How far did US society change in the 1920s?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth Study D Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Depth study D: The United States, 1919 to 1941 Key Question 2 of four

This file covers one thing: how far American society was changed by the 1920s, and how far it was not. Four focus points, four arguments: what the "Roaring Twenties" actually were, how widespread intolerance was, why Prohibition was introduced and then repealed, and how far the roles of women changed.

The two words that matter in the Key Question are how far. Cambridge is not asking you to list changes. It is asking you to weigh a decade in which some Americans lived a life their parents would not have recognised against a decade in which most Americans, and almost everyone outside the cities, lived much as before. A file that only listed jazz, flappers, cars and speakeasies would leave a candidate stranded on one side of a two-sided question, and this Key Question is examined as a two-sided question more often than any other in the Depth Study.

Three warnings before the content.

Both sides of every argument here are creditable. Cambridge's own mark schemes print exemplar answers for the case that women's lives were transformed and for the case that they were not, for the case that American society was tolerant and for the case that it was violently intolerant. Neither is the "right" answer. Section 5 of the marking notes explains why one explanation on each side is worth 7 out of 10 and a one sided answer is capped at 6.

Racial violence is content, not background. The mark schemes reward candidates who name what the Ku Klux Klan did, how it did it and what protected it. They give no credit for vagueness. Section 6 sets it out in Cambridge's own terms, without softening and without adding anything Cambridge does not print.

Almost every fact in this file has a "but" attached. Ten million women in work is a real number and so is the observation that fewer than three in ten households had a washing machine. The marks are in holding both, not in choosing one.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028, on the Depth study D page. Cambridge prints the date range with a dash; it is written out in words throughout these notes.

Key Question 2, as Cambridge prints it

2 How far did US society change in the 1920s?

Focus points, as Cambridge prints them

- What were the ‘Roaring Twenties’?
- How widespread was intolerance in US society?
- Why was Prohibition introduced, and then later repealed?
- How far did the roles of women change during the 1920s?

The specified content is printed once, undivided

This is the part candidates get wrong when they work from a syllabus print-out. Depth study D prints one single list of specified content for the whole Depth Study, covering all four Key Questions together. It is not broken down by Key Question, it carries no headings that map onto the Key Questions, and Cambridge nowhere states which line belongs to which. Here is the whole list, exactly as it is 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

The entries that carry this file are the seven under "Society in the 1920s", and nothing else. Every other line above belongs to Key Question 1, 3 or 4. That alignment is unusually clean, and it is the one place in Depth Study D where the undivided list happens to fall into obvious blocks. Do not assume the same is true of the other three Key Questions, and do not treat "Society in the 1920s" as a Cambridge heading for Key Question 2. It is a heading inside one long list.

What the three layers mean

Cambridge defines them itself. Key questions define the over-arching issues. Focus points identify the issues that enable candidates to gain an understanding of the key question. Specified content provides guidance on what needs to be studied.

So the four focus points are not four topics to memorise. They are four arguments, and each is a ready-made 10 mark question. Read them as questions you must be able to answer both ways:

2. How Paper 1 marks this Key Question

Section B is marked by exactly the same ladders as Section A. There is no separate Depth Study mark scheme, no extra credit for depth, and no source marks anywhere on this paper.

All of it is set out in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes: the three parts and their marks, the assessment objective split, both rules Cambridge changed for the 2024 series, the sentence that splits Level 3 on part (b), and the shapes that separate an identification from an explanation. Read that page once, early. Nothing below repeats it.

The one thing worth carrying into this Key Question specifically: the questions here are overwhelmingly two-sided, so the balance rule bites harder here than almost anywhere else on the paper. Section 10 lists the faults examiners name on this content in particular.

3. Where this Key Question is set on the paper

Cambridge publishes no table of this. What follows was produced by reading the printed question stem of every Question 15 and Question 16 in all 48 Paper 1 mark schemes from 2018 to 2024, and classifying each of the 288 sub-questions by Key Question.

Depth Study D is Questions 15 and 16, without exception

Section B is headed "SECTION B: DEPTH STUDIES" and begins at Question 9. Each Depth Study gets two consecutive questions in syllabus order, and the United States takes Question 15 and Question 16 in all 48 papers read. Every single one of the 288 sub-questions at those two numbers is on United States content. There is no drift and no exception.

That holds across the 2024 restructure. Papers from 2018 to 2023 ran to Question 22, because there were then seven Depth Studies rather than five. The three that were withdrawn (China, South Africa, and the Israelis and Palestinians) sat at Questions 17 to 22, entirely above the United States, so the shortening of the paper moved nothing underneath it. If you are practising on an old paper, Questions 15 and 16 are exactly where they will be on a 2027 paper. That is a rarer piece of luck than it sounds, and it makes Depth Study D the most practisable of the five.

How often this Key Question is set

By my count across the 48 papers:

Two conclusions, and they pull in opposite directions.

It is set on more than half of all papers. If you are entered for Depth Study D, the odds are better than even that one of your two questions is entirely on society, so this is not a Key Question to revise thinly.

It does not dominate the marks. A quarter of the sub-questions is exactly the share four Key Questions would get if Cambridge split them evenly, and that is roughly what Cambridge does. The reason it appears on 26 papers rather than 12 is that Cambridge almost never mixes Key Questions inside one question: when society comes up, it takes all three parts. High paper frequency and an ordinary share of the marks are the same fact seen from two angles. Do not let anyone tell you this Key Question is the safe bet that lets you skip another.

Within this Key Question, the four focus points are not set equally often. My counts of the papers touching each:

Some questions sit in two rows at once, which is why these total more than 26. Prohibition is the single most examined thing in this Key Question, and it is examined from every angle Cambridge can find: why it was introduced, why it failed, why it was repealed, whether it achieved its aims, what its worst consequence was, and how hard it was to enforce.

