One of the cultural clashes during this period was on prohibition, where there was an effort to ban the consumption of alcohol. A constitutional amendment was passed that banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. This caused a major clash between those who favored the move and those who wanted it repealed. Protestant religious groups and other fundamentalists highly favored the move as they saw alcohol as a contributor to social evil. Given that drinking alcohol was not illegal, enforcing the prohibition became very difficult and this led to the rise smuggling operations. Many people would make their own liquors using the homemade equipment. Criminal empires came to rise because of …show more content…
This struggle reached its peak when Tennessee became the first state to adopt the ban and a high school teacher taken for trial for breaking the ban. Those who supported the state were majorly the fundamentalists and those who lived in the rural, who saw evolution as a teaching that will weaken the faith of the students thereby weakening the moral tone of the nation.
2. The causes and consequences of the Great Depression.
One of the causes of the great depression was the crash in the stock market. The crash in the stock markets greatly reduced American aggregated demand. There was a sharp decline in the consumer purchases of durable goods and even in business investment after the crash which took place in the fall of 1929. The crash made people reduce their spending as they felt poorer. This made them shy away from buying durable goods or even investing in businesses.
Another cause is thought to the banking panics and monetary contraction which first in the fall of 1930. Depositors lost confidence in banks and therefore demanded they be paid their deposits in cash. These panics generally reduced the money supply. Reduction in money supply consequently depressed spending and caused a deflation in the US