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Notes:
World War I:
Thunder Across the Sea
In 1914,World War I was sparked when the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was murdered by a Serb patriot. An outraged Vienna government, backed by Germany, presented an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia, backed by Russia, refused to budge. Russia began to mobilize its army, alarming Germany on the east, and France confronted Germany on the west.
Germany struck at France first and the fighting began. The Central Powers consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The Alliesconsisted of France, Britain, Russia, Japan, and Italy.
Germany struck at France first and the fighting began. The Central Powers consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The Alliesconsisted of France, Britain, Russia, Japan, and Italy.
A Precarious Neutrality
President Wilson issued the neutrality proclamation at the outbreak of WWI.
Most Americans were anti-Germany from the outset of the war. Kaiser Wilhelm II, the leader of Germany, seemed the embodiment of arrogant autocracy. Yet, the majority of Americans were against war.
America Earns Blood Money
American industry prospered off trade with the Allies. Germany and the Central Powers protested American trading with the Allies, although America wasn't breaking the international neutrality laws -- Germany was free to trade with the U.S., but Britain prevented this trade by controlling the Atlantic Ocean by which Germany had to cross in order to trade with the U.S.
In 1915, several months after Germany started to use submarines in the war, one of Germany's submarines sunk the British liner Lusitania, killing 128 Americans.
Americans demanded war but President Wilson stood strong on his stance against war. When Germany sunk another British liner, the Arabic, in 1915, Berlin agreed to not sink unarmed passenger ships without warning. Germany continued to sink innocent ships as apparent when one of its submarines sank a French passenger steamer, the Sussex. President Wilson informed the Germans that unless they renounced the inhuman practice of sinking merchant ships without warning, he would break diplomatic relations, leading to war. Germany agreed to Wilson's ultimatum, but attached additions to their Sussex pledge: the United States would have to persuade the Allies to modify what Berlin regarded as their illegal blockade. Wilson accepted the Germany pledge, without accepting the "string" of additions.
Wilson Wins the Reelection in 1916
The Progressive Party and the Republican Party met in 1916 to choose their presidential candidate. Although nominated by the Progressives, Theodore Roosevelt refused to run for president. The Republicans chose Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes. The Republican platform condemned the Democratic tariff, assaults on the trusts, and Wilson's dealings with Mexico and Germany.
The Democrats chose Wilson and ran an anti-war campaign. Woodrow Wilson won the election of 1916 and was reelected to the presidency.
The War to End War
1917-1918
On January 31, 1917 Germany announced its decision to wage unrestricted submarine warfare on all ships, including American ships, in the war zone.
War by Act of Germany
German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann secretly proposed a German-Mexican alliance with the Zimmermann note. News of the Zimmermann note leaked out to the public, infuriating Americans.
On April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked for a declaration of war from Congress after 4 more unarmed merchant ships had been sunk.
3 Mains Causes of War: Zimmermann Note, Germany declares unrestricted submarine warfare, Bolshevik Revolution.
Wilsonian Idealism Enthroned
President Wilson persuaded the public for war by declaring his twin goals of "a war to end war" and a crusade "to make the world safe for democracy." He argued that America only fought to shape an international order in which democracy could flourish without fear of dictators and militarists.
Wilson was able to get war to appeal to the American public.
Wilson's Fourteen Potent Points
Wilson delivered his Fourteen Points Address to Congress on January 8, 1918.
The message, though intensely idealistic in tone and primarily a peace program, had certain very practical uses as an instrument for propaganda. It was intended to reach the people and the liberal leaders of the Central Powers as a seductive appeal for peace, in which purpose it was successful. It was hoped that the points would provide a framework for peace discussions. The message immediately gave Wilson the position of moral leadership of the Allies and furnished him with a tremendous diplomatic weapon as long as the war persisted.
The first 5 points and their effects were:
1. A proposal to abolish secret treaties pleased liberals of all countries.
2. Freedom of the seas appealed to the Germans, as well as to Americans who distrusted British sea power.
3. A removal of economic barriers among nations was comforting to Germany, which feared postwar vengeance.
4. Reduction of armament burdens was gratifying to taxpayers.
5. An adjustment of colonial claims in the interests of both native people and the colonizers was reassuring to the anti-imperialists.
The largest achievement, #14, foreshadowed the League of Nations - an international organization that Wilson dreamed would provide a system of collective security.
