How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth study D: The United States, 1919 to 1941 Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Key Question 1 of four

The Key Question is "How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s?" and this file covers it in full: the four focus points Cambridge prints underneath it, the part of the Depth study's specified content that belongs to it, where it is set on the paper, the figures Cambridge is willing to print, and what the mark schemes reward that the syllabus never says.

Read the question before anything else, because its first two words decide how the file is built. "How far" is not "why". The question does not ask you to list what boomed. It contains a claim that the American economy boomed, and it asks you to measure that claim against the parts of the economy that did not boom at all: agriculture, the older industries, and the Americans, black and white, who were poor throughout the decade. A file that catalogued new industries and consumer goods would be answering half a question, and on the 10 mark part a one sided answer is capped at 6 no matter how good it is.

Cambridge tells you this itself. Two of the four focus points are about failure rather than success, and a third asks whether everybody benefited. That is Cambridge saying, in its own printed wording, that the boom and its exclusions are one topic and not two. Everything below is arranged so that each fact arrives attached to the side of the argument it serves.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028, in Depth study D. Ranges are written out in words throughout this file, but the wording is otherwise exactly as set.

Key Question 1

How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s?

Focus points

• On what factors was the economic boom based?
• Why did some industries prosper while others did not?
• Why did agriculture not share in the prosperity?
• Did all Americans benefit from the boom?

Notice the balance of those four. One asks what caused the boom. Three ask about its limits. If you build your revision in the proportions Cambridge printed, three quarters of your material will be about who was left out, and that is the correct proportion.

The specified content, and the part of it that is yours

Cambridge prints one list of specified content for the whole of Depth study D, not one list per Key Question. The list is undivided. Nowhere does the syllabus say which bullet belongs to which Key Question, and you should not expect it to. Here is the whole list as printed:

• The expansion of the US economy during the 1920s:
• government policies
• mass production in industries for cars and other consumer goods
• the fortunes of older industries
• the development of credit and hire purchase
• the decline of agriculture
• Weaknesses in the economy by the late 1920s
• Society in the 1920s:
• the 'Roaring Twenties'
• film and other media
• Prohibition and gangsterism
• restrictions on immigration, the 'Red Scare', religious intolerance
• discrimination against Black Americans
• the Ku Klux Klan
• the changing roles of women
• The Wall Street Crash and its financial, economic and social effects
• The reaction of President Hoover to the Crash
• The presidential election of 1932; Hoover's and Roosevelt's programmes
• Roosevelt's inauguration and the 'Hundred Days'
• The New Deal legislation, the 'alphabet agencies' and their work, and the economic and social changes they caused
• Opposition to the New Deal:
• the Republicans
• the rich
• business interests
• the Supreme Court
• radical critics like Huey Long
• The strengths and weaknesses of the New Deal programme in dealing with unemployment and the Depression

Yours is the first bullet in full, all five of its sub-bullets. Government policies, mass production for cars and consumer goods, the fortunes of older industries, credit and hire purchase, and the decline of agriculture map onto your four focus points almost one for one.

The second bullet, "Weaknesses in the economy by the late 1920s", is shared. It is the hinge between this Key Question and Key Question 3, and Cambridge has examined it from both ends. Section 8 explains how to hold it without straying into the Crash.

Everything from "Society in the 1920s" downward belongs to other Key Questions. Section 11 names the files.

2. Where this Key Question is set

The marking is a separate page and this file does not repeat it

How Cambridge marks the three parts, what separates Level 2 from Level 4, the two rules that changed for the 2024 series, and the faults examiners name on every paper regardless of topic are all set out in How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1. Read it once before you use this file. Nothing on it is restated here, and the technique sections below assume you have it.

Question 15, and a pattern stronger than the general rule

Section B begins at Question 9 and gives each Depth study two consecutive questions in syllabus order, so Depth study D is Question 15 and Question 16. That was confirmed against the printed Section B heading in all 48 Paper 1 question papers from 2018 to 2024.

The general rule is that Cambridge does not tie a Key Question to a slot within a Depth study. In Depth study D that rule is technically true and practically misleading, and the counting says so plainly.