The one place the pattern breaks

Depth Study D questions are not tied to a slot. In the great majority of papers, society questions land on Question 15 and the New Deal or the Crash on Question 16. In November 2022 variant 1, this is inverted. Question 15 is entirely economic (Republican import policies, the textile industry, the boom and women's lives) and Question 16 is entirely this Key Question: how some Americans broke Prohibition laws, why demand for popular entertainment increased, and whether immigrants suffered most from intolerance.

That single paper is the reason not to walk into the exam having decided you will answer Question 15. Read both stems.

Where else this content is examined

Paper 4, the Alternative to Coursework, examines your Depth Study too. The United States sits at Questions 7 and 8 on every Paper 4 read, and the format changed for 2024: one 40 mark essay became (a) 15 marks, "Write an account of", plus (b) 25 marks, "Discuss the importance of". This Key Question is set there heavily. Titles read on past Paper 4s include the significance of racial intolerance in changing US society, the importance of the Ku Klux Klan, the impact of immigration, the significance of the Scopes Monkey Trial, the importance of jazz music as an aspect of the Roaring Twenties, the importance of the movie industry, the significance of the Red Scare, the reasons Prohibition was introduced, and the reasons it failed by 1933. If you are entered for Paper 4, this Key Question is worth more to you than the Paper 1 counts alone suggest.

Paper 2 never examines a Depth Study. Its prescribed topic is always drawn from Core Content, so the source skills you learn there and this content never meet.

4. Focus point 1: what were the "Roaring Twenties"?

Cambridge's own definition

The mark schemes define the term by what changed and who did the changing. The Level 3 exemplar for "Why were the 1920s known as the 'Roaring Twenties'?" reads that these were years associated with radical change in society and outrageous behaviour from some sections of society: some women broke free from traditions and wore short dresses and short hairstyles, took up smoking and drinking in speakeasies, and spent time in the new nightclubs where jazz quickly became very popular.

Note what that definition already contains. "Some sections of society" is inside Cambridge's own definition of the term. The limitation is not a counter-argument you bolt on at the end. It is part of what the phrase means.

Cambridge's list of creditable identifications includes: the economic boom encouraged a change of lifestyle; jazz became the new popular music; women changed their look and became more independent; traditions such as having a chaperone were abandoned; many people bought cars and travelled for the first time; there was more leisure time for pastimes such as the cinema and music clubs; some drank illegally in speakeasies; and, in Cambridge's own phrasing, some said the 1920s started with a roar and ended with a crash.

The cinema

This is the most heavily documented part of the whole focus point, and the mark schemes print real figures.

• The first "talkie" was released in 1927. Before that every film was silent. Cambridge's exemplar says that in a few years after the first talkie, ticket sales more than doubled.
• By the end of the 1920s, 100 million cinema tickets were sold each week.
• Seats were cheap, often only 10 cents.
• Hollywood developed into a major industry, producing what one mark scheme calls dozens of films a month about sex.
• Stars became national figures: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino in "The Sheik", and Clara Bow, whom Cambridge describes as portrayed as the "It" girl.
• Cinemas were warm and comfortable, people could socialise in them, more people had cars and could drive to them, and people had more leisure time.

The mark schemes also credit the reaction. In the generation before the war, sex had been a taboo subject; the cinema discovered its selling power; there was public concern about the effect of what was being shown. That concern is your bridge from this focus point into the next one.

1. the talkie arrives in 1927
2. cinema stops being a novelty and becomes a national weekly habit at 100 million tickets
3. film stars set how millions of people dress, speak and behave
4. the same country that made them starts campaigning against what they represent

Radio

• America's first radio station, Station KDKA, started in 1920.
• By 1930 nearly half of Americans had a radio in their homes.
• Radios could be purchased in instalments, which is why the credit story in Key Question 1 and the culture story here are physically the same machine.
• Radio introduced listeners to new types of music such as dance bands and jazz. Cambridge names the band led by Joe Candullo.
• It created a national habit of listening to sports events and made sports personalities into national figures.
• The mark schemes note that more women than men were employed in the radio industry.

Jazz and the nightclubs

Cambridge's exemplar explains the Jazz Age as a time when jazz appealed to young white Americans because they thought it was exciting and modern, matched by opportunities to visit jazz clubs as a result of increased leisure time and prosperity. Examiner reports add that jazz had started in the south and spread to gain young white audiences throughout the country.

Cambridge names the Cotton Club of Harlem as the example of the new nightclub, and Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong as the famous musicians. Jazz was linked to dance music, and Cambridge names the dances: the Charleston and the Black Bottom.

There is a hard fact sitting inside this material that the mark schemes do not spell out but that the rest of the specified content makes unavoidable, and a strong candidate does spell it out: the music that defined the decade for young white Americans was made by black musicians in a country where the same young audiences' parents were passing segregation laws. Say it as a link between focus points 1 and 2, not as an aside.

Why this focus point is really about disapproval

The commonest way Cambridge examines the Roaring Twenties is not "what were they" but "why did many Americans disapprove of them". The Level 3 exemplar for that question is worth knowing almost word for word in shape:

The glitz, glamour and fun of the Roaring Twenties were enjoyed only by a very small section of American society, usually young and rich people living in the big cities. In small towns and in the countryside people were not enjoying cocktails, nightclubs and new fashions. They looked at the excesses of the Roaring Twenties and disapproved of what was happening because they could not share in it at all.

Cambridge's Level 2 identifications for the same question: they thought much of it was immoral, such as short skirts and kissing in films; they thought jazz music was corrupting; they disapproved of it all because they could not share in it.

