Key Terms You Must Know

📖 Key Terms You Must Know

Overproduction

When factories produce more goods than consumers can actually afford to buy. This was one of the hidden weaknesses of the 1920s boom. Wages for ordinary workers did not keep pace with factory output. By the late 1920s, unsold goods were piling up in warehouses. Overproduction was a key structural cause of the Depression — not just a result of the Crash.

Sharecropping

A system of farming in which tenants farmed land owned by someone else and gave a share of the harvest as "rent." Common in the American South, where it kept millions of Black Americans trapped in poverty. Sharecroppers were often in permanent debt to landowners — unable to leave because they owed more than they could earn. This was structural economic slavery dressed up as a market arrangement.

Poverty line

The minimum income considered necessary for a decent standard of living. In 1920s America, this was $2,000 per year. 60% of American families earned less than this — meaning the majority of Americans were poor, even at the height of the boom. This exposes the "Roaring Twenties" as a story about a wealthy minority, not the whole country.

The Great Migration

The mass movement of Black Americans from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North (especially Chicago, Detroit, New York) in the early 20th century. Driven by racial violence in the South and hope of better-paid factory jobs in the North. But Northern cities were not free of racism — Black workers still faced discrimination, lower wages, and segregated housing.

Structural unemployment

Job losses caused by permanent changes in the economy — industries becoming obsolete due to new technology or shifting demand. Workers in coal mining, textiles, and leather goods faced structural unemployment in the 1920s. Unlike cyclical unemployment (caused by a temporary downturn), structural unemployment cannot be solved simply by economic recovery — those jobs are gone forever.