America enjoyed an ______ in the 1920s.

America enjoyed a great economic boom during the 1920s. This was fueled by rapid highway construction, automobile manufacturing, and the new electrical appliances coming on the market such as radios, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and the like. Not every one enjoyed the prosperity. There was technical unemployment, and the farmers suffered from overproduction and excessive debt. Nevertheless, the stock market climbed to a dizzy height for investors who believed that there would be no tomorrow.
   A great crash of the stock market occurred in 1929. This was only one element in a national and international economic depression of massive proportions. Exports fell, manufacturing declined, agricultural surpluses mounted, and unemployment spiraled upward. The depression alarmed the national government but President Herbert Hoover opposed subsidizing the unemployed.
   Change came with the election in 1932 of President D. Roosevelt and his program called the New Deal. There was immediate government intervention into the economy to aid business and put men to work.  American reactionaries felt that Mr. Roosevelt was instituting communism, his friends replied that he was rejuvenating capitalism. Prosperity didn’t return to America until the nation began to rearm for the coming war. Thus the New Deal didn’t end the depression but it ameliorated the hardships for many and it ended the national government’s attitude that it could not concern itself with the well-being of the common man.