- •1. The land of the us: geography, the face of the land, mountain and rivers, weather and climate.
- •2. The people of the usa: population, the society. Ellis Island - Gateway to America. Contribution of the immigrants to the national identity.
- •"Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,....
- •A new era, a new mission
- •3. The regions of the us: the Northeast, the Central Basin, the Southeast, the Great Plains.
- •The Regions of the United States The Northeast
- •4. Discovery of America. American Indians - the accomplishments of the Iroquois, the Sioux, the Pueblo; great civilizations of the Mayas, Aztecs and Incas.
- •5. The History of the usa: Columbus or Vikings? Exploring and settling the New World: Spanish, Dutch and French territories in North America. Russian discovery of America.
- •French colonization of the Americas
- •6. The voyage of the Mayflower, Pylgrims and Puritans. Virginia Company with the right to colonise the South and the Plymouth Company with the right to colonise the North.
- •Pilgrims' voyage
- •Second Mayflower
- •Virginia Company
- •The Plymouth Company
- •7. Britain and the colonies. Jamestown colony, the dramatic history of Virginia.
- •8. The move to independence: the colonies in their fight to protect their liberties, the Tea Act and Boston Tea Party.
- •First Continental Congress
- •Second Continental Congress
- •10. The Founding Fathers of the nation (g. Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin).
- •Collective biography of the Framers of the Constitution
- •11. Constitution of the us, structure and main principles. Bill of rights.
- •The First Constitution
- •Louisiana Purchase
- •Florida Purchase
- •Republic of Texas
- •Alaska Purchase
- •13. The Civil War - the reasons, the process, the generals, the battles the consequences. The Emancipation Proclamation. The role of a. Lincoln. The Gettysburg address.
- •The reasons of the Civil War.
- •How many Generals were there?
- •List of u.S. Army generals and chief staff officers in early 1861 Line officers
- •Staff Officers
- •Lincoln's role
- •14. Afterwar peiod (Reconstruction), the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the constitution. Carpetbaggers, Ku-Klux-Klan. What did Reconstruction fail?
- •15. America at the turn of the century: Foreign policy - the fight for new colonies: Venezuelan conflict, Cuban crisis, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Panama Isthmus.
- •16. The Manifest Destiny, Monroe's Doctrine, Olney (or Roosevelt) Collorary.
- •17. Economic development: "captains of industry", industrialization. "The Square Deal" of Theodore Roosevelt and "The New Freedom" of w. Wilson. The us - a world leader.
- •List of businessmen who were called robber barons
- •U.S. Industrialization
- •History
- •18. America in the World War I. The League of Nations.
- •19. The roaring twenties. The rush for wealth. The movies. The bootleggers. Prohibition.
- •20. The Great Depression and the New Deal. The difference of the Roosevelt Administration from all previous administrations.
- •21. America before and at the time of the World War II. Hirishima 1945: right or wrong?
- •22. After the wwii: prodperity and problems - presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. "McCarthyism". Cold War with the Soviet Union.
- •23. Korean War, the birth of Nato, the War in Vietnam, crisis over Cuba.
- •24. The American century - the Americanization of the world. Mail Concepts of American Business.
- •27. The symbols of the us: the Statue of Liberty, the White house, the Library of Congress, the American Flag, the national Anthem.
- •28. Churches in the usa. America as a shelter for many people oppressed in their native countries for their religious beliefs. The role of religion in the us.
- •28. The main concepts of American Education.
- •30. The American Character: its origin and development. Values in the american character.
- •30. Cities of the us: Washington - planned city, New York (Big Apple) and its boroughs.
- •Economy
- •State finances
19. The roaring twenties. The rush for wealth. The movies. The bootleggers. Prohibition.
Girls dancing the Charleston. Gangsters carrying
machine guns. Ch arlie Chaplin playing comical
trick s. T hese arc some ofthe pictu res that come into
people's minds when they thi nk of the United States
in the 19205. The " roaring twent ies," Good times .
Wild times.
T he United States was vcry rich in these years.
HCl"aUSl' ofthe Fir st World War, o ther co un tr ies
owed it J lot of mon cy. lr had ple nt y of raw ma terials
and plen ty offactories. Its natio nal income - the to tal
earnings ofall its citi zens - was much higher . than th at
of Hritain , France, Ccnuan v and japan pm rc gceher.
