7.6 WWI HOMEFRONT

(1) Government Power:

• The government’s power expanded greatly during the three years America was involved in WWI.

• By the time the war ended in 1918, he federal govt had gotten $32 billion dollars in war expenses, a staggeing sum at the time

• Sale of %%“Liberty Bonds”%% to raise money; were esentially loans from the Amrican people.

• $23 Billion raised by that

• At the same time, new taxes like graduate icome tax esrablished with 16th Amendment, raiseed $23 billion.

• AT the same time, govt took over the telephone, telegraph, and rail industries and a massive bureaucracy arose to handle these new responsibilities

• The War Industrry Board (WIB) created in July 1917 coordinated production of military supplies

Sought to provide supplies for the rest of the Allies as well, not just USA

• The Natoinal War Labor Board created in April 1918, served as the mediator for labor disputes

It pressures industry to meet the demandd of workers like the 8-hour workday, and in return it asked that woekers stop strikes.

(2) FREEDOM of SPEECH→→→→

(a) Sedition & Espionage

• The govt also curtailed individal civil liberties during the war

• In responce to opposition to U.S. involvment in World War, Congress passed the ==Espionage Act in 1917== and the ==Sedition Act in 1918.==

The Espionage Act: ✉

• Prohibited anyoene from using the US mail system to hinder the war effors or with the draft that was instituted under the Selective Services Act of 1917 when America entered thewar.

The Sedition Act: 💭

• Made it illegal to prevent war bond sales or to speak bad on the govt, flag, military, or the Constitution

• Both laws violated the spirt of the First Amenement

• In all, more than 1,500 ppl arrested in 1918 for critisizing the govermnent or the war.

(b) Schenk v. United States

• IN 1919, SupremeCourt upheld Espionage Act in three cases, the most notable being ==Schenck v. United States==.

• Schenck was a sociaist and a critic of American Capitalism, who was arrested and convicted for violation of the Espionage Act when he printed and mailed leaflets urging men to resist the draft.

• Schenck argued draft was a violation of the 13th amenement of slavery.

• However, the amentment didnt mention slavery, but rather prohibited “involuntary servitude”.

• Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rules that ones feedom of speech and other civil liberties were not absolute and can be curtailed of ones actions posed a “clear and present danger” to others or the nation.

• In essence, you cannot yell “FIRE!” in acrowded theater if there is no fire.

• These laws soon became useful tools for the suppression of anyone who voiced unpopular ideas.

(c) Commitee on Public Information

• Govt leadrs awaree that pblic sentimet of the war was sharply divided

• Thus the gvernment used a propaganda arm, the Comittee of Public Information (CPI).

• The CPI, under Denver journalist George Creel, spuervised ddistriution of over 75 million pieces of printed materiak and controlled much of the info avaliable for news and magazines.

• Creel encouraged journalis to excersize “self-censorhip” when reporting war news. Most complied by covering the war as the government wished.

• CPI messages grew more sensational as war continued

• Depicted Germans as coldblooded, baby-killing, power-hungry Huns.

• During this period Americans rejected all things German like saurkraut whcih they named to “liberty cabbage.”

(3) The First Red Scare:→→→→

(a) Context

• A mood of increased paranoia, hightened by the Russian Revolution, whcih placed Russian under Bolshevik control.

• Americans began to fear a communist takeover in what became known as… The ==First Red Scare. (red here signifies communism)==

• Radical labor unions like the International Workers of the World, were branded enemies, and leaders were incarcerated.

• Eugene Debs, for example, the Socialist leader, was sent to jail for 10 years for war critisizing.

• A new govt agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, was created to prevnt radicals from overtake.

• J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the agency.

• Buisness assumed greater power, while unions lost power.

• Under the guise of supressing radicalism, buisnesses increased their use of strikebreakers and oter forces against labor unions.

(b) Palmer Raids

• Fears of revolution might have remained a fear only, except for the actions of a lunaic fringe.

• In April 1919, series of bombs exploded in several American Ccities. Nearly 40 bombs were intercepted.