1. the boom pays for cars, radios and cinema tickets in the cities
2. a visible urban youth culture appears that has no rural equivalent
3. rural and small town America sees a country it does not recognise and cannot join
4. the disapproval hardens into Prohibition enforcement, immigration quotas and the Klan

That chain is the single most useful thing in this file. It connects all four focus points, and it is what turns a list of 1920s features into an argument about a divided society.

5. Focus point 2: how widespread was intolerance in US society?

This focus point covers four separate strands, and Cambridge examines them against each other. The commonest question shape is not "describe intolerance" but "which group suffered most", so you need all four and you need to be able to rank them.

The Red Scare

Cambridge's four mark list for "What was the Red Scare?" prints these points:

• Americans were alarmed at the 1917 Russian Revolution.
• Fear of communism.
• Fear that immigrants were bringing radical political ideas such as anarchism with them.
• Fear of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.
• The strikes of 1919 made Americans more fearful, and Cambridge names the general strike in Seattle in 1919 as an event seen as a communist plot.
• The bomb blasts of 1919 made Americans more fearful, including the bomb attack on Attorney-General Palmer, who organised the Palmer Raids after his home was attacked.
• Suspected communists were rounded up and deported.
• The press and some politicians whipped people up so that conspiracies were seen everywhere.

Sacco and Vanzetti

Cambridge treats this case as the Red Scare made concrete, and an examiner report prints a model explanation of it that is worth learning as a shape:

Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian Americans and anarchists. They were arrested on suspicion of armed robbery and murder. The evidence against them was thin but the prosecution in the court case focused on their radical ideas. The judge said that they might not be guilty of the offence but were morally to blame because they were enemies of the United States' institutions. They were found guilty and executed.

Examiner reports add that candidates knew they had witnesses who said they could not have committed the crimes. Another mark scheme names the crime as the killing of two men at a shoe factory.

The examiner comment that matters: an identification of the case earns Level 2, and the conversion to an explanation comes from stating what the case demonstrates, which is that the focus was not on their crime but on their political beliefs. That is the sentence that turns a fact into a mark.

1. a foreign born anarchist is tried on thin evidence
2. the judge states that his beliefs make him morally to blame regardless of the offence
3. the courts are shown to be part of the intolerance rather than a check on it
4. prejudice at the highest level of the judicial system becomes the point of the story

Restrictions on immigration

This is the one part of the whole Key Question where Cambridge prints hard legislative numbers, and it prints them consistently. From the four mark list for "Describe US government policy on immigration in the 1920s":

• There was a quota system.
• The Emergency Quota Act was passed in 1921.
• The number of immigrants was limited to 357 000 per year.
• A quota was set where annual numbers of immigrants were restricted to 3 per cent of the number from the same country living in the US in 1910.
• The number of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe was reduced by 75 per cent.
• In 1924 the National Origins Act was passed.
• It reduced annual immigration to 150 000.
• The quota was reduced to 2 per cent of the 1890 figure.
• Immigrants from China and Japan were barred.
• 85 per cent of immigrants came from northern Europe.

Use those exactly. This is the section of the file where an invented figure would look most plausible and be most wrong, so nothing above has been rounded, adjusted or supplemented.

Understand what the two dates do, because that is where the explanation marks are. Moving the base year from 1910 back to 1890 pushes the reference population back to before the great wave of southern and eastern European immigration. The mechanism of the 1924 Act is the choice of base year, not the percentage. A candidate who explains that has explained the Act. A candidate who states both percentages has identified it.

Cambridge's exemplar for why the restrictions came in gives two reasons and treats them as competing, which is exactly how the 10 mark version of this question is set:

• Fear of communism. The Red Scare made many Americans more afraid of immigrants; the rise of communism in Russia made them worry about these ideas coming to America; they thought immigrants from Eastern Europe were bringing these ideas into the country; the fears were made worse by bomb attacks in America by anarchists.
• Racial supremacy. Americans wanted to maintain the supremacy of white, northern Europeans who were most like the original settlers. The quotas radically reduced numbers from southern and eastern Europe but also entirely barred immigrants of Asian origin.

Cambridge's own Level 5 exemplar comes down on the second: the quota structure barred Asian immigrants completely while leaving northern European immigration possible, which is a pattern that fear of communism cannot explain. That is a judgement you are allowed to reach and it is supported by a mechanism, which is what Level 5 asks for.

Cambridge's other creditable identifications: Americans thought immigrants would take their jobs; extreme political ideas were associated with immigrants; it was felt that immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia would not mix into American society and accept its values; to make sure that white, northern Europeans stayed in a majority and were in charge; there were racist undertones in society; the Klan had a big following.

The Ku Klux Klan

Write this factually and completely. The mark schemes credit accurate methods and consequences and give nothing for vague disapproval.

What it believed, from Cambridge's four mark list:

• White, Protestant supremacy, which Cambridge also renders as WASP.
• A belief that foreigners were overrunning the country.
• To protect the principles and ideals of a pure Americanism.
• A belief that the USA was suffering from moral degeneracy.
• A belief that communism was threatening the country.
• A belief that black Americans were inferior, and that they should not be allowed to vote.
• That white power should be maintained.
• That American values were threatened by Catholics and Jews.

What it was and did, from a second four mark list:

• A white supremacy movement, which claimed to defend American values.
• It terrorised black Americans. Its members beat and lynched black Americans.
• It was against Catholics, Jews and foreigners.
• It had secret codes and elaborate rituals.
• It operated in the southern states.
• It was revived in 1915, partly because of the film "The Birth of a Nation".
• It was a powerful political force in the 1920s, with support among politicians.
• Members of the Klan were often found not guilty in Southern courts.
• The Klan declined after 1925.

