Roaring 20s and Depressing 30s

1920s APUSH Vocabulary

1. "The Jazz Singer"
2. "This Side of Paradise"
3. Al Capone
4. Albert Fall
5. Andrew Mellon
6. Assembly Line
7. Billy Sunday
8. Calvin Coolidge
9. Charles Evans Hughes
10. Charles Forbes
11. Charles Lindbergh
12. Dawes Plan
13. Emergency Quota Act
14. Flappers
15. Fordney-McCumber Tariff
16. Harlem Renaissance
17. Harry Daugherty
18. Hawley-Smoot Tariff
19. Henry Ford
20. Herbert Hoover
21. Immigration Quota Act
22. Isolationism
23. Kellogg-Briand Pact
24. Laissez-Faire
25. Langston Hughes
26. Louis Armstrong
27. Marcus Garvey
28. National Origins Act
29. New KKK
30. Prohibition
31. Red Scare
32. Return to Normalcy
33. Sacco and Vanzetti
34. Scopes Trial
35. Speakeasies
36. Speculation
37. Teapot Dome
38. Trickle Down Economics
39. Warren G. Harding
40. Washington Conference

IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS EDITORIAL

For homework, write an editorial from the point of view of either supporting or opposing immigration restriction. The editorial should cover information addressed during class and from readings.

Consider the following:

• How did the composition of immigrants change after 1880?
• How were the “new” immigrants post-1880 different from the “old” immigrants pre-1880?
• Which immigrants, if any, should be targeted for restriction?
• What were the fears of native-born Americans regarding the new immigrants?
• Which groups in American society favored immigration restriction? 
• And which groups opposed such restriction?
• How will restriction solve the problems of America?
• What are the benefits of immigration restriction? 
• What are the drawbacks of immigration restriction?
• Should the United States adopt a policy of immigration restriction?

1930s APUSH Vocabulary

1. "cash and carry"
2. A. Philip Randolph
3. Adolf Hitler
4. Albert Einstein
5. Anti-Injunction Act
6. Benito Mussolini
7. Black Tuesday
8. Bonus Army
9. Brain Trust
10. Buying on Margin
11. Civilian Conservation Corps
12. Congress of Industrial Organizations
13. Cordell Hull
14. Court-packing scheme
15. Eleanor Roosevelt
16. Fair Employment Practice Commission
17. Fair Labor Standards Acts
18. Father Coughlin
19. Frances Perkins
20. Francis Townshend
21. Francisco Franco
22. Franklin D. Roosevelt
23. George W. Norris
24. Glass-Steagall Act
25. Good Neighbor Policy
26. Harold Ickes
27. Harry Hopkins
28. Herbert Hoover
29. Hoover-Stimson doctrine
30. Huey Long
31. John L. Lewis
32. Joseph Stalin
33. Liberty League
34. National Labor Relation Board
35. National Recovery Act
36. Neutrality Acts
37. New Deal
38. Parity
39. Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act
40. Reciprocity
41. Reconstruction Finance Corporation
42. Social Security Act
43. Tennessee Valley Authority
44. Twentieth Amendment
45. Twenty-first Amendment
46. Wagner Act
47. Winston Churchill
48. Works Progress Administration

Video Quiz – The Grapes of Wrath

Directions: Answer each of the following questions completely.

1. Where was Tom Joad coming back from at the beginning of the movie and why? 
2. Why did the Joad family (and other families) leave their home in Oklahoma? 
3. Why did they decide to move to California, specifically? 
4. How were the Okies (Joad family and others from Oklahoma) treated as they traveled to and arrived in California?  
5. What happened when the workers broke the strikes (became scabs)? 
6. How was the Wheat Pickers Camp (the camp ran by the Department of Agriculture) different from other camps? 
7. Why did Tom Joad feel he had to leave his family? 
8. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?
9. What was your favorite part of the movie? Why?
10. What was your least favorite part of the movie? Why? 

Chapter 31
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. Debs and 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 the congressional 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 Governor Calvin 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.

Chapter 32
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 Palmer was 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 the Emergency 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.

Chapter 33

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 the Adjusted 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" Conference in 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.  American investors 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.

