- U.S. suffered greatly

- 1920, women were given the right to vote.

Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who attained fame during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he was 33 years old.

- new advertising strategies (; radio and newspaper/print)'

- Sears, Roebuck & Co./Consumer's Bible (revolutionised how people purchased items)

- buying on credit and paying for the item gradually over time

- Calvin Coolidge (president of US from 1923-1929)- Coolidge prosperity effected modern day economics

- "..More than 15 million Model T's were built in Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan, and the automobile was also assembled at a Ford plant in Manchester, England, and at plants in continental Europe..."

The roaring 1920s was an era of dramatic change. Among the most enduring manifestations of this change was the rise of the big city. The centrality of urban growth to the social, political, and economic changes of the 1920s gives it a special place in the study of that decade, the twentieth century, and the United States in the modern century. The changes that took place in New York City, America’s largest city by this time (see the interactive activity in the March 2007 issue of History Now), were in response to the changes that were taking place in the nation. New York, New York, would become the symbol of the nation during this exciting decade.

Rapid urban growth was the source of a whole new range of problems and challenges. The solution to increased population density and demand for office space came from new buildings that enabled the cities to expand upward rather than outward. New technologies and innovations—steel framing, concrete, improved heating and plumbing, and elevators—played a role in the construction of taller-than-ever-before buildings. In America’s preeminent city of the twentieth century—New York—the skyscraper came to be a symbol of America's modernity.

For the first time it became possible for Americans to buy on credit through the credo of ‘buy now, pay later’ practices that ushered in the Roaring Twenties. Generous lines of credit were offered by department stores for families who were not able to pay upfront but who could demonstrate their ability to pay in the future. Installment plans were also offered to buyers who were not able to pay upfront. More than half of the automobiles in the nation were sold on credit by the end of the 1920s. As a result, consumer debt more than doubled during the decade. 

The capture and sale of Africans for the American slave markets were barbaric and often lethal. Two out of five West African captives died on the march to the Atlantic seacoast where they were sold to European slavers. On board the slave vessels, they were chained below decks in coffin-sized racks. An estimated one-third of these unfortunate individuals died at sea.

In America, they were sold at auction to owners, who wanted them primarily as plantation workers. Slave owners could punish slaves harshly. They could break up families by selling off family members.

Despite the hardships, slaves managed to develop a strong cultural identity. On plantations, all adults looked after all children. Although they risked separation, slaves frequently married and maintained strong family ties. Introduced to Christianity, they developed their own forms of worship.

Spirituals, the music of worship, expressed both slave endurance and religious belief. Slaves frequently altered the lyrics of spirituals to carry the hope of freedom or to celebrate resistance.

In time, African culture enriched much of American music, theater, and dance. African rhythms found their way into Christian hymns and European marches. The banjo evolved from an African stringed instrument. The sound of the blues is nothing more than a combination of African and European musical scales. Vaudeville was partially an extension of song-and-dance forms first performed by black street artists.

• The End of Wilsonianism
  

The Republican politics of the 1920s sprung from the repudiation of Woodrow Wilson, the only Democrat elected to the presidency between 1892 and 1932. Wilson had never governed with the support of a majority of voters, winning office in 1912 only because two Republicans (popular ex-President Teddy Roosevelt and incumbent William Howard Taft) split the vote by running against each other, then barely retaining the presidency with less the half the popular vote in 1916. Despite his dubious mandate, Wilson pursued aggressive reforms at home and abroad, culminating in the virtual nationalization of the economy during World War I and the ambitious internationalism of the League of Nations after the armistice.

In 1928, Coolidge retired to civilian life, leaving office as a highly popular figure among the American people. Coolidge's Republican successor in the White House was Herbert Hoover, a former mining engineer, war-relief administrator, and Secretary of Commerce considered by many to be the greatest man of his generation. Raised in rural Iowa and Oregon, Hoover was a self made millionaire but no rigid adherent of laissez-faire. Hoover might be considered the last Progressive, a believer in the potential of the private market to achieve beneficial results through voluntary cooperation encouraged (but not enforced) by the government. As Commerce Secretary in 1920, Hoover had helped to stave off a postwar depression by successfully encouraging leading businessmen voluntarily to pursue policies of growth rather than retrenchment. As a presidential candidate in 1928, Hoover confidently declared, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land... we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation." 11 Hoover won more electoral votes than any previous presidential candidate in American history, but his optimistic vision of a future of universal affluence was soon shattered. In October 1929, just months after Hoover assumed office, the stock market collapsed, ushering in the reat Depression, the worst economic crisis in American history, which Hoover's policies of voluntary cooperation proved utterly unable to solve.