• One slipped through and blew off hands of a Georgia senator’s maid.

• In June, another bomb destroyed **Atorney Mitchell Palmer’**s house in Washington

• The bombs, along with fear of radicalism and communism, encouraged Palmer to organize a series of raids on suspected rdical groups round the country.

• In %%Palmer Raids%% in early 1920s, govt abandons all civil liberties and raided union halls, pool halls, social clubs and residencies.

• Over 10,000 arrested and about 500 immirants were eventualy deported at the end of the Palmer raids.

(4) A New Labor Force:→→→→

(a) Context

• Immigraton in the USA slowed to a trickle due to WWI. Went down to 110,000 rom an average of 1 million.

• Anti-Immigrant sentiments in USA grew despie them serving honorably in te US armed forces.

• Stories of atrocities by German soldiers, both real and exaggerated, fed hostility toward persons of German descent and led many immigrants to hide their heritage.

• Russian immigrants were feared as possible communists and anachest because of the “Red Scare”

• Growing isolationist and nativist sentiments in US lead to closing of Amrica’s “golden door”

• THe dramatic decrease in immigrants and the movement of 4 million men rom the workplace into the armed services created a labor shortage

• To meet this shortage, women, Blacl Americans, and other ethnic minorites encouraged to enter indutries and agriculture previourly dominated by men.

(b) Great Migration

• Northern business sent agents into Deep South to get workrs fro ther factories and miills.

• Southern Black Americans undertook the ==Great Migration== to the North’s big cities when they realized the jobs the wartime created.

• During the war, more than 500,000 blacks left the South in search of work.

• Recruiting agents and news potrayed the Noth as the “land of promise” for sothern blacks suffering from the regions racist voilence and bad agriculture.

African American Chicago Dffender quote:

“To die from the bite of frost is far more glorious than at the hands of a mob.”

• By 1930, the number of BLack AMericans living in the North tripled that of 1910.

(c) Women

• Wartime also presented new opportunities for women. Although the number of women in the workforce did not increase greatly during the war, their means of employment did change.

• Many women quit domestic work and started working in factoreis with 20 percent of factory workers being women at one point.

One black woman exhnaged her live-in servant for facory work declared:

• “I’ll never work in nobody’s kitchen but my own any more. No indeed, that’s the one thing that makes me stick to this job.”

• Most women returned to their previous jobs once once veterans reurned from the war and reclaimed thei jobs

In fact, male-dominated unions encouraged women to revert to their stereotypical domestic roles after the war ended….

• “the same patriotism which induced women to enter industry during the war should induce them to vacate their positions after the war.”

(5) Red Summer

• Black men and women approached war with a sense of civic duty. Roughly 370,000 Black men were induce into the army.

• The army, however, assigned most of the black soliders to service units, reflecting a beleif that Black me were more suited for manual labor than combat duty.

• WHen the war ended, Black Americans hoped their patriotic sacrifices would have positive impact on race relations.

• Feb 17, 1919 the 369th Infantry Regiment marched up Fifth Avenue in Harlem. A spirit of determination, inspired by the war, surged throughout Black America.

Du Bois voiced such sentiment in the May 1919 Crisis editorial “Returning Soliders,” declaring, “We return. We return from fighting. Make way for Democracy!”

Instead, what Black Americans faced was continued discrimination and increased violence in what James Weldon Johnson dubbed…

The %%Red Summer%% (red here signifies blood)

• The return of black soliders and the ongoing Great MIgration created nationwide surge of violence in the summer of 1919, much on Black Americans.

• Altogether, twenty-five rave riots erupted in 1919.

• Chicago Riot July 27- August 3, 1919 considered Red Summers worst riot as it sparked a week of mob violence, murder, and arson.

• In October 1919, whites in Elaine, Arkansas, massacred more than 100 Black people in response to the efforts of sharecroppers to organize themselves.

• In the South, the number of reported lynchings swelled from 64 in 1918 to 83 in 1919. At least eleven of these victims were returned soldiers.

• For African Americans, the end of the war brought anything but peace.