That eleventh point is the one that carries the argument. A mark scheme exemplar puts it directly: members lynched black Americans but juries, full of white Americans, let them off. The Klan's violence was not being committed against the law of the southern states so much as alongside it.

1. the Klan murders by lynching in the states where it is strongest
2. those states' juries are drawn from the white population the Klan represents
3. prosecutions fail
4. the violence has no legal consequence, and so it continues as an ordinary feature of southern life rather than an aberration

On numbers, be careful. Cambridge prints a membership figure exactly once in the 48 mark schemes read: a Level 3 exemplar states that the Klan had a membership of five million people, including many important politicians. Every other reference says only "millions of members" or "a big following". If you use five million, that is the figure Cambridge itself prints and you are safe. Do not invent a different one and do not attach a year to it, because Cambridge does not.

On lynching counts, Cambridge contradicts itself, and section 11 sets out the conflict. Do not try to resolve it.

Discrimination against black Americans

Cambridge examines this both as Klan violence and, separately, as law. The two are different arguments and the mark schemes keep them apart.

The Jim Crow laws, from the four mark list:

• They enforced racial segregation in the southern states.
• They enforced segregation in public places and facilities like buses, and there was segregation on public transport.
• They introduced segregation in public schools, and there was segregation in restaurants.
• They gave black Americans inferior facilities.
• They were aimed at maintaining white dominance over black Americans.
• They were racist and they discriminated against black Americans.
• They were first introduced in the nineteenth century.

That last point is the one candidates skip and the one that answers the Key Question. The Jim Crow laws are not a 1920s development. They are the thing the 1920s did not change. In a "how far did society change" question, a law that predates the decade and survives it intact is your strongest single piece of continuity evidence.

Cambridge's further creditable points, drawn from the 10 mark schemes on discrimination:

• Most black Americans could not vote.
• Black Americans could not serve on juries.
• Black Americans were denied good education and jobs.
• Black Americans in the South had the worst jobs, such as sharecropping.
• Many car factories operated an all white policy, which places the exclusion inside the flagship industry of the boom.
• Many black Americans left the south and moved to cities in the north, where Cambridge names Harlem as an example of the poor urban areas they were confined to, and records discrimination in housing and low wages there.
• Segregation in schools, parks and hospitals, with the facilities usually inferior to white ones.

The northern migration is where the two halves of the Key Question meet. Cambridge's exemplar for the rural and urban comparison makes the point directly: black Americans faced discrimination in rural and urban areas; persecution in southern rural areas was worse with the Klan operating, but in northern cities they suffered from low wages and discrimination in housing. Moving north changed the form of the discrimination, not its existence.

Religious intolerance and the Monkey Trial

Cambridge names John Scopes, put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution, and treats the case as evidence of a divide rather than as a legal event. The exemplar:

This was a disagreement over Darwin's theory of evolution. A teacher broke the law by teaching the theory and was put on trial. It was important because it showed the difference in beliefs and way of life between those living in towns and those living in rural areas. People in the country tended to be very religious and believed what the bible said literally. Some people in the cities believed in the theory of evolution and thought that the rural dwellers were backward.

Cambridge's other creditable points: it demonstrated the great gap between the beliefs of town and country dwellers; it was damaging to Fundamentalists; it damaged the cause against evolution; it was over how much the bible should be believed literally.

Religious intolerance also has a violent form in the mark schemes, and Cambridge prints it plainly: the Klan took violent action against Catholics, and attacked Jews.

The other side: the case that society was becoming more open

Cambridge prints an exemplar for this side too, and a one sided answer on intolerance is capped at Level 3. The exemplar reads that in some ways the United States was more tolerant in the 1920s: life changed for many women; contraception reduced the size of families; labour saving devices allowed more women to work, making them financially independent; for some women the traditional restrictive role changed; women wore more modern clothes, smoked in public and went out with men without a chaperone.

Cambridge's other creditable points on this side: women had greater freedom; more women worked and gained financial independence; new tastes in entertainment were growing.

Notice how narrow that is. Every item Cambridge credits on the tolerance side of an intolerance question is about women. It offers no equivalent for immigrants or for black Americans, because there is none. That is itself the judgement Level 5 is asking for: the society became markedly more permissive about how young white women behaved and no more tolerant at all about who was allowed to be American. Both halves are true at once, and a candidate who says so has answered "how far".

6. Focus point 3: why was Prohibition introduced, and then later repealed?

This is the most examined content in the Key Question, and the focus point is deliberately two-part. Cambridge sets the introduction and the repeal as separate questions and it sets them against each other.

What Prohibition was

From Cambridge's four mark list:

• The making of alcohol was banned.
• The sale of alcohol was banned.
• The transporting of alcohol was banned.
• It lasted from 1920 to 1933.
• It led to illegal selling of alcohol, to crime and gangsterism, to corruption among the police and officials, and to speakeasies.

Why it was introduced

Cambridge sets this as a 10 mark question with two competing families of reason.

The social and moral case. Many people thought that drinking alcohol was damaging families: men were spending too much money on drink, so there was not enough money to feed their families; families were being neglected and living in poverty; there was concern about the violent treatment of women and children if a man had been drinking. Cambridge names the pressure groups: the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Temperance Union. Religious groups believed alcohol was a threat to moral standards. It was believed that drinking led to ill health and crime, and that alcohol stopped workers working hard and efficiently.

The wartime and patriotic case. Cambridge's alternative exemplar: many of the brewers were German; the United States had just fought a war against Germany and anything German was unpopular; it was claimed that alcohol was linked to German aggression and that it was anti-American to drink; Prohibition became patriotic for many Americans. Cambridge adds that there were concerns about shortages in wartime, and that some thought the grain used for beer would be better used to make bread.