Hooked on the Horn of Plenty

• One of the main causes of the Great Depression was overproduction by both farm and factory.  The nation's ability to produce goods had outrun its capacity to consume or pay for them.  All the money was being invested in factories and other agencies of production; not enough money was going into salaries and wages.  Overexpansion of credit also contributed to the depression.

• The Great Depression continued the economic destruction of Europe, which had not yet fully recovered from WWI.

• In the 1930s, a terrible drought scorched the Mississippi Valley, causing thousands of farms to be sold.

Rugged Times for Rugged Individuals

• In the beginning of the Great Depression, President Hoover believed that industry and self-reliance had made America great and that the government should play no role in the welfare of the people.  He soon realized, however, that the welfare of the people in a nationwide catastrophe was a direct concern of the government.

• Hoover developed a plan in which the government would assist the railroads, banks, and rural credit corporations in the hope that if financial health was restored at the top of the economic pyramid, then unemployment would be relieved as the prosperity trickled down.  Hoover's efforts were criticized because he gave government money to the big bankers who had allegedly started the depression.

Herbert Hoover Battles the Great Depression

• President Hoover secured from Congress $2.25 billion for useful public works.  (ex. the Hoover Dam)

• Hoover was strongly opposed to all schemes that he saw as "socialistic."  He vetoed the Muscle Shoals Bill, which was designed to dam the Tennessee River and sell government-produced electricity in competition with citizens in private companies.

• In 1932, Congress established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which was designed to provide indirect economic relief by assisting insurance companies, banks, agricultural organizations, railroads, and state and local governments.

• Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act in 1932, outlawing antiunion contracts and fording federal courts to issue injunctions to restrain strikes, boycotts, and peaceful picketing.

Routing the Bonus Army in Washington

• Veterans of WWI were among the hardest hit by the Great Depression.  A drive developed for the premature payment of the suspended bonus vetoed by Congress in 1924.

• The "Bonus Expeditionary Force" (BEF), which claimed about 20,000 people, converged on the capital in the summer of 1932, demanding the immediate payment of their entire bonus.

• After the BEF refused to leave the capital, President Hoover sent in the army to evacuate the group.  The ensuing riots and incidents brought additional public abuse of Hoover.

Japanese Militarists Attack China

• In September 1931, Japanese imperialists, seeing that the Western world was bogged down in the Great Depression, invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria.  Although a direct violation of the League of Nations, the League was unable to do anything because it could not count on America's support.

• In 1932, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson decided to only diplomatically attack the Japanese aggressors by issuing the Stimson doctrine.  It declared that the United States would not recognize any territorial acquisitions achieved by force.  Japan ignored the doctrine and moved onto Shanghai in 1932.  The violence continued without the League of Nation's intervention as WWII was born.

Hoover Pioneers the Good Neighbor Policy

• President Hoover brought better relations with America's Latin American neighbors.  An advocate of international goodwill, he withdrew American troops from Latin America. 

• He had engineered the foundation of a "Good Neighbor" policy.

Chapter 34

The Great Depression and the New Deal

1933-1939

• As the election of 1932 neared, unemployment and poverty brought dissent of President Hoover and a demand for a change in policy.  The Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover to run for president in the election of 1932.  The Democrats chose Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He had been born to a wealthy New York family and served as the governor of New York.

FDR:  Politician in a Wheelchair

• Franklin D. Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was to become the most active First Lady in history.  She powerfully influenced the policies of the national government, battling for the impoverished and oppressed.

• Roosevelt's commanding presence and golden speaking voice made him the premier American orator of his generation.

Presidential Hopefuls of 1932

• In the Democratic campaign of 1932, Roosevelt attacked the Republican Old Deal and concentrated on preaching a New Deal for the "forgotten man."  He promised to balance the nation's budget and decrease the heavy Hooverian deficits.

• Although the campaign for the Republicans was dire, Herbert Hoover reaffirmed his faith in American free enterprise and individualism.  He predicted prosperity if the Hawley-Smoot Tariff was repealed.

Hoover's Humiliation in 1932

• Franklin Roosevelt won the election of 1932 by a sweeping majority, in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

• Beginning in the election of 1932, blacks became, notably in the urban centers of the North, a vital element of the Democratic Party.

