In the 1920s, America was forging a new kind of society: democratic, modern and capitalist. A society that many envied and imitated. The First World War had turbo-charged the US economy as America had sold munitions and supplies to its allies and moved into markets that the imperial nations like Britain and France had vacated during the fighting. Farmers saw their incomes rise rapidly as commodity prices soared. Over 4 million Americans served in the armed forces and they returned to a country on the up. By the 1920s the US economy was well ahead of the rest of the world.
There were plenty of new products to buy in the USA. The automobile industry’s growth was explosive, with cars such as the Model T Ford dropping in price throughout the decade. This drove the development of a whole infrastructure ecosystem with new roads, service stations and garages and a surge in the sectors that supplied the raw materials for this new technology such as rubber, petrol and glass.
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