And one that sits under both: politicians thought supporting it would win them votes.

1. temperance groups spend decades arguing that drink causes poverty and violence
2. the war makes brewing look German and drinking look unpatriotic
3. politicians who had ignored the temperance case now see votes in it
4. a moral campaign that had never had a majority acquires one for reasons that have nothing to do with alcohol

That chain is why the repeal is not a puzzle. Two of the three forces that produced Prohibition were temporary.

Why it failed

Cambridge's exemplars give two mechanisms and both are printed with figures.

People would not obey it. Millions of Americans, especially in urban areas, were simply not prepared to obey the law. Some made their own liquor at home, known as moonshine, which the mark schemes note carried poisonous dangers. Rich households imported wine and spirits illegally. By 1925, there were more speakeasies in American cities than there had been saloons in 1919. That single comparison is the most useful figure in the whole focus point, because it measures the failure against the situation the law was meant to improve.

It could not be policed. The government appointed several thousand enforcement agents, but this was not enough and they were poorly paid. The networks running the illegal liquor business were complex. Agents were open to threats and bribes from criminal gangs. State officials, judges, senior police officers and jury members were often bought off. Almost 10 per cent of Prohibition agents were fired for taking bribes.

And the supply could not be stopped. Cambridge's exemplar: about two thirds of the illegal alcohol came from Canada; the vast border between the United States and Canada could not be effectively patrolled, so supplies could not be stopped from entering the country. Rum was smuggled from the West Indies.

Gangsterism

Cambridge treats gangsterism as a consequence of Prohibition rather than a separate phenomenon, and the causal link is the explanation examiners want:

Gangsterism developed in the 1920s largely because of Prohibition. In big cities people were still willing to buy and drink alcohol. This gave criminals the chance to supply it. Gangsters like Al Capone started to do this, but soon they were fighting each other for control of parts of cities. This led to gun fights and murders. Many cities were plagued with murders coming from the gangsters.

Cambridge names the St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, and records that the gangs set up and supplied the speakeasies, earned millions of dollars, ran protection rackets, and bribed policemen, judges and juries. It also records the ending: the gangsters were finished when Prohibition was repealed.

There is an examiner warning attached to Al Capone. Asked why gangsterism increased, candidates wrote about his violent activities including the St Valentine's Day Massacre, and the report states this was not relevant to the question. The massacre is evidence of what gangsterism was, not a reason it grew.

Why it was repealed

Cambridge's exemplar: the repeal of Prohibition came because the United States appeared to be lawless, with rich and powerful gangsters committing murders while the police and judges appeared powerless; gangsters such as Al Capone had corrupted the law enforcers so that their activities would be ignored; repealing Prohibition would remove that.

The second family of reasons is economic, and it belongs to the Depression rather than to the 1920s. Legalising the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol would create jobs, raise tax revenue and free up the resources tied up in the impossible task of enforcement. Cambridge records that the repeal was supported by Roosevelt.

This is the one point in the Key Question where you must reach forward into Key Question 3's territory, and Cambridge expects you to. A question that asks whether Prohibition was repealed because of the Depression cannot be answered without the Depression.

The other side, which most candidates miss

Cambridge credits a case that Prohibition partly worked, and a one sided answer here is capped at 6. From an examiner report: the amount of alcohol drunk by Americans fell by 30 per cent in the 1920s; in many rural areas Prohibition was popular and strictly enforced; less damage was done to many families; people were arrested for breaking the law; many illegal distilleries were seized and closed. A mark scheme adds that in some places the Prohibition agents were effective.

1. Prohibition collapses in the cities where the speakeasies outnumber the old saloons
2. it holds in the rural areas that campaigned for it
3. national drinking falls by 30 per cent even as national lawlessness rises
4. whether it "failed" depends entirely on which America you measure

That is a Level 5 judgement, and it is the same rural against urban divide that runs through every focus point in this file.

7. Focus point 4: how far did the roles of women change during the 1920s?

Cambridge sets this focus point as a two-sided question more consistently than any other in the Depth Study, and it prints exemplars for both sides in almost every mark scheme that touches it. Learn it as a pair of paragraphs, not as a list.

The case that women's roles changed

Political rights. Women got the vote in 1920, in all states. Cambridge's exemplar draws the inference for you: this showed they were politically equal to men.

Work. The number of women in employment increased by 25 per cent to 10 million by 1929. Cambridge also expresses the same change as more than 2 million women joining the workforce during the 1920s. Office work and manufacturing accounted for most of the increase. Before the First World War few women worked outside the home; the new opportunities were created by new offices, department stores and factories using assembly lines. In some new industries, such as electronics, women were preferred to men, and Cambridge notes that more women than men were employed in the radio industry.

Social freedom. Cambridge sets out the change as a before and after. Before the war, women were expected to be modest and discreet, which meant no drinking or smoking and, if unmarried, no male company without a chaperone. In the 1920s many women took up smoking, wore shorter dresses and, in urban areas, went out with male friends without a chaperone.

Dress. Ankle length dresses were replaced by knee length, lighter dresses, made of new fabrics. Cambridge names rayon. Women had shorter hair and wore make-up, which Cambridge describes as symbols of the new freedom.

Mobility and the home. Women drove cars, which made them more mobile and gave them the freedom to go to the cinema. Labour saving devices such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners gave women more free time. Cambridge records that Ford introduced different colour cars in 1925 for the female market, which is the neatest single piece of evidence that industry had noticed women as customers.

Independence in law and in fact. The divorce rate went up, so women were no longer trapped in unhappy marriages. Contraception reduced the size of families.

