THE GREAT GATSBY

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

What activities in the 1920s caused the U.S. and many other countries to fall into a Great Depression? World War I definitely had an effect on the Great Depression. The technologies of WORLD WAR I carried over into technologies of automobiles and electricity too. Then, the mass amount of cars helped the transportation industry and the plane industry was getting more luxurious. Also, the President's cabinet members being corrupt, wasn't a good thing either. And with the stock market crash of October 24, 1929, it made the Depression open up. Also, with prohibition going around, didn't help things at all. And finally, the new Federal Reserve system, was causing panics too. There were many causes of the Great Depression, and its not just limited to these few.

Many people don't know this but the Great Depression was started off by the ending of World War I. Farming wasn't flourishing in the "20s. Agriculture was high in demand during World War I but, after the war, demand fell and farmers lost money they borrowed to buy land(The Americans, pg 643). Without money to pay off the loans the farmers lost their houses and farms to the bank. So, the roots of the Depression are to be sought back to World War I, which was itself a product of the British ego political machinations of King Edward VII and his circles(British Financial Warfare, pg 3).

The automobile industry was one of the technologies that was flourishing in the 1920s. For automobiles, between the years 1920 and 1929 the number of registered cars went from 8 million to 23 million(War, Boom, and Bust, pg 70). Also, in 1904, only 12,000 workers had been directly employed in the auto industry: 25 years later it went up to 421,000 producing cars and countless thousands more were supplying auto service.(War, Boom, and Bust, pg 70) For instance, this description of Gatsby's car in the book "The Great Gatsby", I'd seen it, everybody had seen it.

It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind shields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory we started to town.(The Great Gatsby, pg 68) describes a luxurious car during the Roaring 20s. So the automobile industry was booming and really expanding in the 1920s.

Another industry that was booming was the electrical business. American factories used electricity to run their machines. Also, the development of an alternating electrical current made it possible to distribute electric power by means of a transformer. Electricity was no longer restricted to big cities( The Americans, pg 603), and because of the developments in alternate electrical currents, it opened the doors for small electrical conveniences. Like, The 1920s saw an enormous increase in the number and kind of goods available. Automobile were the biggest items, but there were also many small electrical ...