Test. Test test. We talked a lot about that, right . All of the efforts that advertisers went to add some kind of value to their product. At a certain point there is no new markets to be found. There is no new demand to be generated. Now when we talk about prices were talking about cost of living. When we talk about expectations, when we talk about expectations what were talking about is the standard of living. Right . So prices, cost of living, expectations, standard of living. And the standard of living in the 1920s was on the rise. This new standard of living was beckenni beckoning americans to buy more and to want more. The threathold of dire was rising. Now let me be really clear with you. All of the things that we looked at and thought about. But they were considered decencies. So the shift from luxury to decencies, and they were coming to become the birthright of all american citizens. Something that all americans had a right to claim, wish for, and to want. So despite the historic levels of economic productivity, we have a decrease in prices and a standard of living. Many americans were forced to live on the edge. They were like george wims. No scholar figured out how Many Americans were living in poverty in the 1920s. There was no official agreement today what constituted living in poverty. That would be seven out of ten americans. Others say it was only 20 . I think both of those estimates are extremely high. Extremely high and extremely low. I think the best guess is about a third. About 30 . 3 33 . Living lives of real privation. Another 20 or so were probably near the line. Maybe they were above poverty, but it was pretty rough. Life was a struggle for them. So what are you noticing from this wage chart . What do you notice about the season workers. Yeah, the significant total is more than the unskilled workers. You see their yearly total is 357 down to 294. Those are poverty wages. It is estimated in the 1920s, im not sure if i agree with this, but it is estimated it took about 2500 a year for a household to have a decent standard of living. So we see this is an easy time for them. Anything else from these wages. Productivity doubts productivity doubles in the space of ten years. Do the wages double . No, not even close. So wages are not keeping up with productivity at all, right . And what this suggests is that working americans were not receiving a significant or a fair share of the worth. They are perhaps unevenly spread out. Lets think for a minute about the distribution of the wealth. It is probably something you heard about. The distribution of wealth. So in the 1920s, the top 1 and we all heard the term the 1 , it is becoming a very popular term in our day, the top 1 held about 24 of the nations wealth. Top 1 holds 24 of the nations wealth. Lets take the next 9 . The next 9 can hold 6 of the nations wealth. The top 9 or the next 9 have a quarter of the nations wealth. As a whole the top 10 , 51 of the nations wealth. And then lets look at the bottom 60 . So the bottom 60 of americans held 5 of the nations wealth. 5 . And then that other 30 in between that bottom 60 , they held the rest. They were doing pretty well. They held about 45 or 44 of the nations wealth. So this is an incredibly unequal distribution of wealth. At no other time in our nations history except for right now, has there been as much inequality. As a welt been distributed so unequally. An activist, im sure you have heard of him, he is looking at the situation. He was looking at it as very wrong. This is a kwoequote, he said wee prosperity and depression. Cheek by jowl. Like this africanamerican news boy he is selling a penny newspaper, and it is proclaiming taxes on billionaires. This is from 1921. So cheek by jowl africanamericans. So too were farmers as you could tell, right, from the wages we just looked at . And they made up 30 of the population, so, too, were coal minors. We have a vast proportion of american thats are essentially impoverished. So despite the slow rate of inflation, prices are not changing, most americans did not earn enough to buy the necessities. And they didnt earn enough at all. You have wages that dont match the pace at all. Wages are here, theyre flat, and in some cases theyre just down. What did americans do about this. Let me make generalizations for you first about how individuals and communities handle it. When they cant pay for their what do you do when you cant pay for what you need or for what you want, what are some of the strategies or college students. Maybe you need some things you might need for, too. What do you need, too. So you might steal, you might substitute, right, okay, i like these ideas. You could take out a loan, right. What else might you do. Move in with friends. Share a textbook, move in with friends, share a car, take the bus, economize in all sorts of way. Taking out loans, steeling, we have economizing. What else . You guys can smart, you can tutor. You can tutor, and you could take a min money wage job. There is all sorts of things you could do to add to your economic. They try to stooifl their demands, you could eat less, right . When i was in my first year i didnt have much money so i ate a lot of ramen noodles. What you have what we have just laid out here is common sense stratt gis. There is nothing new about what you might come up with about how to make your ends meet. This is what americans have been doing for a long time. There is one thing you didnt mention. That americans started to do in a is trying to control prices that is one of the first things you might do if your needs and wants, if your income doesnt meet what you need or want, you could protest prices. You could engage in collective action. The sect thing you could do is stifle command, right . You could try to make do, try to spend less. Try to expose yourself less to the time lants that make you want things that could stop internet shopping, for instance. You could try to add to your income. So what do americans do the prices are going down and theyre not trying to go up. They not trying to control prices in the 1920s. They were relieved that prices returned to prewar levels. But 1900 to 1915 