The flapper. Cambridge's four mark description: young women who wore shorter clothes and went out in public unchaperoned; they defied traditional ideas about female behaviour and took up smoking; they were often from the middle and upper classes; they came more often from urban areas.

The case that they did not

Cambridge prints this side with just as much detail, and it is the side that wins marks because fewer candidates write it.

Most women were not flappers. Despite the stories, most women were housewives raising a family. Cambridge states plainly that it was only a small group of women who enjoyed social freedom in the 1920s, and that the changes brought in by the flappers did not affect most women.

The countryside barely moved. In rural areas life changed little and women continued to focus on childcare and managing the home. Cambridge's exemplar: women still did their jobs without mechanical aids; washing was often done without washing machines; many farms did not have running water; life was still very hard, with many women working in the fields as well as looking after their children; these women did not see the changes that middle class urban women enjoyed. Cambridge adds that in rural areas there was greater control exercised on society by the church, and that women in small communities and rural areas tended to continue their traditional roles.

The labour saving devices were not general. Less than 30 per cent owned a washing machine in 1930. That figure is the direct answer to the "labour saving devices freed women" argument, and Cambridge prints it in the same mark schemes.

Pay did not follow work. Even in urban areas, women who worked were paid less than men in the same job. Cambridge's list of what women were discriminated against over reads: jobs, pay, and politics.

Not all women approved. Some women disapproved of the habits of the new generation of flappers. Change did not divide neatly into women who wanted it and men who resisted it.

1. the vote arrives in 1920 and employment rises by a quarter to 10 million by 1929
2. the visible change is concentrated in young, urban, middle class women with money and electricity
3. fewer than three in ten households own a washing machine in 1930 and many farms have no running water
4. the roles that changed were the ones a minority already had the means to change

How to judge it

The judgement Cambridge's own exemplars reach is not "yes" or "no". It is that the change was real, was legal and political as well as social, and was distributed so unevenly that the average American woman's day in 1929 looked much like her day in 1919. An examiner report from March 2019 records that successful answers emphasised that most changes only affected young, middle class urban women, which is the judgement in one clause.

8. Answering "how far" on the Key Question itself

The Key Question is the same shape as its focus points, and Cambridge sets it directly: how far do you agree that American society was intolerant in the 1920s, was US society becoming more tolerant, were the lives of rural and urban Americans more similar than different.

The case that society was transformed

• Mass culture became national for the first time. Radio in nearly half of homes by 1930, 100 million cinema tickets a week, the same films, the same music and the same sports personalities available in every state.
• Women gained the vote in all states in 1920 and 10 million were in work by 1929, up a quarter.
• A visible youth culture existed that had no pre-war equivalent, with its own music, dances, clothes, venues and rules about chaperones.
• The car reorganised where people lived and what they did, producing suburbs, road building, and travel for leisure to cinemas, sporting fixtures and holiday resorts.
• Federal law reached into private behaviour in a way it never had, first through Prohibition and then through the immigration quotas.

The case that very little changed

• The Jim Crow laws were nineteenth century laws that survived the decade untouched. Most black Americans still could not vote or serve on juries in the south, and the segregation of schools, transport, restaurants, parks and hospitals continued.
• The Klan was revived in 1915 and was a powerful political force through the decade, with millions of members, lynching black Americans in states whose juries would not convict its members.
• Immigration was cut, not expanded, by two Acts that reduced the annual figure to 150 000 and barred Chinese and Japanese immigrants entirely.
• The countryside did not participate. No running water on many farms, fewer than three in ten households with a washing machine in 1930, and rural women's lives continuing as before.
• The flapper was a minority of a minority: young, urban, middle and upper class.
• The people who did not share in the boom did not share in the culture either, and the two exclusions were the same exclusion.

Judgement sentences that reach Level 5

Each of these states a position and attaches a reason, which is what Level 5 asks for:

• "US society changed profoundly in the cities and hardly at all in the countryside, and since most Americans lived outside the big cities, the decade changed the country's image faster than it changed its life."
• "American society became far more permissive about how young white women behaved and no more tolerant at all about who counted as American, which is why the 1920s can be called both the freest and the most intolerant decade."
• "The changes were real but were bought by people who already had money and electricity, so the 1920s widened the gap between two Americas rather than moving one America forward."
• "Prohibition is the whole Key Question in miniature: it succeeded where it was wanted and collapsed where it was not, and the line between those two places is the same line that runs through everything else in the decade."

9. Where the boundary with the other Key Questions falls

The line between this Key Question and its neighbours is real but narrow, and Cambridge polices it in the mark schemes. Two boundaries matter.

Key Question 1 owns the economy, including who missed out economically

How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s? owns government policies, mass production, the car industry as an industry, older industries in decline, credit and hire purchase, advertising, tariffs, and agriculture. Crucially it also owns the fourth focus point, "Did all Americans benefit from the boom?", which means the economic exclusion of farmers, workers in traditional industries, black Americans and immigrants belongs there. Those notes are the file named DSD1. How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s?

The line is this. If the question asks about money, jobs, wages or output, it is Key Question 1. If it asks about how people lived, what they believed, whom they excluded and what they did with their leisure, it is Key Question 2. Cambridge tests the line itself: "The boom had little impact on the lives of women" sits on the seam, and a good answer uses both.

Where the two genuinely overlap, use the material and say why it belongs. The car is the clearest case: how it was made and what it did to the steel and glass industries is Key Question 1; what it did to courtship, suburbs, cinema-going and women's mobility is yours. So is the radio, which is a consumer good in Key Question 1 and a national culture here.