Twenty two of the 48 papers built the entire three part question out of this Key Question, and every one of them put it at Question 15. Not one paper in seven years put it at Question 16. The reason is visible once you read the Question 16 stems: Question 16 is where the Crash, the Depression, the 1932 election and the New Deal live, on 47 of the 48 papers. Depth study D splits by decade, with the 1920s at Question 15 and the 1930s at Question 16.

Do not turn that into a guarantee. Three papers break it. June 2018 version 1 and June 2024 version 3 both put Crash material at Question 15, and November 2022 version 1 put 1920s society at Question 16. And parts of a question move even when whole questions do not: November 2020 version 1 set "Describe the weaknesses in the US economy in the 1920s" as Question 16 part (a), which is your content sitting in the other slot.

The other 26 papers. Where Question 15 was not this Key Question it was almost always Key Question 2, US society in the 1920s. The two share the slot roughly evenly, 22 papers to 23, with three going elsewhere. So if you have revised only this Key Question you have slightly under a one in two chance at Question 15, and you should know Key Question 2 as your fallback rather than Key Question 4.

Paper 4 sets it more often than Paper 1 does

If your school enters you for Paper 4, the Alternative to Coursework, this Depth study is examined there too, at Question 7 and Question 8, on every Paper 4 read from 2018 to 2024. Question 7 is built out of this Key Question on roughly half the papers, which is a higher rate than Paper 1 manages, and the phrasing is blunt about it: "How important was the availability of credit as a cause of economic growth in the USA in the 1920s?", "How important were new methods of production in causing the economic boom in the 1920s?", "How important were tariffs as a reason why farmers did not share in the prosperity of the 1920s?"

Paper 4 changed format for 2024, and the 2024 papers show the same content in the new shape: "Write an account of Republican economic policies in the 1920s", then "Discuss the importance of assembly-line production techniques in the USA in the 1920s".

Paper 2 never examines a Depth study. Its prescribed topic always comes from Core Content, so nothing in this file will be tested on a source paper.

Examiner reports do cover this question

There is a general warning that the later Section B questions attract "too few responses for meaningful comments to be made". For this Key Question that warning is largely wrong. Question 15 in Depth study D drew substantive examiner commentary in the great majority of the reports read, while the silence begins reliably at Question 16. Four series put Question 15 inside the "too few" list, so it is not universal, but this is one of the better documented questions in Section B and section 10 is built from that commentary.

3. The shape of the argument

Before the content, the frame. Every 10 mark question on this Key Question is a version of one of four arguments, and all four are two sided by construction.

Real question titles from the papers, so you can see the arguments are not invented:

• "'The American economy boomed in the 1920s because of government policies.' How far do you agree with this statement?"
• "'American industry boomed in the 1920s.' How far do you agree with this statement?"
• "'All sectors of the US economy were included in the prosperity of the 1920s.' How far do you agree with this statement?"
• "'Americans benefited from the boom.' How far do you agree with this statement?"
• "Which suffered more in the 1920s: farming or traditional industries?"
• "'Technical advances were more important than tariff policies in bringing about the boom in the 1920s.' How far do you agree with this statement?"

Each of the next four sections is one focus point, written as a ready made 10 mark title with both sides supplied.

4. On what factors was the economic boom based?

As a 10 mark title: 'The American economy boomed in the 1920s because of government policies.' How far do you agree with this statement?

This is the commonest single argument on the Key Question. Cambridge has set it, or a near variant of it, more often than any other, and the mark scheme structure is always the same: government policy on one side, everything else on the other.

Government policies, which is the side the question usually names

Cambridge's mark schemes credit four Republican policies, and they credit them as a category rather than as the work of any named president.

• Tariffs. High import duties made foreign goods expensive, protected American producers from foreign competition and encouraged Americans to buy American. The one tariff Cambridge names is the Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922, which appears in four separate mark schemes on this Key Question.
• Low taxation. Cutting income tax left individuals with money to spend on American goods and left companies with money to invest.
• Laissez-faire. Cambridge uses the term itself, in seven separate mark schemes: little government regulation, businesses left free to expand as they wanted.
• Tolerating trusts. The mark schemes credit "The Republican governments allowed large trusts like Rockefeller to have a lot of power and control."

