearing of the poor house" as Hoover blatantly declared in 1928.

The Americans had prospered and thus it can be said that there was substance to the claim that this decade was the "Age of the Excess". For example, prior to the war the US was a debtor nation but afterwards they had converted to become a creditor nation.

This turnaround was possible because the Americans had paid back their debt and procured extra money that was lent to other nations. The money the Americans used to do this was obtained from the blossoming of the American economy in the post war years. This illustrates the point that the US was in a period of economic boom.

Americans achieved technological progress in this decade. Mass production, motor cars and radios were examples of this. Such innovations occurred due to financing of research which shows that the Americans had money to spend. This analogy again elaborates that the Americans were thriving in economic success making this period "the roaring twenties".

The First World War had devastated the economies of leading nations throughout the world. America, however, was unaffected and thus was in a stronger position. This meant that the Americans were the economic leader in the...