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The Conflicted Legacies of WWI

The Conflicted Legacies of WWI. What threats did democracy face in the immediate post-war period?. Demobilization = Economic Turmoil. Return to a peacetime economy Government abandon wartime controls on industry Cancelled millions of dollars in war contracts

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The Conflicted Legacies of WWI

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  1. The Conflicted Legacies of WWI What threats did democracy face in the immediate post-war period?

  2. Demobilization = Economic Turmoil • Return to a peacetime economy • Government abandon wartime controls on industry • Cancelled millions of dollars in war contracts • Businesses raised prices they had been forced to keep low during the war • 3 million soldiers return & flood job market = High unemployment • Increase demand for consumer goods = Post-war spending spree = Rapid inflation • 1919 prices rose 75% over pre-war levels • 1920 prices rose another 28% • Workers lose gains made during war time • 8 hr. work day gone • Labor unions no longer recognized • Post War Recession

  3. Post-War Labor Unrest 1919 = 3,600 strike involving 4 million workers • Seattle General Strike (Feb. 1919) • Shipyard workers unemployed due to demobilization • IWW & AFL called for strike to shut down the city • Newspapers claimed “a Bolshevik effort to start a revolution” • Mayor used troops to crush strike • Boston Police Strike (Sept. 1919) • Police want higher pay • Refused to walk beats = riots erupt = looter sack the city • Gov. Calvin Coolidge called in National Guard “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.” • Steel Strike of 1919 • Industry plan return to 7-day weeks, 12-hr. days & $20/week • Gompers (AFL) call for strike & 350,000 workers in 15 states walked out • 30,000 strikebreakers hired (mostly African-Americans) Convinced public strikers were radicals bent on subverting democracy & capitalism!

  4. The Red Scare Fear of Internal Subversion • Causes: • Post-war recession • Labor unrest • Difficulties of reintegration millions of veterans • Russian Revolution & creation of the Comintern • World-wide association of communists intent on inciting rebellion in capitalist countries • Terrorist acts • Mail-bombs sent to dozens of prominent individuals • Sept. 16, 1919 dynamite filled Wagon on Wall St. exploded killing 38 and injuring 143

  5. The Red Scare Fear of Internal Subversion • Palmer Raids • Organized by Attny. Gen. A. Mitchell Palmer against various radical organizations, particularly Communist • Focused on foreign residents and immigrants • 6,000 alleged subversives arrested • 500 noncitizens suspects detained and deported • Raids failed to turn up evidence of revolutionary conspiracy. • Leads to founding of ACLU • Contributes to resurgence of Nativism

  6. Nativism • Sacco & Vanzetti • 2 Italian-born anarchists • Arrested, charged, and tried for shooting and killing two employees of a shoe factory in Braintree, MA ANDRobbing it of $15,000. • No conclusive proof to their committing of the crime. • Sacco owned a gun similar to the one used in the crime- bullets matched. • Both were found guilty and sentenced to death • Guilty or victims of prejudice?

  7. Nativism & Public Policy • Immigrants seen as a threat to cultural order • Threat to soldiers of WWI who needed jobs in the post-war weak economy. • Emergency Quota Act (1921) • Only 3% of the total population of an ethnic group that was living in the US as recorded in the 1910 US census could be admitted into the US per year. • Results = discriminated heavily against Immigrants from eastern and southern Europe • The National Origins Act (1924) • Set quotas at 2% of people living in the US of a particular nationality as recorded in the 1890 census. • Result: scaled back where immigrants could come from- favoring Northern Europe • Second part of the act that took effect in 1929 limited immigration to 150,000 people a year. • Exempted people from the Western Hemisphere

  8. Political Cartoons – On Immigration 1921 2014

  9. Post-war Racial Tension • The Great Migration • 300,000-500,000 Af.Amers. move to North during war to fill jobs. • Post war- job competition & economic turmoil led to race riots • 1919 race riots broke out in over 20 Northern cities. • Chicago • Black boy swam onto beach restricted to whites • Whites allegedly stoned boy = he drowned • Police refused to arrest the white man whom eyewitnesses identified as causing it • Sparked a week of rioting between gangs of black and white Chicagoans, concentrated on the South Side  • 15 whites and 23 blacks killed and 500+ people injured • Violence spread to South • 1921—Tulsa Riot • 1923—Rosewood

  10. The Re-emergence of the KKK • Original KKK response to emancipation of the slaves & radical reconstruction • 1915 Klan reborn • Claim that the Klan was fighting for “Americanism” • Promised to defend family, morality, traditional American values against threats posed by blacks, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics & Jews • Attracted 3-4 million members nationwide

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