or so americans protested price hikes and all sorts of interesting collective actions. When they riot about the police. Housewives boycotted butchers, so the meat price rose so high they said they would not buy it at all. It was not just a individual boycott, but if all of us in dallas said were not buying meat until you decrease the price by 25 , we might get through to them, right . This is what housewives did. They boycotted butchers. And they refutured to pay their rent. It only works if everyone in the building refuses to pay the rent, right . But if all of us didnt pay our rent the landlord would have trouble filling all of the apartments. They are rising out of control, but at the same time the government during world war one, during the war. The government recognizing that inflation was out of control and that there was going to be rioting and worse if they didnt bring it under control. They put price controls on food and fuel. There was some regulation of prices. They talk about how to blast income with needs. What about controlling demand. Stifling expectations, spending less, hardly requires collective action, right . This is more of a individual response to the problem. Most argues would argue that they stifled their cone assumer expectations. They stifle their desires to one degree or another. They didnt just buy everything they wanted. They did not buy a new refrigerator every year or a new automobile every year. Let alone all of those other baubles and gadgets, but they did not engage completely in selfdenial either. They stretched their dollars, they were creative and ingenious. They made their own food. They made their own clothes, pattern from the 1920s. Many women made their own dresses, they sewed their own clothes trying to be ala mode in the fashion of the day. Never the less making the clothes. They made their own food, they canned their own tomatoes and vegetables. They made apple sauce, they put them away for the winter and they engaged and there by didnt have to they didnt have toma tomatoes or all of the other canned goods. Americans saved and budgeted. They traded and bartered. They traded eggs for a homemade dress. They bartered and traded services with each other. Sometimes they resorted to stealing. They went to secondhand store and they bought things on the black market. This is the way that americans tried to stretch their collars, but it didnt work. It didnt work entirely. There is only so far you can stretch something. So americans they moved away from trying to control price, and trying to control demand, and they tried to take control of the other side of the equation which is purchasing power. They try to get paid more. They change jobs, they between the a gm and a ford factory. Why ford . They paid 5 a day. It was twice the wages of all of the other automobile vak tifact. And ford increased his daily wage to 6 a day. After the stock market crashed and the economy went into decline, ford raises wages again to 7 a day. Those lucky enough to keep their jobs were getting 7 a day. This is baud ford understood that without purchasing power there would be no market for all of those automobiles and all of that stuff. They are working for a higher paying job. They can raise their wages by unionizing, right . Another way of engaging in collective action. I go to president turner and i complain about my salary. Its not making any effect. Im not going to do any of that. We likely see a increase in our s ri just as if if all of you engaged in collective action you would probably see a decrease in tuition. This is airing on national television, i have now called for collective action. The point is that unions. So americans formed unions they went on strike after world war one. Prices were so high and the wages did not match. They went on strike. For the rest of the 1920s, very little in terms of collective action. You can another thing you could do, you try to get a higher paying job, you could send more members of your house old out towork. You can send your children and your wife to work instead of working one job, two jobs, three jobs. You can engage in criminaltivity. You could smuggle. You could they are household income. So trying to increase your individual income. There is a third thing you can do and this is a amelia suggested, and that is that you can take a loan. Lets look backward for just a minute. Lets introduce you to an important concept. It is an id term. Okay. If we look backwards at various moments, americans during the 1800s, americans protested high wages but they protested high wages, so bred riots, many strik strikes. They were directed at usually the activist in the 19th century. Usually it was directed at employers or merchants. So it was very directly at whoever is paying the prices. It was not directed at the government. The activity did not march in washington dc. They did not wage raises or lower prices. It did not occur to them that there was Political Solutions to these economic problems. They saw Marketplace Solutions for their economickqh problems. It is Political Solutions to economic problems. They started to demand Political Solutions to economic programs. Political solutions. Limitations on purchasing power is what pushed americans to demand Political Solutions. They started to ask the government to control inflation. To regulate pages, to ensure access to basic living stand rs. And to regulate wages. And in 1900 these were unheard of actions for the government to engage in. But americans started to ask for that kind of government involvement. So as a historian has shown, the United States these kind of politics entered into the political arena in the early decades of the 20th century. In the 1920s they went dormant. They were not to be seen. Calvin coolige said it is the business of americas business. It didnt mean taking care of consumers. The business of america is making sure people have adequate income and wages. The 1920s, the department of commerce flourishes. Finding markets at home and abroad. Helping them become more efficient and helping them adapt scientific management. The business of america is business. Americans, as i said, didnt engage in collective action. There was hardly any strikes, there werent any protests, and there werent any communal efforts to make up for the difference between the wants. So we just muddled along in the 20s. You have a slow rate of inflation. People complain about rising prices. They are it was also due in part because Consumer Debt became more widely available. Consumer loans became more widely available and as you can see here, Consumer Debt nearly tripled. You 3. 