| Kathleen McKenzie: Her Time Period | ||||||||||
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Life During the Roaring Twenties The era in which Kathleen McKenzie grew up is often referred to as the Roaring Twenties. The economy was booming and new inventions were being made daily. By the end of the 1920s, the majority of city homes were equipped with indoor plumbing and electricity. This enabled even the most common housing to have modern conveniences such as telephones, refrigerators, electric stoves, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and perhaps most popular of all, the radio. It was not only the bustling economy that dubbed the 1920s the Roaring Twenties. Unlike the decades before, there was a strong pursuit of personal entertainment. Many historians attribute this to the fact that people were willing to do almost anything for pleasure after the horrors of World War I. But whatever the case, the Broadway stage, radio, and silent movies were becoming quite the rage. Dancing and professional sports were also gaining popularity. More than ever before in history, radio and newspaper ads encouraged Americans to spend money on entertainment and modern conveniences. Because of the media and constant push for pleasure, many people view the Roaring Twenties as a decade of decadence and extravagance. For Kathleen, and the average American family, living was comfortable but not excessive. Entertainment involved activities such as attending a baseball game with the family or going to a church social. The Stock Market and the Crash Much of the wealth that fueled the excesses of the Roaring Twenties was provided by the stock market—a place where people buy and sell stocks. Stocks are shares of ownership in a company. Because the economy had been so strong for over a decade, shares in many companies had enormously increased in value. Everyone knew people who had greatly profited from buying stocks, and that influenced them to invest their savings as well, further fueling the stock market. Even though they knew almost nothing about the company whose shares they bought, they believed that they could not lose. Everyone was making bushels of money in the stock market! Greed took over, and many people borrowed money from the bank to buy more stock. This created more demand and stock prices went higher. People borrowed more money, mortgaged their houses, farms, or businesses, and still stocks increased in value. It seemed there would be no end to the profits—that is until the day the stock market crashed on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. The value of the stocks plunged so severely that it wiped out all of the investors’ previous profits and they didn’t have the money to pay back their loans to the bank. Many lost their homes, farms, and businesses. Their employees lost their jobs and could not pay their home mortgages. Soon the banks failed, and even people who had never risked their savings on stocks lost everything. No one had money to buy anything, so more businesses failed, more people lost their jobs, more banks failed, and more savings were wiped out, until it seemed that no one would survive the financial catastrophe. The Price of Living in Kathleen’s Day Seeing America’s economy through the eyes of the 1920s is both fascinating and astonishing. In our modern world it is unlikely that we could walk into a department store and pay a dollar for a brand new dress or go to the local cinema for twenty-five cents. But in Kathleen’s day, this was the normal cost of living, and during the Roaring Twenties thousands of consumers enjoyed spending their hard-earned cash. The following are some examples of prices in Kathleen’s day. The Price of Living: Food
Clothing
Furniture and Appliances
Extras and Entertainment
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