Topic > What is the Rise of the Auto Boom in the 1920s - 1940s

In what is often called the most questionable decade in American history, the Roaring Twenties saw a society drunk on its own success. The United States was a thriving economy, the stock market was booming, and the New York Stock Exchange was at the center of everything. The American people rode on a money train, then without wearing the world was turned upside down. The prodigious New York Exchange collapsed and caused astonishing financial losses across the country. The United States has just emerged from the recession of 1921-1922 and a period of economic expansion and prosperity for the United States has begun. The economic boom began with many different events, but the most important event was the improvement of technology. The automobile began to prosper with new assembly lines and other inventions. During this period of time it became the most significant industry. This caused other industries to thrive as well, due to the need for materials to make cars. The industries needed to make the automobile were steel, rubber, glass, tool companies, oil companies, and road construction. The need for these materials caused a boom because the automotive industry was producing a lot of cars at the time. As there was an increase in the automotive industry, this made possible an increase in suburban housing, fueling, and an increase in the construction industry. “Electronics, appliances, plastics and synthetic fibers, aluminum, magnesium, oil, electric power and other sectors fueled by technological advances have all grown dramatically” (citethisshit). By the end of the 1930s, one in six Americans owned a telephone, and there were approximately 25 million telephones in the United States. “……half of the document…imposed a quota on the number of immigrants who could enter the United States from any country at one time. The quota “could not exceed three percent of the persons of that nationality who had been in the United States in 1910” (lkdfjlj), which reduced the number of immigrants coming to the United States from 800,000 to 300,000 in any given year. East Asians were completely banned from immigrating to the United States due to the National Origins Act of 1924, which reduced the quota for Europeans from 3 to 2 percent. This share was not recorded in the 1910 census; it was taken from the 1890 census. The government took a major role in immigration, and five years later a major restriction brought immigration back to 150,000 immigrants per year. In 1914 a new Ku Klux Klan was formed. These Klan members were more concerned with Catholics, Jews and foreigners after World War I.