FDR and the Three R's:  Relief, Recovery, Reform

• Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933.

• On March 6-10, President Roosevelt declared a national banking holiday as a prelude to opening the banks on a sounder basis.  The Hundred Days Congress/Emergency Congress (March 9-June 16, 1933) passed a series laws in order to cope with the national emergency (The Great Depression).

• Roosevelt's New Deal programs aimed at 3 R's:  relief, recovery, reform.  Short-range goals were relief and immediate recovery, and long-range goals were permanent recovery and reform of current abuses.

• Congress gave President Roosevelt extraordinary blank-check powers:  some of the laws it passed expressly delegated legislative authority to the president.

• The New Dealers embraced such progressive ideas as unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, minimum-wage regulations, conservation and development of natural resources, and restrictions on child labor.

Roosevelt Tackles Money and Banking

• The impending banking crisis caused Congress to pass the Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933.  It gave the president power to regulate banking transactions and foreign exchange and to reopen solvent banks.  President Roosevelt began to give "fireside chats" over the radio in order to restore public confidence of banks.

• Congress then passed the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).  A reform program, the FDIC insured individual bank deposits up to $5,000, ending the epidemic of bank failures.

• In order to protect the shrinking gold reserve, President Roosevelt ordered all private holdings of gold to be given to the Treasury in exchange for paper currency and then the nation to be taken off the gold standard-Congress passed laws providing for these measures.

• The goal of Roosevelt's "managed currency" was inflation, which he believed would relieve debtors' burdens and stimulate new production.  Inflation was achieved through gold buying; the Treasury purchased gold at increasing prices, increasing the dollar price of gold.  This policy increased the amount of dollars in circulation.

Creating Jobs for the Jobless

• President Roosevelt had no qualms about using federal money to assist the unemployed in order to jumpstart the economy.  Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which provided employment for about 3 million men in government camps.  Their work included reforestation, fire fighting, flood control, and swamp drainage.

• Congress's first major effort to deal with the massive unemployment was to pass the Federal Emergency Relief Act.  The resulting Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was headed by Harry L. Hopkins.  Hopkins's agency granted about $3 billion to the states for direct relief payments or for wages on work projects.  Created in 1933, the Civil Works Administration (CWA), a branch of the FERA, was designed to provide temporary jobs during the winter emergency.  Thousands of unemployed were employed at leaf raking and other manual-labor jobs.

• Relief was given to the farmers with the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), making available millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages.

• The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) assisted many households that had trouble paying their mortgages.

A Day for Every Demagogue

• As unemployment and suffering continued, radical opponents to Roosevelt's New Deal began to arise.  Father Charles Coughlin's anti-New Deal radio broadcasts eventually became so anti-Semitic and fascistic that he was forced off the air.  Senator Huey P. Long publicized his "Share Our Wealth" program in which every family in the United States would receive $5,000.  His fascist plans ended when he was assassinated in 1935.  Dr. Francis E. Townsend attracted millions of senior citizens with his plan that each citizen over the age of 60 would receive $200 a month.

• Congress passed the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935, with the objective of employment on useful projects (i.e. the construction of buildings, roads, etc.).  Taxpayers criticized the agency for paying people to due "useless" jobs such as painting murals.

A Helping Hand for Industry and Labor

• The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was designed to assist industry, labor, and the unemployed.  Individual industries, through "fair competition" codes, were forced to lower their work hours so that more people could be hired; a minimum wage was also established.  Workers were formally guaranteed the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their choosing, not through the company's choosing. 

• Although initially supported by the public, collapse of the NRA came in 1935 with the Supreme Court's Schechter decision in which it was ruled that Congress could not "delegate legislative powers" to the president and that congressional control of interstate commerce could apply to local fowl business.

• The Public Works Administration (PWA) was intended for both industrial recovery and for unemployment relief.  Headed by Harold L. Ickes, the agency spent over $4 billion on thousands of projects, including public buildings and highways.

• In order to raise federal revenue and provide a level of employment, Congress repealed prohibition with the 21st Amendment in late 1933.

Paying Farmers Not to Farm

• Congress created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA).  It established "parity prices" for basic commodities.  "Parity" was the price set for a product that gave it the same real value, in purchasing power, that it had from 1909-1914.  The agency also paid farmers to reduce their crop acreage, eliminating surpluses, while at the same time increasing unemployment.

