Themes in American History

Image depicts the idea of the quota laws set forth during the 1920's in the United States. Original Source: American Isolationism Cartoon, 1921 (Library of Congress)

During the 1920s many American cities saw quota laws that limited or completely stopped a group of people from entering into the United States. One of the cities that was affected by these quota laws was NYC which saw a great decline of immigration during the 1920s. The congressional acts of 1921, 1924, and 1929 limited greatly the amount of immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe places where the majority of immigration came from to NY (Chudacoff & Smith 206). On the other hand these laws did not limit the immigration coming from the Western Hemisphere therefore, during the 1920’s the majority of the immigrants entering the country where Mexicans. While some of them moved up to some of the northern cities like Chicago and Detroit many of them resided in southwestern cities. For example during this decade Mexicans where a little more than 50% of the population in El Paso, a little less than 50% of the population in in San Antonio and 20% of the population in Los Angeles (Chudacoff & Smith 206). This influx of Chicanos provided a large body of labor as they worked in steel mills, tanneries, meat-packing industries, automobile factories, etc. However these Chicanos were also faced issues in the United States such as segregation a negative aspect of their time here.

Image of a Mexican immigrant couple during the 1920's. Original Source: UC Berkeley Bancroft Library

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According to www.thenagain.info, ” The leading theory regarding the cause of The Great Depression holds that it resulted from the stock market crash in 1929.  Prior to the crash, around the beginning of 1928, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates due to financial speculation and inflated stock prices. Industrial production turned down in the spring of 1929, and overall growth turned negative in the summer. This prosperous decade had proven the old adage that all good things must come to an end, when a recession began in the summer of 1929.  In the two months before the crash, industrial production fell to an annual rate of 20%, and continued to drop well into the fall months.  “By mid-November, the market had declined by a half.” ”

I believe that, the prosperous decade, mostly due to the stock market success, represents an aspect of modernity achieved during the 1920s. On the other hand, Great Depression caused a lot of financial, political and cultural changes. This video show us, how people were optimistic in every aspect of their life, during the decade before the crash of the stock market and how evrything changes after.

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