The Business of America Is Business

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The Business of America Is Business!

• The American Dream in the 1920s

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Business means money
Big Business becomes much like a religion
The man who builds a factory, builds a temple,
the man who works there worships there. Calvin
Coolidge A list of 59 people who were perceived
to rule America was published
-- none were politicians, all were rich
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Signs of Growth in the Roaring Twenties

• Business
• industrial productivity grows by 70
• New industries formed (aluminum, radio, talking
  movies, synthetics
  
• automobiles
• skyscrapers
• corporations merging

• Personal
• Many unskilled find jobs on assembly lines
• White-collar work increases 36
• Sales jobs earned up to 30,000 a year
• Mass produced cars changed the culture
• Consumerism ruled
• first credit card issued
• chain stores
• advertising fuels the AD

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Having it all The AD made personal
Movies make and shape the culture of the AD
The Jazz Singer is the first talkie
Movie Stars promoted and attachment and
identification begins Sports as Entertainment
Tennis and golf become popular with working
class Baseball becomes nations pastime Spor
ts stars are created Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey
and Red Grange Jazz Symbol of the Age An Amer
ican Invention, born in New Orleans
African American