The examiner reports are explicit about crossing the line the wrong way. On an economy question about the causes of the boom, one report records that some responses gave very detailed descriptions of Prohibition and the flappers, and states that this was not relevant to the question.

Key Question 3 owns the Wall Street Crash

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, the Bonus Marchers, Hoovervilles and the 1932 election.

You cross into it in exactly one place: the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, which Cambridge's own mark schemes explain partly through the Depression. Use the Depression there and nowhere else. Everything after October 1929 in this file should be about Prohibition ending, and nothing else.

Key Question 4 owns the New Deal

Racial discrimination appears again under How successful was the New Deal?, where Cambridge sets questions on whether the New Deal ended it and why black Americans benefited less. Segregated CCC camps, the failure to pass an anti-lynching law and the exclusion of black Americans from New Deal town projects all belong there, not here. Your race material stops in 1929.

10. Faults examiners name on this Key Question

These come from the Principal Examiner reports across the 2018 to 2024 series and are specific to this content. The faults that apply everywhere on Paper 1 are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes.

One thing worth knowing before the list. Questions 15 and 16 are never declared too sparsely answered to comment on. In the reports read, the phrase "too few responses for meaningful comments" is attached to Questions 1, 2, 5 to 14 and 17 upward at various times, and never once to Question 15 or Question 16. Depth Study D is the most answered Depth Study on the paper, which is why the examiner commentary on this content is unusually rich and unusually specific.

• Describing the Klan's actions when asked for its beliefs. Named explicitly. A report states that weaker responses included the activities of the Klan, especially their violence towards black Americans, rather than focusing on their beliefs, "thus gaining no credit". Cambridge asks both questions and marks them separately.
• Writing why Prohibition was introduced when asked why it failed, or the reverse. Named twice. On a question about why Prohibition led to an increase in crime, weaker responses included generalised details about why Prohibition was introduced, "which was not relevant to this question".
• Writing about Al Capone's crimes when asked why gangsterism grew. Named. The St Valentine's Day Massacre is a consequence, not a cause.
• Describing changes to women's lives when asked why they changed. Named. One report notes that part (b) aimed to encourage candidates to consider what made it possible for women's lives to change, "and less about describing those changes".
• Unbalanced answers on intolerance. The most frequently named fault on this Key Question. Reports record a tendency to write much more about intolerance, such as the Red Scare and the Klan, at the expense of features showing a more open society, and note that developed arguments were consistently stronger on the intolerance side. If the question is two-sided, the tolerance paragraph is where your marks are, because it is the paragraph most candidates leave out.
• Describing the Monkey Trial rather than explaining why it was controversial or important. Named twice, in different series, in almost the same words.
• Not defining the terms in the question. Reports repeatedly say that responses improved when candidates discussed what might be meant by tolerance and intolerance at that time, or by "more freedom for American women". On a "how far" question about a vague noun, a sentence defining it is worth having.
• Listing several problems in one paragraph instead of explaining each. Named on a Prohibition question: candidates tended to list the problems together in one paragraph rather than taking a paragraph to explain each.
• Answering on the wrong side of the rural and urban line. On the question about whether rural and urban lives were more similar than different, reports record that the elements of similarity and difference were not always made clear, and that responses tended to be unbalanced and descriptive.

11. Where Cambridge's own documents disagree

Two conflicts, both in figures, both inside Cambridge's own mark schemes. Do not try to reconcile them and do not average them. If you use one, use it as Cambridge prints it.

How many black Americans were lynched

Within a single mark scheme, June 2023 variant 2 question 15(c), Cambridge credits both of these:

• The Level 3 exemplar states that black Americans were beaten and lynched, and that "Thousands were lynched by mobs during the 1920s."
• The Level 2 list credits "Intolerance of black Americans led to the lynching of hundreds of them."

A separate mark scheme, June 2024 variant 2 question 15(c), credits "The KKK murdered thousands of black Americans" and an exemplar stating that the Klan murdered far more people than the gangsters did.

So Cambridge's published materials print both "hundreds" and "thousands" as creditable, once in the same document. The safe course is to write what the mark schemes agree on, which is the fact and the mechanism rather than the count: that the Klan beat and lynched black Americans, that this was concentrated in the southern states, and that southern juries acquitted its members. If you want a number, "thousands" is the one Cambridge prints in its higher level exemplars in both series.

When 10 million women were in work

Cambridge repeats a single employment statistic across several series with two different dates attached:

• November 2019 variant 1, November 2021 variant 3 and June 2024 variant 1 all print 10 million by 1929, with the increase given as 25 per cent.
• March 2019 variant 2 prints "By 1930 there were 10 million women in work."

The underlying claim is the same and the difference is one year. Write 10 million by 1929, a 25 per cent increase, which is the version Cambridge prints most often and in its most recent papers, and do not mention the other.

A note on the Klan membership figure

This is not a contradiction, but it is a trap. Cambridge prints a Klan membership number once in all 48 mark schemes read: five million, in a June 2024 variant 2 exemplar. Everywhere else it says "millions" or "a big following". If you have seen a different figure in a textbook, Cambridge has not printed it, and this file will not repeat it.

