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Question: To what extent did all Americans benefit from the 1920s Boom!?
i have to write a report about the economic boom in the 1920 USA
we have to proove herbert hoover wrong when he said ‘ One of the oldest and perhaps the noblest of human activities has been the abolition of poverty!.!.!.we in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land!.’
do you have any facts or whatever to proove him wrong eg only the upperclass was so big that it looked like there was no poverty but there was! any other facts which could help me are welcome!
thanksWww@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
In the 20s, the economic boom helped strengthen the middle class which made the perception that the US was winning the war on poverty!.
Being able to buy on margin in the stock market was a partial reason that normal people were able to start accumulating a lot of wealth with little investment!.
And, as I'm sure you know, the problem was that these normal people were buying on margin (only purchasing part of the investment stock, then the bank would cover the rest of the cost and then the individual would have to pay back the loan through interest)!. The problem was that once the banks started failing after the stock market crash and everyone started to panic, all these banks were calling in these loans to cover the massive withdrawals (under most contracts you had to payback the full amount of the loan in 24 hours if the bank called in that loan)!. Flat out, people did not have the money on hand to payback the loan because the market had crashed, their stocks now worthless,and people couldn't get to their savings because the banks did not enough money to cover all their customers' withdrawals!.

In other words, the population's accumulation of wealth was artificial and was only based on the assumption that if the stock market continued to do well, so would everyone else!.

You can make a lot of connections between the Stock Market crash on 1929 and the housing/credit crisis of the present!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

All you have to do is bring in the tenement housing, the poor living conditions of the farmer and the sweat shop conditions!. Attack Hoover's definition of poverty!. Everyone had two coins to rub together on payday until they got home only to find it bought very little!. The poor had very little but the rich lived like kings!.Www@QuestionHome@Com