1. tariffs make imported goods expensive
2. Americans buy American instead
3. domestic producers face no foreign competition
4. they expand and take on workers
5. those workers have wages to spend on American goods

Everything else, which is the side that wins marks

The mark schemes are notably willing to argue against the government. One printed Level 5 example runs: "Although Republican government policies did help industry by giving them freedom, they were not the most important factor. Government policies would not have been much use without the vast natural resources that the US had. These resources such as coal, timber, iron and copper were crucial in industries like the steel and glass industries."

The credited alternatives:

• Mass production and the assembly line. Cambridge credits "The assembly line brought the work to the worker" and explains the mechanism: a worker focused on one task rather than the whole job, which sped production and cut the price.
• The motor car, which is the engine of the whole argument. More on this below.
• Credit and hire purchase. People who could not buy outright paid in instalments, so more goods were sold, which stimulated the economy.
• Advertising and mail order. Cambridge credits advertisers who "had learned their skills in wartime propaganda", posters, radio adverts and travelling salesmen, and mail order that "opened up rural areas" so that isolated buyers could reach the market.
• New industries and new materials. The chemical industry making rayon, plastics such as Bakelite, and the electricity industry bringing power to homes for the first time, which is what made fridges, washing machines and vacuum cleaners worth owning.
• Raw materials. Coal, timber, iron and copper, as in the Level 5 example above.
• The First World War. Cambridge credits this one carefully. The mark scheme wording is that the United States lent money to the allies and sold arms and foodstuffs to Britain and France, so "American industry and agriculture was given a real boost which continued into the 1920s, creating employment". The examiner report for March 2018 warns that weaker answers wrote about how the war benefited America without connecting it to the economy of the 1920s. The link is the whole point.

The car, and why it is worth a paragraph of its own

Cambridge treats the motor car as the case study that makes the entire boom intelligible, and the June 2022 examiner report printed a model paragraph almost verbatim: many people could afford a car and millions were sold, which created demand for rubber and glass, which meant roads, garages and restaurants had to be built, so that many parts of the economy were stimulated and new jobs created.

1. mass production cuts the price of the car
2. far more Americans can afford one
3. the car industry buys more steel, glass, rubber and leather
4. those supplying industries hire more workers
5. roads, garages, restaurants and holiday resorts are built to serve the cars
6. the newly employed have wages to spend on consumer goods
7. demand rises and the cycle turns again

Learn that chain as a chain. It is the single most transferable thing on this Key Question: it answers "what caused the boom", it explains why the older industries were left behind, and reversed it becomes the mechanism of the collapse in Key Question 3.

5. Why did some industries prosper while others did not?

As a 10 mark title: 'Traditional industries did not benefit from the boom.' How far do you agree with this statement?

Cambridge sets this argument constantly and the June 2021 examiner report is blunt about how it goes wrong: candidates know the industries that boomed far better than the industries that did not, so the answers come back one sided and capped at 6.

The industries that prospered

Cars, steel, glass, rubber, construction, chemicals, electrical goods and the consumer industries generally. The mark schemes name washing machines, radios, vacuum cleaners and refrigerators. Construction firms did well because more cars meant more roads, suburbs and holiday resorts.

The industries that did not

Cambridge names four repeatedly: coal, cotton, wool and textiles, with tin, copper, leather and shoe making appearing as well. Two mechanisms explain nearly all of it, and Cambridge supplies both.

Coal was replaced. Electricity, gas and oil took over as sources of energy. The mark scheme adds the sharper point that even where coal was still burned to generate electricity, more efficient technology meant producers "did not use a lot of coal to produce a lot of energy". So mines closed, miners lost their jobs, and where mines stayed open miners faced wage cuts.