Creel Manipulates Minds
The Committee on Public Information was created to rally public support of war. It was headed by George Creel. His job was to sell America on the war and sell the world on Wilsonian war aims.
The Creel organization employed thousands of workers around the world to spread war propaganda. The entire nation was as a result swept into war fever.
Enforcing Loyalty and Stifling Dissent
There were over 8 million German-Americans; rumors began to spread of spying and sabotage. As a result, a few German-Americans were tarred, feathered, and beaten. A hysterical hatred of Germans and things related to Germany swept the nation.
The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 reflected fears about Germans and antiwar Americans. Kingpin Socialist Eugene V. Debsand the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leader William D. Haywood were convicted under the Espionage Act.
At this time, nearly any criticism of the government could be censored and punished. The Supreme Court upheld these laws in Schenck v. United States (1919); it argued that freedom of speech could be revoked when such speech posed a danger to the nation.
The Nation's Factories Go to War
President Wilson created a Civilian Council of National Defense to study problems of economic mobilization; increased the size of the army; and created a shipbuilding program.
No one knew how much steel or explosive powder the country was capable of producing. Fears of big government restricted efforts to coordinate the economy from Washington. States' rights Democrats and businesspeople hated federal economic controls.
In 1918, Wilson appointed Bernard Baruch to head the War Industries Board in order to impose some order on the economic confusion. The Board never really had much control and was disbanded after the end of the war.
Workers in Wartime
Workers were discouraged from striking by the War Department's decree in 1918 that threatened any unemployed male with drafting.
The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) were victims of some of the worst working conditions in the country. At the end of the war, the AF of L's (American Federation of Labor) membership had more than doubled.
Wartime inflation threatened to eliminate wage gains and thousands of strikes resulted.
In 1919, the greatest strike in American history hit the steel industry. More than 250,000 steelworkers walked off their jobs in an attempt to force their employers to recognize their right to organize and bargain collectively. The steel companies resisted and refused to negotiate with union representatives. The companies brought in 30,000 African-Americans to keep the mills running. After several deadly confrontations, the strike collapsed, marking a grave setback that crippled the union movement for over 10 years.
Thousands of blacks were drawn to the North in wartime by the allure of war-industry employment. The blacks served as meatpackers and strikebreakers. Deadly disputes between whites and blacks consequently erupted.
Suffering Until Suffrage
The National Woman's party, led by Alice Paul, protested the war.
The larger part of the suffrage movement, represented by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, supported Wilson's war.
War mobilization gave momentum to the suffrage movement. Impressed by women's war work, President Wilson supported women suffrage. In 1920, The 19th Amendment was passed, giving all American women the right to vote.
Congress passed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act of 1921, providing federally financed instruction in maternal and infant health care.
In the postwar decade, feminists continued to campaign for laws to protect women in the workplace and prohibit child labor.
Forging a War Economy
Herbert C. Hoover led the Food Administration. Hoover rejected issuing ration cards and, to save food for export, he proclaimed wheatless Wednesdays and meatless Tuesdays, all on a voluntary basis.
Congress restricted the use of foodstuffs for manufacturing alcoholic beverages, helping to accelerate the wave of prohibition that was sweeping the country. In 1919, the 18th Amendment was passed, prohibiting all alcoholic drinks.
The money-saving tactics of Hoover and other agencies such as the Fuel Administration and Treasury Department yielded about $21 billion towards the war fund. Other funding of the war came through increased taxes and bonds.
Making Plowboys into Doughboys
Although President Wilson opposed a draft, he eventually realized that a draft was necessary to quickly raise the large army that was to be sent to France. Through much tribulation, Congress passed the draft act in 1917. It required the registration of all males between the ages of 18 and 45, and did not allow for a man to purchase his exemption from the draft.
For the first time, women were allowed in the armed forces.
Fighting in France-Belatedly
In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution in communist Russia toppled the tsar regime. Russia pulled out of the "capitalist" war, freeing up thousands of Germans on the Russian front to fight the western front in France. Russia pulling out allowed the U.S. fight solidly for Democracy in the war.
A year after Congress declared war, the first American troops reached France. They were used as replacements in the Allied armies and were generally deployed in quiet sectors with the British and French. Shipping shortages plagued the Allies.
American troops were also sent to Belgium, Italy, and Russia. Americans hoped to prevent Russian munitions from falling into the hands of the Germans.
