America was initially an isolationist country and did not really want to enter the war as they believed it to be a purely European affair, but after the sinking of the Lucitania and the German pledge to sink any ship bound for the states president Wilson felt he had no choice but to enter the War on the side of the allies. After the war the dynamic of America had changed significantly due to a variety of reasons.
Firstly the period after the war was known as the BOOM and in that time America established itself as one of the economic greats, throughout the war it had been trading massively with the allies and had exported massive commodities of arms even up to $4 million a day and the value of American trade had risen from $2 billion to $10 million by the end of the year, this set up America for the BOOM TIME!
The War set up America to be the world’s biggest contributor and had the highest GNP in the world and having the highest GNP would indicate that because of the war that this was beneficial to the economy and a higher living standard would indicate that society benefited from the BOOM.
During the 20s employment dropped and wages rose which is another factor to indicate that the war benefited society socially as well because people now had a bit more income to buy luxury goods like cars and showers. America expanded massively after the war post war more people were living in cities (and suburbs) than in the countryside, citys such as Meridian, Chicago, New York, Detroit, New Orleans and Boston. In the census of 1883 Chicago had a population of 350, in the 1920s it was over 2 million, but some argue that this had a negative impact on American society. WASPS (white anglo-saxon people) where living in the ice parts of the cites and blacks people were forced into the slum like grubby areas that would now be called the hoods, in New York Harlem is the famous example; the whites left the inner cities and moved to the ‘berbs’ where their children could grow up in a secluded secular society, this created a greater racial tension between white and black people which wasn’t really beneficial to society, however the expansion of cites could be argued in being beneficial to the economy.
(Consumer goods) Consumer good became readily available where they hadn’t been before from basic appliances today like flushing toilets and electric lighting at the time these were commodities only used in public places, now they were in homes all across America, but they were mostly with the WASPS in the suberbs but non the less they had a great impact on the economy the higher wages mean that they had some disploable income and the market for consumer goods took off the highest grossing being cars became the must have thing of the