7.7 1920s: Innovations in Communication and Technology

Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management (The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911) used time-and-motion studies to break work into small, efficient steps. Henry Ford applied similar ideas with the moving assembly line, introduced at his Highland Park, Michigan, plant in 1913. Cars moved past workers, each of whom did one task.

Production time for a Model T fell from more than twelve hours to about an hour and a half, and its price fell from $850 when it was introduced in 1908 to under $300 by the mid-1920s. Ford also offered a $5 day in 1914, roughly double the going wage, to cut turnover and help his workers buy the cars they built.

Automobiles transformed the economy. Car registrations rose from about 8 million in 1920 to about 23 million in 1929. Cars boosted the steel, rubber, glass and oil industries, led to road building, gas stations and motels, and let people live farther from work, helping suburbs grow.

Mass culture means entertainment and ideas shared by millions of people at once. Radio led the way. KDKA in Pittsburgh made the first commercial broadcast in November 1920, reporting presidential election returns, and by the end of the decade millions of homes had sets and national networks like NBC (1926) carried the same shows coast to coast.

Movies drew tens of millions of viewers a week. Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin became national celebrities, and The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first feature-length 'talkie'. Sports stars like Babe Ruth and aviator Charles Lindbergh, who flew solo across the Atlantic in 1927, became heroes through radio and newsreels.

Mass culture made regional and ethnic differences less sharp, as people in small towns and big cities heard the same music and saw the same films, though critics worried it encouraged conformity.

Advertising became a major industry, using psychology to create desires for new products like radios, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and cosmetics. Bruce Barton's best seller The Man Nobody Knows (1925) even portrayed Jesus as a model businessman.

Electricity reached most city homes by the late 1920s, powering new appliances, though most farms remained without it. Installment plans let families buy on credit, paying a little each month. This expanded sales but left many households in debt, one of the weaknesses that helped turn the 1929 crash into a depression (7.9).

Republican presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover favored business. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon cut taxes, especially on the wealthy, and regulators went easy on corporations. Coolidge said that the chief business of the American people is business.

Prosperity was uneven. Farmers, who had expanded during the war, faced falling prices in the 1920s. Industries like coal and textiles struggled, unions lost members, and wealth concentrated at the top.