• The Supreme Court struck down the AAA in 1936, declaring its regulatory taxation provisions unconstitutional.

• The New Deal Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936.  The reduction of crop acreage was now achieved by paying farmers to plant soil-conserving crops.

• The Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 continued conservation payments; if farmers obeyed acreage restrictions on specific commodities, they would be eligible for parity payments.

Dust Bowls and Black Blizzards

• Late in 1933, a prolonged drought struck the states of the trans-Mississippi Great Plains.  The Dust Bowl was partially caused by the cultivation of countless acres, dry-farming techniques, and mechanization.

• Sympathy towards the affected farmers came with the Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act, passed in 1934.  It made possible a suspension of mortgage foreclosures for 5 years.  It was struck down in 1935 by the Supreme Court.

• In 1935, President Roosevelt set up the Resettlement Administration, given the task of moving near-farmless farmers to better lands.

• The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 encouraged Native American tribes to establish self-government and to preserve their native crafts and traditions.  77 tribes refused to organize under the law, while hundreds did organize.

Battling Bankers and Big Business

• In order to protect the public against fraud, Congress passed the "Truth in Securities Act" (Federal Securities Act), requiring promoters to transmit to the investor sworn information regarding the soundness of their stocks and bonds.

• In 1934, Congress took further steps to protect the public with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  It was designed as a watchdog administrative agency.

The TVA Harnesses the Tennessee River

• Zealous New Dealers accused the electric-power industry of gouging the public with excessive rates.

• 2.5 million of America's most poverty-stricken people inhabited Muscle Shoals.  If the government constructed a dam on the Tennessee River in Muscle Shoals, it could combine the immediate advantage of putting thousands of people to work with a long-term project for reforming the power monopoly. 

• In 1933, the Hundred Days Congress created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).  It was assigned the task of predicting how much the production and distribution of electricity would cost so that a "yardstick" could be set up to test the fairness of rates charged by private companies.

• The large project of constructing dams on the Tennessee River brought to the area full employment, the blessings of cheap electric power, low-cost housing, abundant cheap nitrates, the restoration of eroded soil, reforestation, improved navigation, and flood control.  The once-poverty-stricken area was being turned into one of the most flourishing regions in the United States.

• The conservative reaction against the "socialistic" New Deal would confine the TVA's brand of federally guided resource management and comprehensive regional development to the Tennessee Valley.

Housing Reform and Social Security

• To speed recovery and better homes, President Roosevelt set up the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 1934.

• To strengthen the FHA, Congress created the United States Housing Authority (USHA) in 1937.  It was designed to lend money to states or communities for low-cost construction.

• The more important success of New Dealers was in the field of unemployment insurance and old-age pensions.  The Social Security Act of 1935 provided for federal-state unemployment insurance.  To provide security for old age, specified categories of retired workers were to receive regular payments from Washington.

• Republicans were strongly opposed to Social Security.  Social Security was inspired by the example of some of the more highly industrialized nations of Europe.

• In an urbanized economy, the government was now recognizing its responsibility for the welfare of its citizens.

A New Deal for Unskilled Labor

• When the Supreme Court struck down the National Recovery Administration (NRA), Congress, sympathetic towards labor unions, passed the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act).  This law created a powerful National Labor Relations Board for administrative purposes and reasserted the rights of labor to engage in self-organization and to bargain collectively through representatives of its own choice.

• The stride for unskilled workers to organize was lead by John L. Lewis, boss of the United Mine Workers.  He formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1935.  The CIO led a series of strikes including the sit-down strike at the General Motors automobile factory in 1936.

• Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (Wages and Hours Bill) in 1938.  Industries involved in interstate commerce were to set up minimum-wage and maximum-hour levels.  Labor by children under the age of 16 was forbidden.

• In 1938, the CIO joined with the AF of L and the name "Committee for Industrial Organization" was changed to "Congress of Industrial Organizations."-led by John Lewis.  By 1940, the CIO claimed about 4 million members.

Landon Challenges "the Champ" in 1936

• As the election of 1936 neared, the New Dealers had achieved considerable progress, and millions of "reliefers" were grateful to their government.