America Helps Hammer the "Hun"
In the spring of 1918, the German drive on the western front exploded. Spearheaded by about 500,000 troops, the Germans rolled forward with terrifying momentum. The Allied nations for the first time united under a supreme commander, French marshal Foch.
In order to stop Germany from taking Paris and France, 30,000 American troops were sent to the French frontlines. This was the first significant engagement of American troops in a European war.
By July 1918, the German drive had been halted and Foch made a counteroffensive in the Second Battle of the Marne. This engagement marked the beginning of a German withdrawal.
The Americans, dissatisfied with simply bolstering the French and British, demanded a separate army; General John J. Pershing was assigned a front of 85 miles. Pershing's army undertook the Meuse-Argonne offensive from September 26 to November 11, 1918. One objective was to cut the German railroad lines feeding the western front. Inadequate training left 10% of the Americans involved in the battle injured or killed.
As German supplies ran low and as their allies began to desert them, defeat was in sight for Germany.
The Fourteen Points Disarm Germany
In October of 1918, the Germans were ready for peace based on the Fourteen Points. On November 11, 1918, after the emperor of Germany had fled to Holland, Germany surrendered.
The United States's main contributions to the victory had been foodstuffs, munitions, credits, oil, and manpower. The Americans only fought 2 major battles, at St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. The prospect of endless U.S. troops, rather than America's actual military performance eventually demoralized the Germans.
Wilson Steps Down from Olympus
President Wilson had gained much world popularity as the moral leader of the war. When he personally appealed for a Democratic victory in thecongressional elections of November 1918, the plan backfired and the voters instead returned a Republican majority to Congress.
Wilson's decision to go to Paris in person to negotiate the treaty infuriated the Republicans because no president had ever traveled to Europe.
An Idealist Battles the Imperialists in Paris
The Paris Conference fell into the hands of an inner clique, known as the Big Four. Wilson, having the most power, was joined by Premier Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, and Premier Georges Clemenceau of France.
The Conference opened on January 18, 1919. Wilson's ultimate goal was a world parliament known as the League of Nations. It would contain an assembly with seats for all nations and a council to be controlled by the great powers. In February 1919, the skeptical Old World diplomats agreed to make the League Covenant.
Hammering Out the Treaty
Republicans in America had much animosity towards the League of Nations. The Republican Congress claimed that it would never approve the League of Nations in its existing form. These difficulties delighted Wilson's Allied adversaries in Paris who were now in a stronger bargaining position because Wilson would have to beg them for changes in the covenant that would safeguard the Monroe Doctrine and other American interests valued to the senators.
France settled for a compromise in which the Saar Valley would remain under the League of Nations for 15 years, and then a popular vote would determine its fate. In exchange for dropping its demands for the Rhineland, France got the Security Treaty, in which both Britain and America pledged to come to its aid in the event of another German invasion.
Italy demanded Fiume, a valuable seaport inhabited by both Italians and Yugoslavs. The seaport went to Yugoslavia after Wilson's insisting.
Japan demanded China's Shandong Peninsula and the German islands of the Pacific, which it had seized during the war. After Japan threatened to walk out, Wilson accepted a compromise in which Japan kept Germany's economic holdings in Shandong and pledged to return the peninsula to China at a later date.
The Peace Treaty That Bred a New War
The Treaty of Versailles was forced upon the Germans in June 1919. The Germans were outraged with the treaty, noticing that most of the Fourteen Points were left out.
Wilson, also not happy with the outcome of the treaty, was forced to compromise away some of his Fourteen Points in order to salvage the more precious League of Nations.
The Domestic Parade of Prejudice
Critics of the League of Nations came from all sides. Irish-Americans, isolationists, and principled liberals all denounced the League.
Wilson's Tour and Collapse (1919)
The Republicans in Congress had no real hope of defeating the Treaty of Versailles; they hoped to rather "Americanize" or "Republicanize" it so that the Republicans could claim political credit for the changes.
In an attempt to speed up the passing of the treaty in the Senate, President Wilson decided to go to the country in a speechmaking tour. He would appeal over the heads of the Senate to the sovereign people. The speeches in the Midwest did not go as well as in the Rocky Mountain region and on the Pacific Coast.
On his return to Washington, Wilson suffered a stroke and suffered from physical and nervous exhaustion.
Defeat Through Deadlock
Senator Lodge, a critic to the president, came up with fourteen reservations to the Treaty of Versailles. These safeguards reserved the rights of the U.S. under the Monroe Doctrine and the Constitution and otherwise sought to protect American sovereignty.
