The automobile was the economic symbol of the 1920s. Annual production rose from
1.5 million cars in 1921 to 4.8 million in 1929. By 1930, 60 percent of America’s families owned an automobile (see Table 22.1). One consequence of the automobile was the great construction boom of the 1920s. The automobile changed the location of residences, portending the heyday of suburbia. The automobile combined travel with entertainment and spotted the countryside with motels, hot dog stands, road signs, and gas stations. This remaking of the American landscape was largely unplanned and unregulated by government. As shown by Alexander Field (1992), it also left a residual of legal tangles that made recovery from the depression more difficult in the late 1930s.
The automobile also enlarged the demands on government for paved roads, as automobile clubs and especially farmers pressed for assistance to get out of the mud. With the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, the development of a nationwide highway system began. Under the act, the government committed itself to spending $75 million to build rural post roads, with the money to be expended by the Department of Agriculture over a period of five years. The national contribution was not to exceed 50 percent of the total construction cost, exclusive of bridges and other major structures, and was conditional on the organization of state highway departments with adequate personnel and sufficient equipment to initiate the work and carry out subsequent maintenance. The Federal Highway Act of 1921 amended the original law by requiring the secretary of agriculture to give preference to states that had designated a system of highways to receive federal aid. The designated system was to constitute the “primary” roads of the state and was not to exceed 7 percent of the state’s total highway mileage. Incidentally, in the Highway Act of 1921, Congress appropriated as much money for a single year’s (1922) construction as it had for all of the preceding five years.
Henry Ford began mass production of the Model T in 1908; by 1916, he was producing 2,000 per day. In the 1920s, however, the Model T lost market share to more stylish, although more expensive, competitors. Production of the Model T was discontinued in 1926.
World History