• The Republicans chose Alfred M. Landon to run against President Roosevelt.  The Republicans condemned the New Deal for its radicalism, experimentation, confusion, and "frightful waste."

• President Roosevelt was reelected as president in a lopsided victory.  FDR won primarily because he had appealed to the "forgotten man."  He had forged a powerful and enduring coalition of the South, blacks, urbanites, and the poor.

Nine Old Men on the Supreme Bench

• Ratified in 1933, the 20th Amendment shortened the period from election to inauguration by 6 weeks.  FDR took the presidential oath on January 20, 1937, instead of the traditional March 4.

• Roosevelt saw his reelection as a mandate to continue the New Deal reforms.  The ultraconservative justices on the Supreme Court proved to be a threat to the New Deal as the Roosevelt administration had been thwarted 7 times in cases against the New Deal.

• With his reelection, Roosevelt felt that the American people had wanted the New Deal.  If the American way of life was to be preserved, he argued, and then the Supreme Court had to get in line with public opinion.  President Roosevelt released his plan to ask Congress to pass legislation allowing him to appoint one new justice to the Supreme Court for every member over the age of 70 who would not retire; the maximum number of justices would now be 15.  Shocking both Congress and the public, the plan received much negative feedback.

The Court Changes Course

• President Roosevelt was belittled for attempting to break down the checks and balances system among the 3 branches of government.

• Justice Owen J. Roberts, formerly regarded as a conservative, began to vote liberal.  In March 1937, the Supreme Court upheld the principle of state minimum wage for women, reversing its stand on a different case a year earlier.  The Court, now sympathetic towards the New Deal, upheld the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) and the Social Security Act.

• A succession of deaths and resignations of justices enabled Roosevelt to appoint 9 justices to the Court.

• FDR aroused conservatives of both parties in Congress so that few New Deal reforms were passed after 1937.  He lost much of the political goodwill that had helped him to win the election of 1936.

The Twilight of the New Deal

• In Roosevelt's first term, from 1933-1937, unemployment still ran high and recovery had been relatively slow.  In 1937, the economy took another downturn as new Social Security taxes began to cut into payrolls and as the Roosevelt administration cut back on spending out of the continuing reverence for the orthodox economic doctrine of the balanced budget.

• The New Deal had run deficits for several years, but all of them had been somewhat small and none was intended.  Roosevelt embraced the recommendations of the British economist John Maynard Keynes.  The newly-accepted "Keynesianism" economic program was to stimulate the economy by planned deficit spending.

• In 1939, Congress passed the Reorganization Act, giving President Roosevelt limited powers for administrative reforms, including the new Executive Office in the White House.

• Congress passed the Hatch Act of 1939, barring federal administrative officials from active political campaigning and soliciting.  It also forbade the use of government funds for political purposes as well as the collection of campaign contributions from people receiving relief payments.

New Deal or Raw Deal?

• Foes of the New Deal charged the president of spending too much money on his programs, significantly increasing the national debt; by 1939, the national debt was at $40,440,000,000.  Lavish financial aid and relief were undermining the old virtue of initiative.

• Private enterprise was being suppressed and states' rights were being ignored.  The most damning indictment of the New Deal was that it did not end the depression; it merely administered "aspirin, sedatives, and Band-Aids."  Not until World War II was the unemployment problem solved.

FDR's Balance Sheet

• New Deal supporters had pointed out that relief, not economy, had been the primary objective of their war on the depression.  Roosevelt believed that the government was morally bound to prevent mass hunger and starvation by "managing" the economy.

• FDR was a Hamiltonian in his idea of big government, but a Jeffersonian in his concern for the "forgotten man."

• New Deal Acronyms

ACRONYM DEFINITION

AAA Agricultural Adjustment Administration

CCC Civilian Conservation Corps

CWA Civil Works Administration

FERA Federal Emergency Relief Administration

FHA Federal Housing Administration

FSA         Farm Security Administration

HOLC Home Owners Loan Corporation

NRA National Recovery Administration

NYA National Youth Administration

PWA Public Works Administration

REA Rural Electrification Administration

SSA         Social Security Administration

TVA Tennessee Valley Authority

WPA Work Projects (Progress) Administration

Chapter 35

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow of War

1933-1941

The London Conference

• In the summer of 1933, 66 nations sent delegates to the London Economic Conference.  The delegates hoped to organize a coordinated international attack on the global depression.  They sought to stabilize the values of various nations' currencies and the rates at which they could be exchanged.