3 billion in debt in 1920, and this Consumer Debt includes homelo loans and mortgages. So where do americans get their loans in the 1920s. On your hand out who laebt them money. So credit like always, credit is always available from family and friends. Until you have tapped those markets out. So family and friends. Secondly pawnbrokers. They frequented pawnbrokers and received small amounts of credit. There was also small loan leaders, a small loan lender is like the payday lenders that are so prevalent today. Manufacturers also offer Consumer Credit and they did so with installment plans. If you wanted to buy an automobile or a piano, a durable good, an electric appliance, sewing machine, bicycle, you could buy it with credit. Fifthly retailers offer credit. They offer charge accounts for the welty and you see here on the side a subject account from wanamaker. They were the leading Department Store in philadelphia. It is like a budget account. A thrifty, worthwhile, and a budget is good, right . So they call it a budget account. They started to offer little tiny charge plates to welalthy customers. So theyre offering retail accounts. And theyre offering installment plans for everything else. They sort of took the shape of l layaway. Do you know what layaway is. You identify a pair of hiking boots that you really wants. Youre worried their going to sell out. You put 10 todown and they hol the bikes in the store until you pay them off and you come in the store and you may a little more each week and once you pay it off you get to take them home. What do i do when i find those boots that i want. Put it on your credit card. So it is a really different type of conversation. Lay away, do people still do it tod today. Yeah, it will offer it. Will they hold on to the goods. Yeah, i dont think so, i think they give it to you maybe with the assumption that you will pay it back. A different kind of relationship with the retailer and the shopper. Okay, so we have the last source of Consumer Credit would have been banks. Banks offer consumer loans for the wealthy. Consumer credit was not available to most americans. The pawnbrokers, and the small loan lenders, and it is credit to help people get by issuing it for the next week. It becomes available to the top quarter of the american population. So an economy as productive could not go on this way, right . With 60 of americans getting 5 of the wealth with wages flat. With credit available but not widely availability. Not available to everybody. The economy needed to find a way for more americans to become full fledged consumers. So now were back and i brought you back to the point where we can think about the Great Depression and we can think about what happened. Im fairly certain you can figure out the answer at this point. The answer that makes sense for our class on the history of consumer culture. The Great Depression was a crisis of abundance. It was a crisis of abundance. We, the United States, figured out how to grow and make a tremendous amount of an array of things, right . We could make so much stuff and so many Different Things and we figured out how to market the goods. We figured out how to get them to market. New forms of retail. New kinds of tiadvertising, howo market the goods. And we had not figured out the third leg in the stool. How to provide americans with the means of which to buy all of this stuff. Figure out how to make it, figure how it is a political question, right . The question that socialist and markists had been asking since the 1870s. They had been asking this question. The mexican revolution, the Russian Revolution in 1917 and this political question was just being asked it is a capital system, we liked it the way it was. American Political Parties had to figure out how to address this question and maintain private enterprise. So lets look again here. Lets look at the glut of commodities and manufactured goods. Lets look first at farming. So farming had been in a dprengs since the end of world war one. They had been in a depression that was just as terrible as what we would see in the 30s since the end of world war i. This is because during the war, during the first world war, they expanded acreage and production for the commodities. There was not a lot of room for them to grow. There was tremendous demand for our commodities, prices went up that 60 increase in prices that was so terrible for the American People was pretty awesome for farmers, right . Theyre selling stuff for tremendously more than they had at the beginning of the war. But what happened was the war is over and the farmers didnt cut back on production. In fact they continued to expand it and put more acres in cultivati cultivation. They continued to mechanize, right . All of these things that will increase productivity. As a consequence there is a flut of Agricultural Products and commodities. Wheat, butter, milk, pork, sold for half as much in 1929. Half as much. As they had in 1914. Not a good situation to be in in youre a farmer. A terrible situation. There was no amount of branding. There is no amount of packaging, no amount of marketing that could have raised the price for Agricultural Products. There was just too many. Okay, now manufacturing was a little better off, there was not a glut of manufactured products unless the second half of the 1990s. And beginning about 1927 or so, inventories of manufactured goods started to accumulate as well. There was signs as we know as early as 1925 of over saturation. So there was signs that inventories were beginning to accumulate. They started to lay workers off, and they didded ignore the signs of a slow down and a disaster was in the making. In early 1929