What Do Historians Think?
Part of Wealth and Inequality — GCSE History
This interpretations covers What Do Historians Think? within Wealth and Inequality for GCSE History. Revise Wealth and Inequality in America 1920-1973 for GCSE History with 10 exam-style questions and 12 flashcards. This topic appears regularly enough that it should still be part of a steady revision cycle. It is section 8 of 14 in this topic. Use this interpretations to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Topic position
Section 8 of 14
Practice
10 questions
Recall
12 flashcards
🔎 What Do Historians Think?
Interpretation 1: Howard Zinn argues that the 1920s boom was always a story about the few, not the many. Republican laissez-faire policies deliberately channelled wealth upward — tax cuts for the rich, no minimum wage, no unemployment protection. The poverty of farmers, Black Americans, and industrial workers was not an accident but the intended consequence of policies designed to serve business interests.
Interpretation 2: Frederick Lewis Allen, in Only Yesterday (1931), presents the decade as one of genuine rising prosperity and expanding opportunity. Allen emphasises that real wages rose for many workers, that consumer goods became more accessible, and that the standard of living improved for a significant portion of the population — even if not all.
Why do they disagree? Zinn writes from a radical left perspective, deliberately centring the experiences of those excluded from the mainstream narrative. Allen, as a contemporary journalist from the middle class, experienced and reported on the prosperity he could see around him, inevitably underweighting the experiences of those he did not encounter.