After the Senate rejected the Treaty twice, the Treaty of Versailles was defeated. The Lodge-Wilson personal feud, traditionalism, isolationism, disillusionment, and partisanship all contributed to the defeat of the treaty.
The "Solemn Referendum" of 1920
Wilson proposed to settle the treaty issue in the upcoming presidential campaign of 1920 by appealing to the people for a "solemn referendum."
The Republicans chose Senator Warren G. Harding as their presidential nominee for the election of 1920. Their vice-presidential nominee was GovernorCalvin Coolidge. The Republican platform appealed to both pro-League and anti-League sentiment in the party.
Democrats nominated pro-League Governor James. M. Cox as their presidential hopeful and chose Franklin D. Roosevelt as their vice-presidential nominee.
Warren Harding won the election of 1920. Harding's victory lead to the death of the League of Nations.
The Betrayal of Great Expectations
The Treaty of Versailles was the only one of the four peace treaties not to succeed.
After the war, America did not embrace the role of global leader. In the interests of its own security, the United States should have used its enormous strength to shape world-shaking events. It instead permitted the world to drift towards yet another war.
The Roaring Twenties:
American Life in the "Roaring Twenties"
1919-1929
Seeing Red
Fear of Russia ran high even after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which spawned a communist party in America.
The "red scare" of 1919-1920 resulted in a nationwide crusade against those whose Americanism was suspect. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmerwas chosen to round up immigrants who were in question.
In 1919-1920, a number of states passed criminal syndicalism laws that made the advocacy of violence to secure social change unlawful. Traditional American ideals of free speech were restricted.
Antiredism and antiforeignism were reflected in the criminal case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The two men were convicted in 1921 of the murder of a Massachusetts paymaster and his guard. Although given a trial, the jury and judge were prejudiced against the men because they were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers. Despite criticism from liberals and radicals all over the world, the men were electrocuted in 1927.
Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK
The Ku Klux Klan (Knights of the Invisible Empire) grew quickly in the early 1920s. The Klan was antiforeign, anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Jewish, antipacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, antievolutionist, antibootlegger, antigambling, antiadultery, and anti-birth control. It was pro-Anglo-Saxon, pro-"native" American, and pro-Protestant.
The Klan spread rapidly, especially in the Midwest and the South, claiming 5 million members.
It collapsed in the late 1920s after a congressional investigation exposed the internal embezzling by Klan officials.
The KKK was an alarming manifestation of the intolerance and prejudice plaguing people anxious about the dizzying pace of social change in the 1920s.
Stemming the Foreign Blood
Isolationist Americans of the 1920s felt they had no use for immigrants. The "New Immigration" of the 1920s caused Congress to pass theEmergency Quota Act of 1921, restricting newcomers from Europe in any given year to a definite quota, which was at 3% of the people of their nationality who had been living in the United States in 1910.
The Immigration Act of 1924 replaced the Quota Act of 1921, cutting quotas for foreigners from 3% to 2%. Different countries were only allowed to send an allotted number of its citizens to America every year. Japanese were outright banned from coming to America. Canadians and Latin Americans, whose proximity made them easy to attract for jobs when times were good and just as easy to send back home when times were not, were exempt from the act.
The quota system caused immigration to dwindle.
The Immigration Act of 1924 marked the end of an era of unrestricted immigration to the United States. Many of the most recent arrivals lived in isolated enclaves with their own houses of worship, newspapers, and theaters.
The Prohibition "Experiment"
The 18th Amendment, passed in 1919, banned alcohol. Prohibition, supported by churches and women, was one the last peculiar spasms of the progressive reform movement. It was popular in the South, where white southerners were eager to keep stimulants out of the hands of blacks, and in the West, where alcohol was associated with crime and corruption.
Prohibitionists were naïve in that Federal authorities had never been able to enforce a law where the majority of the people were hostile to it. Prohibition might have started off better if there had been a larger number of enforcement officials.
"Speakeasies" replaced saloons. Prohibition caused bank savings to increase and absenteeism in industry to decrease.
The Golden Age of Gangsterism
The large profits of illegal alcohol led to bribery of police. Violent wars broke out in the big cities between rival gangs, who sought control of the booze market.
Chicago was the most spectacular example of lawlessness. "Scarface" Al Capone, a murderous booze distributor, began 6 years of gang warfare that generated millions of dollars. Capone was eventually tried and convicted of income-tax evasion and sent to prison for 11 years.
