How Things Were

Era Lifestyle · 1928–1931

How Things Were

The world that bought, drove and worked with the Model A Ford.

Who lived in the United States?

The United States of the Model A years was a country of roughly 120 million people, spread across 48 states and changing rapidly. The 1930 census counted 122,775,046 people; about 56.1 percent lived in urban places and 43.9 percent in rural areas under the census definitions of the time. About 14.2 million residents were foreign-born, many from Europe. Black Americans were moving from the South to northern and midwestern cities during the Great Migration, while Mexican American, Asian American and Indigenous communities contributed to the country’s farms, industries and towns. Opportunities were unequal: segregation, discriminatory hiring, restrictive immigration laws and barriers to housing shaped daily life. A family’s region, race, occupation and access to steady wages could matter as much as the number of cents on a price tag. Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley combined agriculture, growing neighborhoods, automobile travel and the expanding motion-picture industry. These pages follow the years when Ford’s new Model A entered that world, then faced the early Great Depression.

Sources: 1930 Census: Population, statistics by subjects · Census: historical foreign-born population · 1930 Census: General Report on Occupations

Explore one year at a time

From the Model A launch to the Depression

Ford introduced the Model A on December 2, 1927, well before the October 1929 stock-market crash. Its initial rollout followed the shutdown and retooling needed to replace the Model T. The Depression therefore did not cause the original Model A launch delay. It changed the market after the car was established: lost earnings, tighter credit and falling confidence reduced families’ ability to buy a new automobile. Ford refreshed the car and offered new body styles, but an attractive sticker price could not replace a missing paycheck.

The year pages distinguish the prosperous-looking late 1920s from the worsening conditions of 1930 and 1931. They also distinguish falling prices from improving affordability. When a bread loaf cost less but a household lost its income, that household could be worse off.

Sources: Ford Motor Company: The 1928 Ford Model A · The Henry Ford: Henry Ford, Post-Model T · Federal Reserve History: Stock Market Crash of 1929 · Federal Reserve History: Banking Panics of 1931–33