American factories produced morc goods eve ry yt"a r.
The busiesr were th ose makin g automobi les.
Bcrwccu 1922 and 1927. the number of car s on the
roads rose from under eleven mill ion to over twenty
million. The elect rical indu st ry also prospered . It
92
made hund reds ofth ousands of refr igerators.
vacuum cleaners, stoves and rad ios.
The United Sta tes becam e the first nation in history
to build its way oflife on selling vast quantities of
goods that gave ord inary people easier and more
enjo yable lives. These "consumer goods" poured o ff
the assembly lines ofbig new facto ries. Between
1IJ I9 and 1929 such mass-production factories
do ubled th eir output.
The growth of ind ust ry made-ma ny America ns wel loff.
Millions earned good wages. Th ou sands
invested money in successful firms so [hat they could
share in their pro fits. Many bought cars, radios and
ot her new products with their money. Often they
obtained these goo ds by paying a small deposit and
ag reeing to pay the rest ofthe cos t th rou gh an
" instalment plan." T hei r mon o was "Live now, pay
tomorrow" - a tomorrow which most wer t'
convinced would be like today only better , with even
more mo ncy swelling thei r wall ets .
Businessmen became popular heroes in the 1920s.
Men like I Icnr v Ford were widely admired as the
creators of the nat ion's prosperit y. "The ma n who
builds a facrorv builds a te-mple," said Calvin
Cool idge, the President from 1923 to 1929. "The
man who works th ere. worships there."
Coolidge's words help to explain the po licies o f
American government s ill the 19205. T hese
governme-nt s were cont rolled by the Republican
Part y. Repu blicans bel ieved that i f rhc go vernment
look ed after the Interests o f the businessman.
everybody would become richer. Businessmen
W h OSl' firms were doing well. they claimed, would
take on more worker s and p.aymore wagt's. In thi s
way their growmg wealth would benefit cvc rvbod v.
T o help businessmen Congre-ss placed high import
taxes o n goods from abroad. The arm was to nuke
Imported goods more expensive. so that American
manufacturers would have less competition from
foreign riv als. At the same time Congress red uced
ta xes on high incomes and company profits. This gave rich men more money to invest. Yet there were lots ofpoor Americans. A su rn'y in
1929 showed that half the American people had
hardly eno ugh money to buy sufficient food and
clothing. In the industrial cities ofth e Nort h, such as
Chicago and Pin sburgb, immigr ant workers still
labored long hou rs for low wages III steel nulls.
factories and slaug hter houses. In the South
tho usands ofpoor farme rs. both black and wh ite,
worked (rom sunrise to sunset to earn barely enough
to live 0 11. The wealth that Republicans said would
benefit everybod y neve r reached people like these.
The main reason fo r povert y among industrial
work ers was low wages. Farm ers and farm wo rkers
had a hard time for di fferent reasons. In the South
lIlallYfarm,..rs did not own the land the y farmed.
They were sha recro ppers. For rent, a sharecropper
gan' rhc landowncr part ofwhat he grl'w - o ften so
much that he was left wi th hardl y enough to feed his
family.
In the Wcst most farmers owned their land . But they,
too, faced hard times. During the First World War
they had been ab le to sell their wheat to Europe for
high prices. By 1921. however . the cou nt ries of
Europe no longe r needed so much American food . And farmers were finding it more difficu lt to sell
their prod uce at home. Immigration had fallen. so
the number of people needin g food was growing
more slowly. All the new cars didn' t help either.
Cars ran a ll gaso line. not on corn and hay like horses.
Amer ican farm ers found themselves growlllg
products they could not sell. By 192-1, around
600 ,000 of them were bankrupt.
Bur to Amer icans who owned shares or "s toc k," III
ind ustrial companies the future looked bright. Sales
ofconsumer goods went on rising. T his meant
bigger profits for the firms that made them. T his in
turn sent up the value of shares in such firms.
In 1928 the American people elected a new President .
Herbert Hoo ver. Hoover was sure that American
prosperity would go on growing and that the
poverty in wh ich some Amer icans stilllived would
be remembered as something in the past. HI.' said that
there wo uld soon be "a chicken in every pot and two
cars 111 eve ry garage."
Look ing at the way their standard ofliving had risen
during the 1920s. many other Americans thought the
same.