1. homes and factories switch to electricity, gas and oil
2. demand for coal falls
3. new generating technology needs less coal for the same power
4. mines close or cut wages
5. miners' standard of living falls even though the country is booming

Textiles were undercut and then out of fashion. New synthetic fabrics, above all rayon, were cheaper to produce than cotton and wool. On top of that the June 2023 examiner report records the explanation that examiners rewarded most often: the new fashions of the decade used shorter skirts and dresses, which needed less material, so sales fell despite a rising population and rising spending.

That second mechanism is the one worth carrying, because it is the paradox in miniature. The same "Roaring Twenties" that made the boom visible was actively shrinking one of the country's oldest industries.

The third reason, which candidates miss. The June 2023 examiner report also credits the point that some older industries simply could not adapt to the new methods of production, such as the assembly line. That is a reason of a different kind from being replaced or undercut, and a third explanation on this side is worth a mark.

The fault to avoid. The June 2021 examiner report names it exactly: "Less successful responses only provided generalised answers with no mention of specific industries." Naming coal or cotton and saying what happened to it is the difference between Level 2 and Level 3 here.

6. Why did agriculture not share in the prosperity?

As a 10 mark title: 'American agriculture was in trouble during the 1920s because of over-production.' How far do you agree with this statement?

Cambridge sets this as a two sided question more often than as an open one, and it almost always names overproduction as the claim to be tested. That matters, because it means the marks are on the other side.

The overproduction case

The chain Cambridge prints is unusually complete:

1. during the war US farmers expanded their growing area to supply Europe
2. the war ends and Europe grows its own food again
3. improved machinery, especially the combine harvester, and improved fertilisers make American farming more efficient still
4. surpluses of wheat pile up that nobody wants
5. prices collapse
6. farmers cannot pay rents or mortgages
7. tenant farmers are evicted and owners sell to clear debts
8. farm labourers lose their jobs when the farms change hands

The mark scheme's own summary is that "by 1920 it was producing surpluses of wheat which nobody wanted and prices fell", and that agriculture was already in a bad state at the start of the decade. That last point is worth holding: the farming crisis did not begin when the boom ended. It ran underneath the boom for its whole length.

The other side, which is where the marks are

Cambridge credits at least five alternatives to overproduction, and a top answer needs the ones that are not just overproduction under another name.

• Foreign competition. Canada above all, and Cambridge repeatedly pairs it with Argentina. Canadian wheat was cheap, Canadian farmers were highly efficient, and Canada supplied world markets.
• Tariffs, working in reverse. This is the best single point available and it links two focus points. American tariffs provoked retaliation, so European countries had a reason not to buy American produce. The tariff policy that protected industry actively harmed farming.
• Changing diet. Cambridge credits a change in the kind of food Americans were buying.
• Prohibition. The June 2021 examiner report credits candidates who explained that Prohibition drove down demand for the barley and grain that went into alcohol. This is the one legitimate place where Prohibition earns marks on an economic question.
• Pests and monoculture. The boll weevil, which Cambridge spells both "boll weevil" and "boll-weevil", destroyed cotton crops in the South, where the mark scheme notes "there was too much reliance on one crop, which made the farmer vulnerable".

1. American tariffs make imported goods expensive
2. foreign governments retaliate with tariffs of their own
3. European buyers have a reason to prefer Canadian grain over American
4. the American surplus cannot be exported
5. prices fall further at home
6. the policy that protected the car industry helped ruin the wheat farmer

Two faults the reports name on this exact question

The Dust Bowl is not yours. The June 2021 examiner report records that answers referencing the Dust Bowl were "outside the timeframe covered by the question". The Dust Bowl belongs to the 1930s and to Key Question 3. Writing it here earns nothing.

Do not describe the results instead of the causes. The June 2023 examiner report names this precisely: weaker answers "described the results of the troubles, rather than the causation". Eviction and bankruptcy are what happened, not why.

One thing farmers did well, and it is the balancing point. The June 2022 examiner report credits answers that added the contrasting view: very large mechanised farms in the Mid-West could produce wheat cheaply and did prosper, and fruit growers in Florida and California benefited because more Americans turned to eating fruit. If your question is "Farmers benefited from the economic boom of the 1920s", that is your other side, and without it you are capped at 6.

