17-33 politics

WW1 impact on USA

WW1 impact on USA

• Unprecedented and increasingly unpopular federal government intervention under Wilson

• Contributed to rise of republicans like Harding, Coolidge and Hoover

• Generated ‘desire for normalcy’

• Ensured the introduction of prohibition

• Contributed to the red scare

• Debate over how interventionist USA should be

Rise of republicanism

• Hoover became an international hero during WWI for work aiding civilian victims of the war, Wilson later put him in charge of food admin in the US (1917)

• Publicly Hoover campaigned for voluntarism but privately for large amounts of gov aid

• Wilson wanted to join the League of Nations, with Harding serving on the senate foreign relations committee (from 1919) and criticised joining the LoN as it would undermine congress

• Coolidge gained media attention in 1919 for his tough stance on a police strike in Boston (it appealed to Americans suffering from post-war economic problem who resented strike action)

• The 1920 Republican nominee was Harding, with Coolidge as Vice and Hoover as Sec of Commerce

Prohibition

• American temperance campaigners argued that drunkenness led to: urban crime, insanity, poor health, communism, overcrowded prisons, inefficiency, poverty and family problems (claimed 300 infants were smothered due to drunken parents)

• By 1917 27 states had banned alcohol and temperance was seen as an extremely important issue in the US

• 1919 - 18th amendment made it illegal to sell, make or transport alcohol int the US

WWI and Prohibition

• the biggest American brewing companies like Pabst had been set up by Germans, with German names and had been pro-German before the war, so it was seen as patriotic to avoid beer

• German aggression was blamed on beer

• Patriots believed that a food staple like grain should not be wasted on making booze in wartime

• Remained an important political issue through the 20s, but was increasingly perceived as encouraging law breaking and was ended in 1933 by FDR

Most Americans opposed communist ideas and feared communist activity:

• communist believed government should organise the equal distribution of wealth, whereas many Americans considered an unregulated economic system essential to the American dream because it gave the poorest the opportunity to work to the top

• Communists argued that other parties were unnecessary because the communist party was of the people, but America’s favoured a multi-party system

• By 1919, the Soviet’s set up Comintern to promote World revolution and an American communist part was founded. Aroused American fears that communists might promote revolution within the US

Events in 1919 that intensified the Red scare

• there were 3600 strikes in which around 1/5th of American workers participated. When 350,000 steel workers struck, the steel companies initiated an effective propaganda campaign blaming communists

• Political malcontents mailed dozens of bombs to business and political leaders in several cities

• The press attributed the many urban race riots to communist influences on Black Americans and called the summer of 1919 the ‘red summer’

The Palmer Raids (November 1919 - February 1920)

• 1919 - an anarchist bomb destroyed part of attorney general A Mitchell Palmers house and spread anarchist leaflets accords Washington streets

• Palmer claimed that America was on the verge of a revolution and that he as the man to save it

• During the raids, around 6000 supposed ‘alien’ communists or anarchists were arrested in 36 American cities

• Sec of Labour (Louis Post) investigation concluded that only 556 individuals actually needed to be deported, of which only a minority were actually communists

Effects of the Palmer raid

• fear of and opposition to communism became an essential part of American identity during the first red scare

• Quickly lost its initial intensity, Americans remained intensely anti-communist nonetheless

• Many political radicals were immigrants and therefore WASP attitudes to immigration was altered due to the red scare

Reasons for Harding’s election and a return to ‘normalcy’

• hundreds of gov agencies were created to manage the war effort, including the war industries board (resource allocation, directed purchases, fixed prices)

• Many Americans began paying federal tax

• Legislation like the sedition act (1918) gave the fed government extra powers to silence opposition to the war

• 1917 - 5m men were drafter to fight

• Even after the war there was strikes, economic problems, the red scare, race riots, a flu pandemic which killed 600,000 and Wilson as an absentee president

Hardings campaign (effects of)

• demonstrated the significance of WWI on domestic politics (reflected how tired voters were of the activism of Wilson and engagement with the global community)

• Harding primarily won because of his promise of a return to a way of life like before the way

• Used campaign slogans like ‘have confidence in the republic! America will go on!’

• Harding possessed the ‘rare power of convincing his hearers’ - he had a knack for telling voters what they wanted to heaR

1920 election

• Harding rejected membership of the LoN, opposing democratic ticket who followed Wilson in placing focus on the League

• Harding recognised that Americans were much more concerned about falling exports and high unemployment and post-war economic problems such as deflation, falling exports and high unemployment than post-war world peace and internationalism

Other factors in Hardings victory

• He was personable, photogenic, and looked presidential

• His publicist Albert Lasker introduced many of the advertising and PR techniques that would become common usage for future political campaigns

• Laser exploited all available media - radio, magazines, movie clips, sound recordings, billboards and newspapers

• Press support was large as most newspapers were owned by republicans, and Harding got on well with reporters

• Harding also won over the new woman voters as he had supported he right to vote

The presidency of Harding - triumphs

• Successfully mediated between labour and management during the 1921 steel strikes

• Obtained an injunction that ended the railroad strike

• Fulfilled his campaign promise to lower federal gov expenditure (was $500m in 1913, then $5000m in 1920) - by 1922 expenditure was cut to $3373m and federal taxes were cut as a result

• Harding approved progressive style legislation like the Shepard-Towner Maternity aid act (states received federal aid for infant and maternity health programmes)