Gangsters began to move into other profitable and illicit activities: prostitution, gambling, narcotics, and kidnapping for ransom.
After the son of Charles A. Lindbergh was kidnapped for ransom and murdered, Congress passed the Lindbergh Law in 1932, making interstate abduction in certain circumstances a death-penalty offense.
Monkey Business in Tennessee
Education made great strides in the 1920s. Professor John Dewey set forth the principles of "learning by doing" that formed the foundation of so-called progressive education. He believed that "education for life" should be a primary goal of the teacher.
Science and better health care also resulted out of the 1920s.
Fundamentalists, old-time religionists, claimed that the teaching of Darwinism evolution was destroying faith in God and the Bible, while contributing to the moral breakdown of youth.
In 1925, John T. Scopes was indicted in Tennessee for teaching evolution. At the "Monkey Trial," Scopes was defended by Clarence Darrow, while former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan prosecuted him. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100.
The Mass-Consumption Economy
WWI and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's tax policies brought much prosperity to the mid-1920s.
Bruce Barton founded advertising which sought to make Americans want more and more.
Sports became a big business in the consumer economy of the 1920s.
Buying in credit was another new feature of the postwar economy. Prosperity thus accumulated an overhanging cloud of debt, and the economy became increasingly vulnerable to disruptions of the credit structure.
Putting America on Rubber Tires
The automobile industrial started an industrial revolution in the 1920s. It yielded a new industrial system based on assembly-line methods and mass-production techniques. Detroit became the motorcar capital of the world.
Henry Ford, father of the assembly line, created the Model T and erected an immense personal empire on the cornerstone of his mechanical genius. By 1930, the number of Model Ts in the nation had reached 20 million.
The Advent of the Gasoline Age
The automobile industry exploded, creating millions of jobs and supporting industries. America's standard of living rose sharply, and new industries flourished while old ones dwindled. The petroleum business experienced an explosive development and the railroad industry was hard hit by the competition of automobiles.
The automobile freed up women from their dependence on men, and isolation among the sections was broken down. It was responsible for thousands of deaths, while at the same time bringing more convenience, pleasure, and excitement into more people's lives.
Humans Develop Wings
Gasoline engines provided the power that enabled humans to fly. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made their first flight, lasting 12 seconds and 120 feet.
After the success of airplanes in WWI, private companies began to operate passenger airlines with airmail contracts.
Charles A. Lindberg became the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. His flight energized and gave a strong boost to the new aviation industry.
The Radio Revolution
Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy (the telegraph) in the 1890s.
In the 1920s, the first voice-carrying radio broadcasts reached audiences. While automobiles were luring Americans away from the home, the radio was luring them back. Educationally and culturally, the radio also made a significant contribution.
Hollywood's Filmland Fantasies
As early as the 1890s, the motion picture, invented by Thomas A. Edison, had gained some popularity. The true birth of motion picture came in 1903 with the release of the first story sequence: The Great Train Robbery. Hollywood became the movie capital of the world.
Motion picture was used extensively in WWI as anti-German propaganda.
Much of the diversity of the immigrants' cultures was lost, but the standardization of tastes and of language hastened entry into the American mainstream-and set the stage for the emergence of a working-class political coalition that would overcome the divisive ethnic differences of the past.
The Dynamic Decade
In the 1920s, the majority of Americans had shifted from rural areas to urban (city) areas.
Women continued to find jobs in the cities. Margaret Sanger led a birth-control movement. Alice Paul formed the National Women's Party in 1923 to campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
The Fundamentalists lost ground to the Modernists who believed that God was a "good guy" and the universe was a friendly place.
The 1920s witnessed an explosion in sex appeal in America. Young women, "flappers," rolled their stockings, taped their breasts flat, and roughed their cheeks. Women began to wear one-piece bathing suits.
Dr. Sigmund Freud writings justified this new sexual frankness by arguing that sexual repression was responsible for a variety of nervous and emotional ills.
Jazz thrived in the era of the 1920s.
Racial pride blossomed in the northern black communities. Marcus Garvey founded the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to promote the resettlement of blacks in Africa. In the United States, the UNIA also sponsored stores and other businesses to keep blacks' dollars in black pockets.
Cultural Liberation
In the decade after WWI, a new generation of writers emerged. They gave American literature new life, imaginativeness, and artistic quality.