• President Roosevelt, at first, agreed to send delegates to the conference, but had second thoughts after he realized that an international agreement to maintain the value of the dollar in terms of other currencies wouldn't allow him to inflate the value of the dollar.  He declared that America wouldn't take place in the negotiations.

• Without support from the United States, the London Economic Conference fell apart.  The collapse strengthened the global trend towards nationalism, while making international cooperation increasingly difficult.

Freedom for (from?) the Filipinos and Recognition for the Russians

• Increasing the nation's isolationism, President Roosevelt withdrew from Asia.  Bowing to organized labor's demands of the exclusion of low-wage Filipino workers, Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934, providing for the independence of the Philippines by 1946.  The nation did not want to have to support the Philippines if Japan attacked there.

• In 1933, Roosevelt formally recognized the Soviet Union, opening up trade and bolstering a friendly counter-weight to the possible threat of German power in Europe and Japanese power in Asia.

Becoming a Good Neighbor

• President Roosevelt initiated the Good Neighbor policy, renouncing armed intervention in Latin America.  The last marines left Haiti in 1934; Cuba, under the Platt Amendment, was released from American control; and the grip on Panama was relaxed in 1936.

• When the Mexican government seized American oil properties in 1938, President Roosevelt held to his unarmed intervention policy and a settlement was eventually worked out in 1941, causing the oil companies to lose much of their original stake.

Secretary Hull's Reciprocal Trade Agreements

• Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1934.  Designed to lower the tariff, it aimed at both relief and recovery.  Secretary of State Hull succeeded in negotiating pacts with 21 countries by the end of 1939.  These pacts were essentially trade agreements that stated if the United States lowered its tariff, then the other country would do the same.  With the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, the president was empowered to lower existing rates by as much as 50% provided that the other country involved would do the same.

• During these years of trade agreements, U.S. foreign trade increased dramatically.  The act paved the way for the American-led free-trade international economic system that took shape after WWII.

Impulses Toward Storm-Cellar Isolationism

• Joseph Stalin took control of the Communist USSR, Benito Mussolini took control of Italy in 1922, and Adolf Hitler took control of Germany.  Hitler was the most dangerous of all of them because he combined tremendous power with impulsiveness.

• In 1936, Nazi Hitler and Fascist Mussolini allied themselves in the Rome-Berlin Axis.

• Determined to find a place in the Asiatic sun, Japan terminated the Washington Naval Treaty and accelerated their construction of giant battleships.

• Mussolini, seeking power and glory in Africa, attacked Ethiopia in 1935.

• In 1934, Congress passed the Johnson Debt Default Act, preventing the debt-dodging nations from borrowing further in the United States.  Americans maintained the isolationist mentality due to the ocean borders.

Congress Legislates Neutrality

• Responding to overwhelming popular pressure, Congress passed the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937.  The acts stated that when the president proclaimed the existence of a foreign war, certain restrictions would automatically go into effect.  No American could legally sail on a belligerent ship, sell or transport munitions to a belligerent, or make loans to a belligerent.

• The Neutrality Acts were made to keep the United States out of a conflict.  By declining to use its vast industrial strength to aid its democratic friends and defeat its totalitarian foes, the United States helped to provoke the aggressors.

America Dooms Loyalist Spain

• The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 started when Spanish rebels, led by General Francisco Franco, rose against the left-wing Republican government in Madrid.  Aided by Mussolini and Hitler, Franco undertook to overthrow the Loyalist regime, which was assisted by the Soviet Union.

• Although it was legal for the United States to send aid to the Loyalist regime, the United States desperately wanted to stay out of war; Congress amended the existing neutrality legislation so as to apply an arms embargo to both Loyalists and rebels.

Appeasing Japan and Germany

• In 1937, the Japanese militarists touched off an explosion that led to the all-out invasion of China.  President Roosevelt declined to invoke the recently passed neutrality legislation by refusing to call the "China incident" an officially declared war.  If he had, he would have cut off the trickle of munitions on which the Chinese were dependent.  The Japanese, as a result, were able to continue to buy war supplies in the United States.

