By the middle of 1919, the flu pandemic abruptly ended, without a treatment or a cure having been discovered. Life continued for the Zawada family, who hadn't lost a single member to the flu or the Great War.

Joe Zawada, 1918

Jean and her brother Joe Zawada, 1919

At the end of World War I, soldiers returning through May of 1919 were greeted with fanfare, parades, and promises of a wealthy decade to come.
However, the U.S. ended up in a post-war recession by January, 1920, which lasted until July of 1921. Most industry quickly recovered - except for the copper and farming industries.
Demand for copper had declined since the war, leaving the U.S. with an excess amount accumulating in storage. The price of copper dropped by more than half of what it had been sold for during the Great War, which in turn led to job cutbacks in Copper Country. The job losses affected the entire community, because if people were not making ends meet by way of the copper mines, they could not afford to do their shopping at local businesses. This in turn led local business to cut their staff and hours of operation.

As a result of the recession, four of the nine Zawada kids had moved downstate Michigan by early 1920; Frank Jr., Joe, Marian and Jean all found jobs in the auto industry.
Frank Jr. had his own home with his wife Marie, their daughter Helen, Marie's brother Max, and another boarder.
Joe, Marian and Jean boarded together in Detroit with one other person and a female head of household.
The 1920 census record indicates that within the auto industry, Frank was an Inspector, Joe and Marian were Receiving Clerks, and Jean was also an Inspector. Jean was 16 years old when she started working.

Of the remaining Zawada children, Clarice, Ann, Kay, Helen and Ray stayed in Calumet, living with their parents. Clarice worked in a department store, while her other siblings were too young to work, yet.
Frank Sr. listed himself in the 1920 census as a Timberman down in the mines. This is remarkable, and in fact, as was stated earlier, Frank's employment record makes note of a bronze medal awarded to him in 1916.
Could it be that Frank started again as a Timberman between 1916 and 1920, to the astonishment of his co-workers and managers?

An interesting note for the 1920 census is that Victoria no longer listed an occupation, leaving Frank Sr. and Clarice to bring in money to support the family, while Victoria stayed at home once more to care for the remaining children.
It is possible that some of the money that Joe, Marian and Jean made downstate in the auto industry was sent back home to the rest of the family as well, since Henry Ford was paying above average wages to workers in the auto industry.

Despite the hard times that had fallen on the copper industry and other industries like farming (who were paid very well to produce excess food during the war to ship oveseas to Allied countries), the rest of the U.S., especially in urban areas, appeared to be enjoying the promised wealth of the 1920's.

The U.S. was anxious to put the troubles of the Great War behind them, along with the troubles that had preceeded the war; labor and racial strife, women's suffrage, the rise of urban areas and with that a less stringent following of puritanical morals and values. These problems had marked the previous decade, and now people wished for things to go back to a more simpler time before all these changes jolted the world. People just wanted to be happy and free...and wealthy.

In 1920, Warren G. Harding, a Republican, won the presidency in part by tuning in to the public's wish to return back to simpler times. Harding promised a "return to normalcy" - a new word coined by Harding to describe what people were yearning for. This included a renewed call for nationalism, a reigning in of more traditional Christian values, and restrictions on immigration. In that day, there were fears of Eastern Europeans coming in, taking away jobs, and causing more labor strikes due to their "Bolshevik (or Communist) ways", as became widely popular with the rise of Lenin.

Harding's acknowledgement of needs for nationalism and restrictions on Eastern Europeans led to a surge in racism against anyone who was not defined as White or Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant-descended.

Did the Zawada family encounter racism during the 1920's because of their Eastern European ancestry, Polish heritage and customs, and Catholic religion?

In 1921, the economy took a turn for the worse in Calumet. The U.S. Federal Government stopped purchasing domestic copper because it had an excess surplus of it. The recession, combined with a decrease in the demand for copper, resulted in many mining companies shutting down completely.

Calumet & Hecla Mining Company was no exception to this hardship, and on April 1, 1921, at the age of 48, Frank Zawada Sr. was laid-off the job, likely along with the entire workforce, as Calumet & Hecla closed its doors and shut down for a year.
This appears to be Frank's last known date of work anywhere in the Keweenaw.

His layoff exempted him from the company's retirement pension plan, firstly because he was not 60 years old, and secondly because he was not retiring - he was being laid-off. The second part to Calumet & Hecla's pension plan stipulated eligibility if a worker had in 20 years of service by age 60.
Although Frank had roughly 28 years of service under his belt by the time he was 48, this meant nothing to the company. All the years of dedicated service to Calumet & Hecla only appeared to have gotten Frank a lost limb and a bronze medal.

Frank had lost his leg in a copper mine, forcing his two eldest boys out of their childhood at an early age and over to the mines to work in his place. The family had come through the bloody copper strike of 1913, World War I, and the flu pandemic of 1918.

With the shutdown of the mining industry in the Keweenaw, Frank Zawada Sr. now had to find new employment and a new home for his family, since the home the family had lived in for the past 27 years was rented from Calumet & Hecla Mining Company.

Ray, playing on Bridge Street, Calumet, MI

Helen (about age 10), Ray (about age 7), and Kay (about age 12), approximately 1922

While the rest of the nation appeared to be enjoying themselves, the Zawada family continued to work hard to sustain itself.
There is little information during the 1920's about the Zawada family, but it appears that Joe Zawada was doing well in the auto industry within five years of coming downstate.
By January, 1924, Ford Motor Company stock had reached $1 Billion in worth, and if any of the Zawadas had any Ford stock, they were doing very well.
In fact, Joe had his own car by the mid-twenties and he travelled as far north as the Keweenaw Peninsula and as far west as the Grand Canyon.

From the mid twenties until the end of the decade, "there were no effective legal guidelines on buying and selling stock. Free from such limitations, corporations began printing up more and more common stock. Many investors in the stock market practiced "buying on margin," that is, buying stock on credit. Confident that a given stock's value would rise, an investor put a down payment on the stock, expecting in a few months to pay off the balance of their initial investment while reaping a hefty profit. This investment strategy turned the stock market into a speculative pyramid game, in which most of the money invested in the market didn't actually exist." - Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History at University of Wisconsin.