H.L. Mencken attacked marriage, patriotism, democracy, and prohibition in his monthly American Mercury.
F. Scott Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise in 1920 and The Great Gatsby in 1925.
Earnest Hemingway was among the writers most affected by the war. He responded to propaganda and the overblown appeal to patriotism. He wrote of disillusioned, spiritually numb American expatriates in Europe in The Sun Also Rises (1926).
Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922).
Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919).
Architecture also became popular as materialism and functionalism increased.
Wall Street's Big Bull Market
In the 1920s, the stock market became increasingly popular.
In Washington, little was done to curtail money management.
In 1921, the Republican Congress created the Bureau of the Budget in order to assist the president in preparing estimates of receipts and expenditures for submission to Congress as the annual budget. It was designed to prevent haphazardly extravagant appropriations.
Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's belief was that taxes forced the rich to invest in tax-exempt securities rather than in the factories that provided prosperous payrolls. Mellon helped create a series of tax reductions from 1921-1926 in order to help rich people. Congress followed by abolishing the gift tax, reducing excise taxes, the surtax, the income tax, and estate taxes. Mellon's policies shifted much of the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle-income groups. Mellon reduced the national debt by $10 billion.
The Politics of Boom and Bust
1920-1932
The Republican "Old Guard" Returns
Warren G. Harding was inaugurated in 1921. He, like Grant, was unable to detect immoral people working for him. He was also very soft in that he hated to say "no," hurting peoples' feelings.
Charles Evans Hughes was the secretary of state. Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh's multimillionaire aluminum king, was the secretary of the Treasury. Herbert Hoover was the secretary of commerce.
Harding's brightest and most capable officials (above) were offset by two of the worst: Senator Albert B. Fall, an anticonservationist who was the secretary of the interior, and Harry M. Daugherty, a big-time crook chosen to be the attorney general.
GOP Reaction at the Throttle
The newly-elected government officials almost directed the president's actions on the issue of government and business. They wanted not only for the government to have no control over businesses but for the government to help guide businesses along the path to profits.
In the first years of the 1920s, the Supreme Court struck down progressive legislation. The Supreme Court ruling in Adkins v. Children's Hospital(1923) declared that under the 19th Amendment, women were no longer deserving of special protection in the workplace.
Corporations under President Harding could once again expand without worry of the antitrust laws.
The Interstate Commerce Commission came to be dominated by men who were sympathetic to the managers of the railroads.
The Aftermath of War
Wartime government controls of the economy were quickly dismantled. With the Esch-Cummins Transportation Act of 1920, Congress returned the railroads to private management. Congress encouraged private ownership of the railroads and pledged the Interstate Commerce Commission to guarantee their profitability.
The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 authorized the Shipping Board to dispose of the wartime fleet of 1500 vessels at extremely low prices.
Under the La Follette Seaman's Act of 1915, American shipping could not thrive in competition with foreigners, who all too often provided their crews with wretched food and starvation wages.
Labor, suddenly deprived of its wartime crutch of friendly government support, limped along poorly in the postwar decade.
In 1921, Congress created the Veterans Bureau to operate hospitals and provide vocational rehabilitation for the disabled. Veterans organized and formed pressure groups. The American Legion was created in 1919 by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Legionnaires met to renew old hardships and let off steam. The legion became distinguished for its militant patriotism, conservatism, and antiradicalism. It convinced Congress in 1924 to pass theAdjusted Compensation Act, giving every former soldier a paid-up insurance policy due in 20 years.
America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens
Because of the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, the United States had technically been at war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary for 3 years after the armistice. To finally achieve peace, Congress passed a joint resolution in July 1921 that declared the war officially over.
Isolationism was still the idea in Washington. President Harding hated the League of Nations and at first, refused to support the League's world health program.
Harding could not completely turn his back on the world. In the Middle East, a sharp rivalry had developed between America and Britain for oil-drilling rights. Secretary Hughes eventually secured the rights for American oil companies to share the oil-rich land with Britain.
Disarmament was one international issue that Harding eventually tackled. Public pressure brought about the Washington "Disarmament" Conferencein 1921-1922. Invitations to the conference went out to all the major naval powers. Secretary Hughes laid out a plan for declaring a ten-year hiatus on construction of battleships and even for scrapping some of the huge ships already built. He proposed that the scaled-down navies of America and Britain should have the same number of battleships and aircraft carriers; the ratio being 5:5:3 (Japan's navy would be smaller than America's and Britain's).
The Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 stated that the British and Americans would refrain from fortifying their Far Eastern possessions, including the Philippines. The Japanese were not subjected to such restraints in their possessions.
A Four-Power Treaty between Britain, Japan, France and the United States replaced the 20-year old Anglo-Japanese Treaty and preserved the status quo in the Pacific.
The Hardingites were satisfied with the final results of disarmament of the navy although no restrictions had been placed on small warships, and the other powers churned ahead with the construction of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines.
In the late 1920s, Americans called for the "outlaw of war." When petitions bearing 2 million signatures reached Washington, Calvin Coolidge's secretary of state Frank. B. Kellogg signed with the French foreign minister in 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Known as the Pact of Paris, it was ratified by 62 nations. The new parchment peace was delusory in the extreme. Defensive wars were still permitted; causing one to wonder what scheming aggressor could not make an excuse of self-defense. Although virtually useless if challenged, the pact accurately reflected the American mind in the 1920s.
Hiking the Tariff Higher
Because businessmen did not want Europe flooding American markets with cheap goods after the war, Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Law in 1922, raising the tariff from 27% to 35%.
Presidents Harding and Coolidge were much more prone to increasing tariffs than decreasing them; this presented a problem: Europe needed to sell goods to the U.S. in order to get the money to pay back its war debts, and when it could not sell, it could not repay.
The Stench of Scandal
In 1923, Colonel Charles R. Forbes, head of the Veterans Bureau, was caught stealing $200 million from the government, chiefly in connection with the building of veterans' hospitals.
Most shocking of all was the Teapot Dome scandal that involved priceless naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome and Elk Hills. In 1921, the secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall, convinced the secretary of the navy to transfer these valuable properties to the Interior Department. Harding indiscreetly signed the secret order. Fall then leased the lands to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, but not until he had received a bribe of $100,000. The Teapot Dome scandal eventually leaked to the public and polluted the Washington government.
More scandals still erupted; there were reports as to the underhanded doings of Attorney General Daugherty, in which he was accused of the illegal sale of pardons and liquor permits. President Harding died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, of pneumonia and thrombosis, not having to live through much of the uproar of the scandal.
"Silent Cal" Coolidge
Vice President Calvin Coolidge took over the presidency following Harding's death. He was extremely shy and delivered very boring speeches.
Coolidge sympathized with Secretary of the Treasury Mellon's efforts to reduce both taxes and debts. He gave the Harding regime a badly needed moral fumigation.
Frustrated Farmers
Peace had brought an end to government-guaranteed high prices and to massive purchases of farm products by other nations. Machines also threatened to plow the farmers under an avalanche of their own overabundant crops. Because farmers were able to create more crops with more efficiency, the size of surpluses decreased prices.
The Capper-Volstead Act exempted farmers' marketing cooperatives from anti-trust prosecution.
The McNary-Haugen Bill sought to keep agricultural prices high by authorizing the government to buy up surpluses and sell them abroad. President Coolidge vetoed the bill twice, keeping farm prices down, and farmers' political temperatures high coming into the election of 1924.
A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924
After being split between, urbanites and farmers, Fundamentalists and Modernists, northern liberals and southern stand-patters, and immigrants and old-stock Americans, the Democrats finally chose John W. Davis to compete with Calvin Coolidge and La Follette for the presidency.
Senator La Follette from Wisconsin leapt forward to lead a new liberal Progressive party. He was endorsed by the American Federation of Labor and by farmers. The Progressive party platform called for government ownership of railroads and relief for farmers, lashed out at monopoly and antilabor injunctions, and urged a constitutional amendment to limit the Supreme Court's power to invalidate laws passed by Congress.
Calvin Coolidge won the election of 1924.
Foreign-Policy Flounderings
In the Coolidge era, isolationism continued to reign.
The armed interventionism in the Caribbean and Central America was the exception to the United States' isolation policies. American troops remained in Haiti from 1914-1934, and were stationed in Nicaragua from 1926-1933.
In 1926, the Mexican government declared its control over oil resources. Despite American oil companies clamoring for war, Coolidge resolved the situation diplomatically.
World War I had reversed the international financial position of the United States; it was now a creditor nation in the sum of about $16 billion. Americaninvestors had loaned about $10 billion to the Allies in WWI, and following the war, they wanted to be paid. The Allies, especially the French and British, protested the demand for repayment pointing out that they had lost many troops and that America should just write off the loans as war costs.
