Then, in 1919, an orgy of consumer spending inaugurated the Jazz Age. All across America, wartime parsimony gave way to an explosion of household purchasing as families finally opened their wallets to buy the new technologies the new American oil had wrought. Farmers bought tens of thousands of tractors. Housewives ordered new stoves and ranges. Corporations ordered new industrial boilers. No item, though, sold faster than automobiles. In 1900 there were eight thousand cars in the United States. By 1916 there were three and a half million. By 1921 there were 10.5 million. And every single one
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