7. Did all Americans benefit from the boom?

As a 10 mark title: 'Americans benefited from the boom.' How far do you agree with this statement?

This is the focus point that makes the Key Question a "how far" question rather than a "why" question, and it is the one Cambridge tells you about most directly.

Who did

The mark schemes credit: many Americans could afford new domestic electrical goods; millions owned motor cars; millions owned radios and went to the cinema; hire purchase let people buy what they could not afford outright; living standards improved and jobs were created. Cambridge also credits the point that many women got paid work for the first time, that labour saving devices freed their time, and that some learned to drive and bought cars.

Who did not

Cambridge prints a long list and credits every item on it. Learn four of them properly rather than all of them thinly.

• Farmers, farm labourers and sharecroppers. Sharecroppers are defined in the mark schemes as tenants who farmed small plots they did not own and paid the landowner a share of the crop, growing cotton, tobacco and rice, mostly in the South. When farms failed, sharecroppers had no cushion at all.
• Black Americans. The mark schemes credit that black American labourers in the South lost their jobs, that black Americans found it difficult to get work, and that they suffered discrimination. Cambridge also notes that unemployment through the decade fell disproportionately on black Americans and on Hispanic people. Keep this economic. The Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow belong to Key Question 2.
• Native Americans. Credited as living in poverty on reservations and suffering from poor education and ill health.
• Recent immigrants and the low paid in the older industries. Immigrants could only find jobs with low wages. Workers in coal, leather, cotton and wool were among the lowest paid factory workers in the country.

The strongest paragraph available to you is the one Cambridge prints as a Level 3 exemplar on women and the boom, because it holds both sides at once: female textile operatives in the cotton mills were paid as little as $9 a week when the minimum required for a basic standard of living was $48, and women in rural areas were unlikely to have the new household appliances at all. The same decade that gave one woman a vacuum cleaner paid another less than a fifth of a living wage to make the cloth.

1. the boom is concentrated in new industries in the cities
2. the older industries and farming are outside it
3. the people in those industries are disproportionately black, immigrant or rural
4. so the geography of the boom and the geography of American poverty are the same map

The unemployment point, which is the one candidates never have

Cambridge prints it once, in a November 2021 mark scheme: "About 5% remained unemployed throughout the 1920s." The word doing the work is "throughout". At the height of the greatest expansion in the country's history, roughly one worker in twenty never found a job. If you can produce that figure inside an explanation it is exactly the specific contextual knowledge the mark scheme is looking for.

8. Weaknesses in the economy, and where this file stops

The syllabus bullet "Weaknesses in the economy by the late 1920s" sits between this Key Question and Key Question 3, and Cambridge examines it from both sides. Question 15 has asked "Why did the US economy have underlying weaknesses in the 1920s?" and Question 16 has asked "Describe the weaknesses in the US economy in the 1920s". You need the weaknesses. What you do not need here is the Crash.

The weaknesses Cambridge credits, all of which are already in this file as the cost of the boom:

• Saturation. The mark schemes put it twice: "When demand was saturated, production began to fall in the consumer industries", and "When the American home market became saturated with consumer goods, it became difficult to sell abroad because of counter-tariffs." Once everyone who could afford a fridge had bought a fridge, the demand that had driven the boom simply ran out.
• No export escape. The tariff policy had provoked retaliation, so the surplus could not be sold abroad.
• Agriculture in permanent depression, which had never joined the boom at all.
• The older industries in decline, shedding wage earners the whole time.
• The gap between rich and poor, which Paper 4 has examined directly as a cause of the Crash.
• Inefficiency behind the tariff wall. The mark schemes credit "The lack of foreign competition eventually made parts of American industry inefficient."

The line to hold. This file takes you to the point where the boom's own mechanisms had exhausted themselves. It does not cross into buying on the margin, speculation, Black Thursday, the bank collapses, the Depression, Hoover's response or the 1932 election. Those are Key Question 3. If a question names the Wall Street Crash you are in that file, not this one, even when the answer runs partly through the weaknesses above.

9. The figures Cambridge actually prints

Production figures, car output and unemployment rates are exactly where an invented number looks plausible. Everything below is quoted or closely paraphrased from a Cambridge mark scheme on this Key Question, and nothing else about the American economy should be given as a number in your answer.