12. Quick revision

• The Key Question is "how far". One explanation on each side is 7 out of 10; a one sided answer is capped at 6, however good it is.
• Depth Study D is Questions 15 and 16 on Paper 1, in all 48 papers read, and Questions 7 and 8 on Paper 4. Paper 2 never touches it.
• This Key Question is set on 26 of 48 papers, usually taking all three parts of one question, and it is about a quarter of the Depth Study D sub-questions. In November 2022 variant 1 it was at Question 16, not Question 15.
• Prohibition is the most examined content in the Key Question, from every angle: why introduced, why it failed, why repealed, whether it achieved its aims.
• Immigration figures, exactly as Cambridge prints them. Emergency Quota Act 1921, 357 000 a year, 3 per cent of the 1910 population. National Origins Act 1924, 150 000 a year, 2 per cent of the 1890 figure. Eastern and southern European immigration down 75 per cent. Chinese and Japanese immigrants barred. 85 per cent of immigrants from northern Europe.
• The mechanism of the 1924 Act is the base year, not the percentage. Moving from 1910 to 1890 pushes the reference population back before the wave it was designed to exclude.
• The Klan: revived 1915 after "The Birth of a Nation", white Protestant supremacy, anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-foreign, operated in the South, beat and lynched black Americans, members routinely acquitted by southern juries, declined after 1925, one printed membership figure of five million.
• Jim Crow was nineteenth century law. It is the continuity evidence, not the change evidence.
• Prohibition, 1920 to 1933. By 1925 more speakeasies than there had been saloons in 1919; two thirds of illegal alcohol from Canada; almost 10 per cent of agents fired for bribery; and alcohol consumption still fell by 30 per cent.
• Women: the vote in 1920 in all states, employment up 25 per cent to 10 million by 1929, no chaperone, rayon and knee length dresses, cars, rising divorce rate. Against that: less than 30 per cent owned a washing machine in 1930, lower pay for the same job, many farms without running water, and most women still housewives.
• Cinema and radio: first talkie 1927, 100 million tickets a week by the end of the decade, seats at 10 cents, KDKA on air in 1920, radios in nearly half of homes by 1930.
• The single organising idea: everything in this decade divides along the same line, between urban and rural, young and old, and those with money and electricity and those without. Say that line out loud in your judgement.

Where these facts come from

Everything above is taken from Cambridge's own published 0470 materials and can be checked against a named one.

The Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028, Depth study D page. The Key Question wording, all four focus points, and the whole specified content list quoted in section 1, including the fact that it is printed once for the Depth Study and not divided by Key Question. Also the definitions of key question, focus point and specified content.

Paper 1 mark schemes, 2018 to 2024, all 48 read. Every fact and figure in sections 4 to 8, and the exemplar wordings paraphrased there: the Roaring Twenties definition and the disapproval exemplar; the cinema figures including the 1927 talkie, the 100 million weekly tickets and the 10 cent seats, and the named stars; the radio facts including KDKA in 1920 and nearly half of homes by 1930, and the named band; jazz, the Cotton Club of Harlem, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, the Charleston and the Black Bottom; the whole Red Scare list including Seattle 1919, the 1919 bomb blasts, the attack on Palmer and the Palmer Raids; the Sacco and Vanzetti account; every immigration figure and both Acts; both Klan lists including the 1915 revival, "The Birth of a Nation", the southern operation, the acquittals, the 1925 decline and the five million membership figure; the Jim Crow list including its nineteenth century origin; the black American discrimination points including juries, voting, sharecropping, the all white car factories and Harlem; the Scopes account; the tolerance side exemplar; the whole Prohibition section including the 1920 to 1933 dates, the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Temperance Union, the German brewers argument, the grain for bread point, the 1925 speakeasy comparison, the two thirds from Canada, the rum from the West Indies, the almost 10 per cent of agents fired, Al Capone, the St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, and the repeal reasons; and every women's figure including the vote in 1920, the 25 per cent rise to 10 million by 1929, the more than 2 million entrants, rayon, the 1925 Ford colour cars, the under 30 per cent washing machine ownership in 1930, the unequal pay, and the rural detail including farms without running water.

Principal Examiner reports, 2018 to 2024. The whole of section 10. Also the 30 per cent fall in alcohol consumption, which appears in an examiner report rather than a mark scheme, and the Sacco and Vanzetti model explanation quoted in section 5.

Paper 4 question papers, 2018 to 2024. The Depth Study D position at Questions 7 and 8, the 2024 format change, and the list of Paper 4 titles on this Key Question in section 3.

Built by reading the papers rather than published by Cambridge. The whole of section 3's counting. Cambridge publishes no table of which Key Question is set at which question number. The Question 15 and 16 slot, the count of 26 papers out of 48, the 73 sub-questions out of 288, the per focus point frequencies, and the November 2022 variant 1 inversion were all produced by reading the printed stem of every Question 15 and Question 16 in all 48 mark schemes and classifying each by Key Question. The classification of a small number of borderline stems, such as changes in shopping habits or the impact of the motor car on people's lives, is a judgement call, so treat the counts as close rather than exact. The Question 15 and 16 slot itself is not a judgement call and admits no exceptions.

Conflicts inside Cambridge's own materials. Section 11, with the paper and question named for each side.

Deliberately left out because the 0470 materials read for these notes do not print them. These are standard textbook facts that a revision guide would supply and that this file will not assert:

• the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments by number; Cambridge's Prohibition mark schemes never name an amendment
• the Volstead Act, which appears once in an examiner report about a different question and in no Key Question 2 mark scheme
• the Nineteenth Amendment by name; Cambridge says only that women got the vote in 1920 in all states
• any lynching count that is not "hundreds" or "thousands", and any year by year lynching figure
• any Klan membership figure other than the single printed five million, and any date attached to it
• the number of Prohibition agents, beyond Cambridge's own "several thousand"
• the Harlem Renaissance, Marcus Garvey, the NAACP and the Great Migration by name, none of which appear in the mark schemes or examiner reports read
• any figure for cars owned, radios sold, speakeasies operating or Klan lynchings, other than the exact ones quoted above
• the names of the 1921 and 1924 Acts in any form other than Emergency Quota Act and National Origins Act

None of those is needed for a top answer, which is why they are named here rather than guessed at in the body.

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