The movies
In the 1920s American movies filled the cinema
screens of the worl d. Most were made III I lollywood,
a suburb of the city of Los Angeles III
Ca liforn ia. Holl ywood 's big attraction for film makers
was its clean air and plen tiful sunshine.
The mo vies made the re we re bright and clear. Uy
the 1920s it had become the film-makin g capital of
the world.
Hollywood movi es we re made by large companies
called studios. T he men who ran these studios
were businessm en and their main aim was to make
as much mOlley as poss ible. T hey soo n found tha t
one way to do this was to sta ndardize their films.
When audiences had shown tha t they liked a
cert ain kind of film, the studios made many more
of exac tly the same kind.
Another sure way for a stu dio to make mon ey was
to run} its acto rs into "stars." Stars were actors
who were so popular that people went in crowds
to see any film they appeared in, no marrer how
good or bad it was. A famous star cou ld make any
movie a certai n success . So the studios went to
great lengths to make their actors into stars . T hey
encouraged fan magazines. They set up special
publicity departments to get sto ries about their
actors into the newspapers.
The mo vies of rhc 1920s we re silent. They spok e
III pictures, not words, and so their language was
international. All over the wo rld, from Berlin co
Tokyo, from Lon don to Buenos Aires, te ns of
millions of people lined up every night of the
week to see their favo rite Ho llywood stars-and,
wi thout realizin g it. to be Americ anized.
Hollywood movies showed people a world that
was more exciting, more free. more equa l, than
their own. To most people thi s world of the
movi es remained a dream world, separa te from
real life. Hut to some it became more. It made
them realize. however dimly. that per haps their
own condi tions of life could be improved. AI Cap one and the bootleggers
In 1919 the American people voted in favo r of J
new amendment to the Consriru rion. The Eightccnt
h Amendment prohibited rhc making or
selling of alcoholic drinks in the United States.
People who supported " pro hibition" claimed
that it would stop alcoholism and drunkenness
and make the Un ited Stares a healthier. hap pier
country.
But nuny Americans were not willin g to give up
alcoholic drinks . Millions beg an to break the
prohi bition law delibe rate ly and regularly. JIIegal
dri nking places called "speakeasies' opened in
basements and backrooms all over the count ry.
The city of Chicago had 10,000 of th em . New
York had 32.000.
Speakeasies obtained thei r alcoholic drinks from
crim inals called "boodeggers." Boork-ggers
worked together III gangs o r " mobs." T he bestknown
mob was one in Chicago led by the
gan gster ..Scarface.. Al Ca pone.
Bootlegging was a dangerous business. COTllpet
ition between rival mobs sometimes caused
bloody stree t wars. fough t out with armored cars
and machin e guns. T he wi nners of the gangster
wars became rich and powerful. TIl ey used their
wealth to bri be poli ce and other publi c officials to
do nothing about their law-breaking. AI Capo ne
became the real rul er of C hicao . He had a private
army of nearly a thousand thugs equipped with
mac hine guns. His income was over 100 mill ion
do llars a year.
By rhc end of the 1920s most Americans rega rded
prohibition as half scandal. half joke. The dis-
hon est y and corruption which grew with it made
them lose their respect bo th for the law and for the
people who were supposed to enfo rce it. Prohibition
was finally given up III 1933. But it had
don e the United States lasting harm. It made lawbreak
ing a habit for many otherwise res pectable
Americans. And gan gsters remained power ful .
Many used the mOlley they had made as bootlegge
TS to set up other criminal businesses.
Prohibition in the United States (sometimes referred to as the Noble Experiment) was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It was repealed on December 5, 1933.
The Senate proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and effected on January 17, 1920.
On November 18, 1918, before the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, the United States Congress passed the temporary Wartime Prohibition Act, which banned the sale of alcoholic beverages having an alcohol content of greater than 2.75%. (This act, which was intended to save grain for the war effort, was passed after the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.) The Wartime Prohibition Act took effect June 30, 1919, and July 1, 1919 became widely known as the "Thirsty-First".
Congress passed the Volstead Act, the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919, and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor, as well as penalties for producing it. Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government did little to enforce it. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.
While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of liquor consumed, it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread criminal activity. The bulk of America became disenchanted after the St. Valentine's Day massacre in 1929. Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities.
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. However, United States federal law still prohibits the manufacture of distilled spirits without meeting numerous licensing requirements that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal beverage use.