Two places Cambridge says it two ways

Ford and the colour black. A March 2020 mark scheme credits "Ford cars were black but from 1925 they could be different colours." A November 2023 mark scheme credits "Ford kept prices down by painting all the cars black." Both are creditworthy answers in Cambridge's own documents, and they cannot both be the whole truth about the same decade. Do not try to reconcile them, and do not build an argument on either. If you want the colour point at all, use it as the March 2020 version puts it, with the 1925 change, because that version contains the other. Better still, use the price and the ten seconds instead, which no mark scheme contradicts.

Six million, of what. One mark scheme says "Six million rural Americans were forced off the land in the 1920s"; another, in the same series, says "Some six million workers in agriculture were forced off the land in the 1920s." Rural Americans and agricultural workers are not the same population. Write whichever you like, but do not present the figure as precise.

Presidents Cambridge does not name

Across every Depth study D Paper 1 mark scheme from 2018 to 2024, Coolidge is never named, Mellon is never named, and Harding appears once. Cambridge credits "Republican governments" and "Republican policies" as a category. Naming the presidents is not wrong, but it earns nothing that "Republican governments introduced high tariffs and cut income tax" does not, and it is not where the mark is. The mark is in the mechanism.

10. What the mark schemes and reports reward, and refuse

These come from examiner commentary on Question 15 across the series, and unlike the general faults on the marking page they are specific to this Key Question.

• Describing a car factory instead of explaining the boom. The June 2023 report notes that some candidates "spent a long time on describing how the production line worked". How the line worked is not why the economy grew. Get to the price fall and the wider demand.
• Undeveloped points stacked in one paragraph. The same report names this shape exactly: "'They were cheap to produce' or 'They provided lots of jobs', without mentioning why or how. Often these undeveloped points were all put together in one paragraph."
• Writing about the bust when asked about the boom. The June 2019 report records that "Some responses focused on the 'bust' rather than the boom" when asked why the boom failed to benefit all Americans. The Crash is not an answer to a question about the 1920s.
• Importing Prohibition and the flappers. The June 2019 report is explicit: "Some responses gave very detailed descriptions of prohibition and the flappers; this was not relevant to the question." The single exception is Prohibition's effect on demand for grain, in section 6.
• Answering about farming when asked about industry. The June 2023 report notes weaker responses on the decline of manufacturing "focusing on other sectors such as farming, which lacked relevance".
• Generalising about "traditional industries" without naming one. Named in the June 2021 report, and it is the commonest way to lose the explanation mark on focus point 2.
• Straying outside the decade. The Dust Bowl in the 1920s, or the Depression's effects, in the June 2021 and June 2023 reports.
• Narrative instead of causation. The June 2019 report: "Less effective responses gave a very detailed narrative, rather than explaining how a given factor was a reason for the American economy booming."

What examiners praise is consistent and easy to copy: a named thing, the mechanism it worked through, and the consequence, with one figure sitting inside the explanation rather than beside it.

Judgement sentences that reach Level 5 on this Key Question

Each of these takes a position and attaches a reason, which is what the top band asks for.

• "The boom was real but partial, because the industries it created were new ones, and it never reached the industries and the regions that were already there."
• "Government policy mattered less as a cause than as a filter, because it decided which parts of the economy the boom reached and which it passed over."
• "Overproduction was the mechanism, but tariffs were the reason it could not be relieved, because a surplus is only fatal when it cannot be sold abroad."
• "Farmers suffered more than the older industries, because a mine that closes leaves a worker looking for a job while a farm that fails leaves a family without a home."
• "The boom did not fail some Americans by accident, because the same tariffs that protected the car industry closed the export markets that farming depended on."

11. What belongs to the other files

The Depth study's undivided specified content makes the boundaries easy to cross by mistake. These are the four that matter.