• In 1937, Japanese planes sunk an American gunboat, the Panay.  Tokyo was quick to make apologies and the United States accepted.

• In 1935, Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles when he introduced mandatory military service in Germany.  In 1936, he again violated the treaty when he took over the demilitarized German Rhineland.

• In March 1938, Hitler invaded Austria.  (Note:  Austria actually voted for the occupation, fully aware that if it resisted, Germany would forcefully take over Austria.)

• At a conference in Munich, Germany in September 1938, the Western European democracies, unprepared for war, betrayed Czechoslovakia to Germany when they gave away Sudetenland.  They hoped that by doing this, Hitler's greed for power would end.

• In March 1939, Hitler took control of Czechoslovakia.  (See Austria note.)

Hitler's Belligerency and U.S. Neutrality

• On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression treaty with Hitler.  The Hitler-Stalin pact meant that Germany could make war on Poland and the Western democracies without fear of retaliation from the Soviet Union.

• Hitler demanded from Poland a return of the areas taken from Germany after WWI.  After Poland failed to meet his demands, Hitler militarily invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.  Britain and France, honoring their commitments to Poland, declared war on Germany; World War II had started.

• Although Americans were strongly anti-Nazi, they were desperately determined to stay out of the war.

• The Neutrality Act of 1937 placed a arms trade embargo on Spain and extended the current embargo on Britain and France.

• Heeding to the need of France and Britain of war materials from America, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1939.  It stated that the European democracies could buy American war materials as long as they would transport the munitions on their own ships after paying for them in cash.  America thus avoided loans, war debts, and the torpedoing of American arms-carriers.

• Overseas demand for war goods brought a sharp upswing from the recession of 1937-1938 and ultimately solved the decade-long unemployment crisis.

The Fall of France

• The months following the collapse of Poland were known as the "phony war."

• The Soviet Union took over Finland despite Congress loaning $30 million to Finland.

• Hitler overran Denmark and Norway in April 1940, ending the "phony war."  Hitler then moved on to the Netherlands and Belgium.  By late June 1940, France was forced to surrender.

• When France surrendered, Americans realized that England was all that stood between Hitler controlling all of Europe.  Roosevelt moved with tremendous speed to call upon the nation to build huge airfleets and a two-ocean navy.  Congress approved a spending of $37 billion.  On September 6, 1940, Congress passed a conscription law; under this measure, America's first peacetime draft was initiated-provision was made for training 1.2 million troops and 800,000 reserves each year.

• With the Netherlands, Denmark, and France all fallen to German control, it was unsure what would happen to the colonies of Latin America (the New World).  At the Havana Conference of 1940, the United States agreed to share with its 20 New World neighbors the responsibility of upholding the Monroe Doctrine.

Bolstering Britain with the Destroyer Deal (1940)

• After France fell to Germany in the Battle of France (June), Hitler launched a series of air attacks against Britain in August 1940.  The Battle of Britain raged in the air over the British Isles for months.  During the Battle of Britain, radio broadcasts brought the drama from London air raids directly to America homes.  Sympathy for Britain grew, but it was not yet sufficient to push the United States into war. 

• President Roosevelt faced a historic decision:  whether to hunker down in the Western Hemisphere and let the rest of the world go it alone; or to bolster Britain by all means short of war itself.

• The most powerful group of those who supported aid for Britain was the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.  Isolationists organized the America First Committee, contending that America should concentrate what strength it had to defend its own shores.

• On September 2, 1940, President Roosevelt agreed to transfer to 50 destroyers left over from WWI to Britain.  In return, Britain agreed to hand over to the United States 8 valuable defensive base sites.  Shifting warships from a neutral United States to Britain was a flagrant violation of the neutrality obligations.

FDR Shatters the Two-Term Tradition (1940)

• The Republicans chose Wendell L. Willkie to run against President Roosevelt.  Willkie's great appeal lay in his personality.  The Republican platform condemned FDR's alleged dictatorship, as well as the New Deal.  Willkie was opposed not so much to the New Deal as to its extravagances and inefficiencies.