America's postwar tariff walls made it almost impossible for the European Allied nations to sell their goods to earn the dollars to pay their debts.
Unraveling the Debt Knot
America's demand for repayment from France and Britain caused the two countries to press Germany for enormous reparations payments, totaling some $32 billion, as compensation for war-inflicted damages. The Allies hoped to settle their debts with the United States with the money received from Germany.
Disputes in government on whether or not war debts and reparations should have even been paid broke out. Negotiated by Charles Dawes, the Dawes Plan of 1924 resolved this issue. It rescheduled German reparations payments and opened the way for further American private loans to Germany. United States bankers loaned money to Germany, Germany paid reparations to France and Britain, and the Allies paid war debts to the United States. After the well of investors dried up in 1931, the jungle of international finance was turned into a desert. President Herbert Hoover declared a one-year debt suspension in 1931.
The United States never did get its money from Europe.
The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, 1928
When Calvin Coolidge chose not to run for president in the election of 1928, the Republicans chose Herbert Hoover. Hoover was a small-town boy who worked his way through Stanford. His experiences abroad strengthened his faith in American individualism, free enterprise, and small government. His real power lay in his integrity, his humanitarianism, his passion for assembling the facts, his efficiency, his talents for administration, and his ability to inspire loyalty in close associates.
The Democrats nominated Alfred E. Smith. He was a Roman Catholic in an overwhelmingly Protestant country, and was "wet" at a time when the country was still devoted to prohibition.
For the first time, the radio was used prominently in election campaigns. It mostly helped Hoover's campaign.
The combination of Catholicism, wettism, foreignism, and liberalism of Smith was too much for the southerners. Herbert Hoover won the election of 1928 in a landslide, becoming the first Republican candidate in 52 years, except for Harding's Tennessee victory, to win a state that had seceded.
President Hoover's First Moves
Two groups of citizens were not getting rich in the growing economy: the unorganized wage earners and the disorganized farmers.
The Agricultural Marketing Act, passed in 1929, was designed to help the farmers. It set up the Federal Farm Board, which could lend money to farm organizations seeking to buy, sell, and store agricultural surpluses.
In 1930, the Farm Board created the Grain Stabilization Corporation and the Cotton Stabilization Corporation. Their goal was to boost falling prices by buying up surpluses. The two agencies eventually failed.
The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 started out as a mild tariff before 1,000 amendments were added to it. It raised the tariff to 60%, becoming the nation's highest protective tariff during peacetime. The tariff deepened the depression that had already begun in America and other nations, and it increased international financial chaos.
The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties
The catastrophic stock-market crash came in October 1929. It was partially triggered by the British, who raised their interest rates in an effort to bring back capital lured abroad by American investments. The British needed money; they were unable to trade with the United States due the high tariffs.
On "Black Tuesday" of October 29, 1929, millions of stocks were sold in a panic. By the end of 1929, two months after the initial crash, stockholders had lost $40 billion.
As a result of the crash, millions lost their jobs and thousands of banks closed. No other industrialized nation suffered so severe a setback as the United States.
Test Review- Multiple Choice
Important terms to define and comprehend:
- The MAIN causes for World War I
- The Members of the Central Powers
- The immediate spark [event] that led to World War I
- The Zimmerman Note
- The Treaty of Versailles
- The Kellogg-Briand Pact
- The Russian Revolution [and why Russia pulled out of WWI]
- The Dawes Plan
- The Young Plan
- President Wilson's 14 Points
- Politics of the 1920s
- The Eighteenth Amendment
- The Harlem Renaissance
- Sacco and Vanzetti
- The Teapot Dome Scandal
- The Automobile Industry
- The "Red Scare" and Xenophobia
- Al Capone
- The Emergency Quota Act of 1921
- Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith - The film was a commercial success, but was highly controversial owing to its portrayal of African-American men (played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force. There were widespread protests against The Birth of a Nation, and it was banned in several cities. The movie is also credited as one of the events that inspired the formation of the "second era" Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the same year. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruiting tool for the KKK. Under President Woodrow Wilson, it was the first motion picture to be shown at the White House.
- Margaret Sanger
- Technological advances in World War I
- The Culture Wars of the 1920s
- The "Great Migration"
- Nativism
- Henry Ford and the assembly line
- Senate's belief on the League of Nations
- Prohibition and its failure
- Marcus Garvey and Garveyism
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