Transcript Chap. 27 Notes

AMERICA AFTER WWI
Ch. 26-Understanding Postwar
Tensions Overview
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Recession A poorly planned demobilization resulted in an economic recession after World
War I. As unemployment rose, living standards for all but the richest Americans declined.
Labor unrest Unions staged thousands of strikes for better wages and working conditions.
Despite these efforts, unions began to lose strength, and their membership declined.
Red Scare Fear of socialists, communists, and anarchists fueled the Red Scare. Attorney
General Mitchell Palmer led raids against suspected subversives, often violating their civil
liberties.
Immigration restriction Congress responded to anti-immigrant pressure by restricting
immigration. A quota system also limited the number of immigrants from each country.
Back-to-Africa movement African Americans were disappointed that their service to the
country in World War I did not reduce racial prejudice. Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa
movement appealed to blacks who had given up hope for equality in the United States.
Discrimination Nativism surged in the postwar years. A revived Ku Klux Klan targeted
blacks, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics as un-American. The Anti-Defamation League
began in response to anti-Semitism. The American Civil Liberties Union formed to protect
freedom of speech.
A Republican Era Begins
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 normalcy: the concept of life as it was before World War I,
when the nation could focus on its own domestic prosperity,
which Republican candidate Warren G. Harding promoted
during the 1920 presidential election campaign and which
helped him win the presidency.
A Republican Era Begins
 Warren G. Harding-
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 Newspaper owner in Marion, Ohio before going into politics
 Cheerful, gregarious nature
 Committed to the free enterprise system: an economic system that
relies on private ownership of property, competition for profits, and
the forces of supply and demand to produce needed goods and
services and that discourages government regulation; also known as
capitalism
 Repealed taxes, reduced federal spending
 With Budget director Dawes he saves the government 1 billion
dollars ( 5 billion total) = surplus
 fiscal policy: the approach of a government to taxes and government
spending= renewed prosperity
 Unemployment from 12% to 2%
A Republican Era Begins
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 Harding suffered a heart attack in San Francisco. He died on
August 2, 1923.
 Calvin Coolidge
 Harding’s VP takes office when he dies
 "Silent Cal," Coolidge was a small man of few words. Americans
saw him as having integrity, hard work, and thriftiness
 The man who builds a factory builds a temple," he wrote. "And the
man who works there worships there.”
 Coolidge worked to cut taxes and eliminate unnecessary spending.
He pushed for reductions in corporate taxes, income taxes, and
inheritance taxes—taxes on assets received from people who have
died. Coolidge even cut his own White House budget
 Americans still prospering
 Decides not to run in 1928
A Republican Era Begins
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 Hoover was an American success story.
 Born in West Branch, Iowa, in 1874, he was orphaned at a young age.
 Despite this, he worked his way through college and became a very
wealthy mining engineer.
 At the age of 40, Hoover decided to leave engineering and devote his
life to public service.
 During World War I, he headed President Woodrow Wilson's Food
Administration.
 When the war ended, Hoover gained fame by setting up programs to
feed the hungry in Europe.
 In 1921, President Harding made Hoover his secretary of commerce.
 Also believed in promoting business
 Hoover hoped that as businesses flourished, poverty would
disappear.
Engaging the World in an Era of
Isolationism
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 The horrors of World War I had left many Americans
yearning for a withdrawal from international affairs,
a policy that became known as isolationism- a
government policy of not taking part in economic
and political alliances or relations with other
countries
 At heart Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were not
isolationists. They recognized that foreign trade
connected American farmers and businesspeople to
the rest of the world.
 Isolationist feeling was strongest toward Europe.
Engaging the World in an Era of
Isolationism
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 American distrust of the League of Nations softened with
time.
 US wants to be on the world court- by time they get around to
wanting in no one else wants us in
 Washington Naval Conference: a 1921 international
conference, including representatives of Britain, France, Italy,
and Japan and hosted by the United States in Washington,
D.C., to discuss naval disarmament and resulting in
agreements to discuss power conflicts in the Pacific, to reduce
or limit the size of each nation's navy, to regulate submarine
use, and to ban poison gas use
 disarmament: the process of reducing the number of weapons
in a nation's arsenal or the size of its armed forces
Engaging the World in an Era of
Isolationism
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 Kellogg-Briand Pact: an agreement made among most
nations of the world in 1928 to try to settle international
disputes by peaceful means rather than war
 At the end of World War I, Great Britain and France owed
U.S. lenders $11 billion
 . With their economies in shambles, these countries relied
on reparations from Germany to make their loan payments.
 The German economy, however, was in even worse shape.
By 1923, Germany had stopped making reparation
payments.
Engaging the World in an Era of
Isolationism
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 Dawes Plan: developed by banker Charles Dawes, a
plan for Germany to repay reparations after World
War I by receiving loans from the United States
 American banks would loan money to Germany.
Germany would use that money to pay reparations
to Great Britain and France. Great Britain and France
would then repay what they owed American
lenders.
 Works for a while but increased the amount of
money Germany owed the United States, an issue
that would cause problems later.
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Engaging the World in an Era of
Isolationism
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 Isolationist sentiment also had an impact on U.S.
policy toward Latin America.
 921, U.S. troops were stationed in Nicaragua, the
Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Harding and
Coolidge both tried to reduce such entanglements.
 Hoover, however, embraced a policy of
nonintervention. Immediately after his election in
1928, he embarked on a goodwill tour of Latin
America.
The Republican Boom Years
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 Under the economic policies of the Republican
presidents, the post-World War I recession faded
away
 Businesses began to expand.
 Productivity increased dramatically.
 Unemployment dropped and wages rose to double
what they had been before the war.
 By 1929, the United States was producing 40 percent of
the world's manufactured goods.
The Republican Boom Years
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 Henry Ford Pioneers a New Age of Mass Production
 The automobile industry's rapid expansion fueled
growth in other industries
 steel, rubber, and oil.
 Highways, gas stations, hotels, camping etc.
 By the mid-1920s, one of every eight American
workers had a job related to the auto industry.
 Airplanes
 Plastics
The Republican Boom Years
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 Consolidation- the merging, or combining, of two businesses.
 Before 1910, there were hundreds of companies building cars in
the United States. By 1929, three automakers—Ford, General
Motors, and Chrysler—built almost 90 percent of the cars on the
market
 Others saw the stock market as the road to riches.
 Dow Jones Industrial Average: a commonly used daily measure
of stock prices doubled
 gross national product: the total value of goods and services
produced in a country in a year
 Rose by 40%
 929, a family of four needed $2,500 a year to live decently. More
than half the families filing tax returns that year earned $1,500 or
less.
 Farmers and unskilled workers had a hard time, however.