• Roosevelt challenged the sacred two-term tradition when he decided that in such a grave crisis he owed his experienced hand to the service of his country.

• Both presidential nominees promised to stay out of the war, and both promised to strengthen the nation's defenses.

• FDR won the election of 1940; voters generally felt that should war come, the experience of FDR was needed.

Congress Passes the Landmark Lend-Lease Law

• Fearing the collapse of Britain, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Bill in 1941.  Nicknamed "An Act Further to

• Promote the Defense of the United States," it allowed for American arms to be lent or leased to the democracies of the world that needed them.  When the war was over, the guns and tanks could be returned. 

• Key opponents of the bill, such as Senator Taft, criticized it, reporting that the arms would be destroyed and unable to be returned after the war.  It was praised by the FDR administration as a device that would keep the nation out of the war rather than dragging it in.  America would send a limitless supply of arms to victims of aggression, who would in turn finish the war and keep it on their side of the Atlantic.

• Lend-lease was a challenge thrown at the Axis dictators; America pledged itself to bolster those nations that were indirectly fighting it by fighting aggression.  The bill marked the abandonment of any pretense of neutrality.

• Hitler recognized the Lend-Lease Bill as an unofficial declaration of war.  Until then, Germany had avoided attacking U.S. ships.  On May 21, 1941, the Robin Moor, an unarmed American merchantman, was destroyed by a German submarine in the South Atlantic, outside the war zone.

Hitler's Assault on the Soviet Union Spawns the Atlantic Charter

• Two events marked the course of WWII before the assault on Pearl Harbor:  the fall of France in June 1940, and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

• Even though the two nations were bound to peace under the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, neither Hitler nor Stalin trusted one another.  Hitler decided to crush the Soviet Union, seize the oil and other resources of the Soviet Union, and then have two free hands to battle Britain.

• On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched an attack on the Soviet Union.  President Roosevelt immediately promised assistance and backed up his words by making some military supplies available.

• With the surrender of the Soviet Union a very real possibility, the Atlantic Conference was held in August 1941.  Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met and discussed common problems of the world.  The two men came up with the eight-point Atlantic Charter, outlining the aspirations of the democracies for a better world at the war's end.  The Atlantic Charter promised that there would be no territorial changes contrary to the wishes of the inhabitants; it affirmed the right of a people to choose their own form of government and to regain the governments abolished by the dictators; and it declared for disarmament and a peace of security, pending a new League of Nations.

U.S. Destroyers and Hitler's U-boats Clash

• FDR made the decision to escort the shipments of arms to Britain by U.S. warships in July 1941.  In September 1941, the U.S. destroyer Greer was attacked by a U-boat, without suffering damage.  Roosevelt then proclaimed a shoot-on-sight policy.  On October 17 the destroyer Kearny was crippled by a U-boat.  Two weeks later, the destroyer Reuben James was sunk off southwestern Iceland.

• Congress voted in November 1941 to repeal the Neutrality Act of 1939, enabling merchant ships to be legally armed and enter the combat zones with munitions for Britain.

Surprise Assault of Pearl Harbor

• Since September 1940, Japan had been allied with Germany.  In late 1940, Washington imposed the first of its embargoes on Japan-bound supplies.  The State Department insisted that the Japanese clear out of China, offering to renew trade relations on a limited basis.  Forced with the choice of succumbing to the Americans or continued conquest, the Japanese chose to fight.

• On "Black Sunday" December 7, 1941, Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor, killing 2,348 people.  (List of those who died) 

• On December 11, 1941, Congress declared war.

America's Transformation from Bystander to Belligerent

• Pearl Harbor was not the full answer to the question of why the United States went to war.  Following the fall of France, Americans were confronted with a devil's dilemma.  They desired to stay out of the conflict, yet they did not want Britain to be knocked out.  To keep Britain from collapsing, the Roosevelt administration felt compelled to extend the unneutral aid that invited attacks from German submarines.  Americans wished to stop Japan's conquests in the Far East.  To keep Japan from expanding, Washington undertook to cut off vital Japanese supplies with embargoes that invited possible retaliation. 

• Rather than let democracy die and dictatorship rule, most Americans were determined to support a policy that might lead to war.