Sentence Completion Questions in IELTS Reading

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In the 1920s, prosperity manifested itself in many forms in the United States, most notably in advancements in technology, which led to new patterns of leisure and consumption. The decade opened up new possibilities of mobility for a large percentage of the US population, as automobile manufacturers began to mass produce what had once been a luxury item, and daring aviators both demonstrated and drove advancements in aircraft technology.

The most significant innovation of this era was Henry Ford’s Model T Ford, which made car ownership available to the average American. Ford did not invent the automobile – the Duryea brothers in Massachusetts as well as Gottlieb W. Daimler and Karl Friedrich Benz in Germany were early pioneers. By the early twentieth century, hundreds of car manufacturers existed. However, they all made products that were too expensive for most Americans.

Ford revolutionised industrial work by perfecting the assembly line, which enabled him to bring down labour costs within the production process. The product was moved from one team of workers to the next, each of them completing a step so simple that they had to be, in Ford’s words, “no smarter than an ox”. His reliance on the moving assembly line, scientific management, and time-motion studies added to his emphasis on efficiency over craftsmanship. Ford’s systems enabled him to lower the Model T’s price from $850 in 1908 to $300 in 1924, making car ownership a real possibility for a large share of the population. As prices dropped, even those on low incomes were able to enjoy the freedom and mobility that cars offered. By 1929, there were over twenty-three million automobiles on American roads.

Ford’s approach had many benefits for his workers, but also some drawbacks. Ford was adamantly opposed to union activity and made every effort to stamp it out, including the use of intimidation tactics. The boring, repetitive nature of the assembly line work also generated a high turnover rate. However, to deal with this issue, he doubled workers’ pay to five dollars per day, and, in a major departure from the norm at the time, cut working hours to eight. Ford’s assembly line also offered greater equality than most opportunities of the time, as he paid White and Black workers equally. Seeking these wages, many African Americans from the South moved to Detroit and other large northern cities to work in factories.

The automobile changed the face of America, both economically and socially. Industries like glass, steel, and rubber processing expanded to keep up with auto production. The oil industry in California, Oklahoma and Texas expanded, as Americans’ reliance on oil increased and the nation transitioned from a coal-based economy to one driven by petroleum. In response to the growing popularity of cars, there was a dramatic government-funded expansion of road networks, which permitted motels and restaurants to spring up and offer new services to millions of newly mobile Americans with cash to spend. New shopping and living patterns also emerged, and streetcar suburbs gave way to automobile suburbs as private automobile traffic began to replace mass transit on trains and trolleys.

The 1920s not only witnessed a transformation in ground transportation but also major changes in air travel. By the mid-1920s, men – as well as some pioneering women like the African American stunt pilot Bessie Coleman – had been flying for two decades. But there remained doubts about the suitability of aeroplanes for long-distance travel. Orville Wright, one of the pioneers of aeroplane technology in the United States, once famously declared, “No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping.” However, in 1927, this scepticism was finally put to rest when Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, flying from New York to Paris in thirty-three hours.

Lindbergh’s flight made him an international hero: the best-known American in the world. On his return, Americans greeted him with a ticker-tape parade – a celebration in which shredded paper thrown from surrounding buildings creates a festive, flurry effect. His flight, which he completed in the monoplane Spirit of St. Louis, seemed like a triumph of individualism in modern mass society and exemplified Americans’ ability to conquer the air with new technology. Following his success, the small airline industry began to blossom, fully coming into its own in the 1930s, as companies like Boeing and Ford developed aeroplanes designed specifically for passenger air transport. As technologies in engine and passenger compartment design improved, air travel became more popular. In 1934, the number of US domestic air passengers was just over 450,000 annually. By the end of the decade, that number had increased to nearly two million.