Hardins presidency - disagreements with congress

• criticised the protectionist Fordney-McCumber act (1922) as too inflexible

• Vetoes the popular bonus for Vets on the grounds it was ‘politically appealing’ but would damage the national finances

• Urged congress to Enact anti-lynching bills, the house passed it but southern dems blocked it in the senate

Teapot Dome scandal

President Hardings secretary of interior, Albert fall, accepted bribes in exchange for leasing petrol reserves such as that at teapot dome, Wyoming. Fall was fined $10,000 and spent a year in prison. Harding himself was not involved in the corrupt practices

Calvin Coolidge

• Was popular although some said he looked like he had been weaned on a pickle

• Seen as a man of integrity

• The nation said he was ‘just what the country needs, a quiet, simple, unobtrusive man, with no isms and no desire for any reform’

Presidency of Coolidge

• promoted tax cuts, decreased national debt (was $26.6b in 1919, $16.9 billion in 1929)

• Kept annual government expenditure at around $3 billion

• Very anti-federalist, believed each person was only responsible for themselves

• He had a progressive record whilst serving at state and local levels, was not always adverse to federal intervention in the economy and society

• Supported tariffs, road building, and regulation o new industries like radio and aviation, begrudgingly agreed to give federal aid for relief after the 1927 Mississippi floods

Changing presidency under Coolidge

• First president to meet reporters regularly and get on well

• Invited congressmen to White House breakfasts

• Greeted an average of 400 callers in the White House daily

• Fro 1919, he was advised by Bruce Barton, one of the first ‘Admen’. He wrote articles promoting ‘silent cal’ as he man of middle America

• He made reassuring, statesmanlike speech’s where he didn’t attack his opponents and frequently cited the bible. Many of these were broadcast on the radio

• He recognised the importance of images, and took care to have crowd pleasing photo-ops

• He did not waste words, but was always willing to make a joke

Coolidge associations

Associated with peace and prosperity and few doubted his claim that America was closer than ever to eradicating poverty. His optimism is often blamed or the later economic issues on his failure to recognise and combat them earlier on.

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)

• embraced rugged individualism which emphasised individual competition, but admitted that society worked best when there was a community demonstrated social responsibility

• He believed that the government needn’t do more than inform and prompt communities

• He was convinced that federal government intervention would ruin the economy, and declared that it as un-American to spend so much on the federal government

• He was considered to be a progressive republican by the old guard of his party

Hoovers economic problems

• he failed to prevent the enactment of the Smoot-Hawley tariff

• He seemed unable to deal with the increasing problems succeeding the Wall Street crash in 1929

• He advocated volunteerism by banks in order to affect economic recovery, and encouraged successful bankers to sign up to the NCC (national credit corporation)

• After wages rapidly fell in 1929, Hoover asked employers to maintain wages and urged workers not to seek pay rises

• Volunteerism was unsuccessful ad dispute the pressure placed on him by the media and congress he insisted on a reliance on social responsibility

Hoover and the changing presidency

• Hoovers promotion of the Glass-Steagal act introduced greater stability in the banking system, and reluctantly asked congress to establish the RFC (reconstruction finance corporation)

• The RFC was given $2 billion to lend to businesses like banks and railroads, but ultimately failed to prevent the further closures of banks

• He continued to reject congressional proposals for federal relief for the poor and unemployed, in May 1932 even reminding the senate of the governments rising deficit, also asking for taxes to be raised by congress

• The rise in taxes in the Revenue Act of 1932 caused the depression to worsen as it decreased the purchasing power of the poor

• Due to extreme pressure, Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and construction act that provided $300 million in Oman’s for states to help the needy, and empowered the RFC to finance $1.5 billion iffor revenue raising public works, although this was a last resort

The bonus march

• In 1924 congress had voted to pay WWI vets a bonus in 1945

• In 1932 around 40,000 impoverished vets went to Washington to request immediate payment

• When police could not send the crowd home, the army was sent in and the encampment of vets was burnt

• It was seen as the event which won the election for FDR

Hoovers bad press

• During he 1932 campaign he was blamed for the Wall Street crash and subsequent depression

• He was also seen to have been the wrong man to manage the economic turmoil that the depression caused

• He was not an inspirational leader and his resistance to large scale government intervention led to a sense of despair among the poor and unemployed

• Americans therefore hoped for a more helpful president, one that was changed from its current form

Reasons for a commitment to isolationism

• the traditional American suspicion of alliances was reinforced by the general conviction that the First World War was the result of rivalries in the old world, with Americans being dragged in by their alliances through arms deals

• Many Americans agreed with Coolidge when he said that the nations core problems are those which are domestic and emphasised cuts to military funding in ord to balance the budget

• Americans became increasingly irritated by European reluctance to pay wartime debts to the US

The myth of isolationism

• Harding, Coolidge and Hoover encouraged and participated in international agreements to discourage expensive arms races and wars (e.g., the Harding administration put the Washington treaties [1922] between America, Britain, France, Italy and Japan where there was an agreed limit to the naval arms race)

• The US recognised that a stable Europe was important to American trade and intervened repeatedly to aid German financial stability

• Wilson had retreated military interventions in Latin America. Harding, Coolidge and Hoover sough an end to the interventionism, although Coolidge sent marines into Nicaragua in 1926 too protect American investments and interests

• The US retained imperial possessions like the Philippines, as it was considered a useful market for US manufactured goods and it showed how the USA could ‘Civilise’ people

• 3 administrations worked with business interest to promote American commerce overseas, e.g., the state and commerce departments helped US businesses gain access to Middle Eastern oil