Key Question 2, "How far did US society change in the 1920s?" owns the 'Roaring Twenties', film and other media, Prohibition and gangsterism, restrictions on immigration, the 'Red Scare', religious intolerance, discrimination against Black Americans, the Ku Klux Klan and the changing roles of women. The overlap with this file is real and it runs in both directions: the boom paid for the cinema tickets and the cars, and the fashions of the decade helped ruin the cotton industry. The test is what the question asks you to measure. If it is money, jobs, prices or output, it is this file. If it is attitudes, freedom, entertainment or intolerance, it is Key Question 2. Discrimination against black Americans appears in both, economically here and socially there.

Key Question 3, "What were the causes and consequences of the Wall Street Crash?" owns speculation, buying on the margin, the Crash itself, its financial, economic and social effects, Hoover's reaction and the 1932 election. Section 8 marks exactly where this file stops. The boom's weaknesses feed the Crash, which is precisely why the two files must not be merged: on a Key Question 3 question the weaknesses are your evidence, and on a Key Question 1 question the Crash is off the point.

Key Question 4, "How successful was the New Deal?" owns everything from Roosevelt's inauguration onward.

Core Content Option A includes the nineteenth century United States, in the Key Question on the American Civil War. That is a different period, a different section of the paper and a different set of questions. Nothing in it touches this file.

12. Quick revision

• The Key Question is "How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s?" Three of the four focus points are about the boom's limits, so most of your material should be too.
• Depth study D is Question 15 and Question 16. This Key Question was the whole of Question 15 on 22 of 48 papers and of Question 16 on none. Key Question 2 takes the other half of Question 15.
• On Paper 4 the Depth study is Question 7 and Question 8, and Question 7 is built from this Key Question about half the time.
• Four causes of the boom besides government: mass production, the car and its supplying industries, credit and hire purchase, advertising and mail order. Add raw materials and the First World War for a fifth and sixth.
• Government policy is four things: tariffs, low taxation, laissez-faire, tolerating trusts. The named tariff is Fordney-McCumber, 1922.
• The car chain: cheaper cars, more buyers, more steel, glass and rubber, more roads and garages, more wages, more demand.
• Older industries failed for two reasons: coal was replaced by electricity, gas and oil; cotton and wool were undercut by rayon and by fashions using less cloth.
• Farming failed for more than overproduction: Canadian and Argentine competition, retaliatory tariffs, changing diet, Prohibition, the boll weevil.
• Who was left out: farmers, sharecroppers, black Americans, Native Americans, recent immigrants, workers in coal and textiles. About 5 per cent were unemployed throughout.
• Weaknesses by the late 1920s: saturation, no export escape, farming in permanent depression, older industries shrinking, the rich and poor gap.
• The file stops before the Crash. Speculation and Black Thursday are Key Question 3.

13. Where these facts come from

Everything above is taken from Cambridge's own documents, and each claim can be checked against a named one.

The Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028. The Key Question, the four focus points and the whole specified content list, all quoted from Depth study D. The syllabus does not divide the specified content between Key Questions; the division in section 1 is this file's reading of it, not Cambridge's, and section 1 says so.

Paper 1 question papers, 2018 to 2024. The Question 15 and Question 16 slot, the counts in section 2, and every question title quoted in section 3. Built by reading the printed Section B heading and the full Depth study D question text in all 48 papers.

Paper 1 mark schemes, 2018 to 2024. Every figure in section 9, every credited cause and mechanism in sections 4 to 8, and the exemplar wording quoted throughout. Where two mark schemes disagree, section 9 names both and neither is preferred.

Paper 4 question papers, 2018 to 2024. The Question 7 and Question 8 slot and the question titles quoted in section 2.

Principal Examiner reports, 2018 to 2023, and March 2024. Section 10 in full, the model car paragraph in section 4, the Mid-West and California balancing point in section 6, and the coverage claim in section 2.

Not from Cambridge, and deliberately absent. No GDP, national income, wage index, share price, car production total beyond the Model T figure Cambridge prints, tariff rate, immigration quota number, or count of farms lost appears anywhere above, because Cambridge prints none of them on this Key Question. Nor are Coolidge, Mellon or Andrew Mellon's tax cuts given dates or figures, for the reason in section 9. None of this is needed for a top answer.

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