Immediately Following

1. Postwar: Hooray the War is over! Let’s get jobs and have kids!!! (Until the worst depression the world has ever seen, then we will immediately regret that decision)

2. Immediately Following • American economy underwent profound structural changes • 1920s saw enormous increase in efficiency of production, steady climb in wages, decline in the length of the average work week, and a boom in consumer goods industries • Differences in prosperity brought on weaknesses in economy and the Great Depression

3. Second Industrial Revolution • Prosperity and then the Depression rest on the second industrial revolution • Technological innovations made it possible to increase industrial output • Did not expand the labor force • *Specifically focused in postwar America

4. The Modern Corporation • Managerial revolution increasingly divorce ownership of corporate stock from everyday control of business • Governing class of salaried executives made corporate policy without themselves having controlling interest • Most successful corporations led in these 3 areas: • 1. Integration of production and distribution • 2. Product diversification • 3. Expansion of industrial research

5. Oligopoly • The control of a market by a few large producers became the norm • Welfare Capitalism: paternalistic system of labor relations emphasizing management responsibility of employee well-being • Encouraged workers to acquire property through stock purchase plans • Open Shop: No employee was compelled to join the union

8. Auto Age • 1920s America made 85% of world’s passenger cars • 1925: Ford’s assembly line produced a car every 10 seconds • Provided market for steel, rubber, glass, and petroleum products • **Biggest problem of the 20s was that not everyone shared in the era’s prosperity**