Chapter 29 - Post-WWII America

Economy

  • Reconversion

  • No depression after the war ended

    • Government spending dropped but consumer demand compensated for it

      • Consumer goods were unavailable during the war so people saved their wages

    • 6 Billion tax cut put money into circulation

    • Servicemen’s Readjustment Act(GI Bill of Rights) - economic and educational assistance to veterans —> increase spending

  • Inflation because of increased consumer demand

    • Elimination of price controls - Truman vetoed an extension of the Office Price Administration but soon signed another bill

  • Sources of economic growth

    • Government spending increased - stimulate growth through public funding of schools veterans benefits, programs, etc

      • Military spending: economic growth highest during the Korean War

      • Baby boom = increased the population and contributed to increased consumer demand

    • Suburban Growth

      • Rapid expansion - growth in the automobile, housing, and road/highway industries

  • The West

    • Profited the most from the economic growth - military contracts flowed to factories in Cali and Texas

      • Automobile use - growth to petroleum industry and oil fields

      • State governments invested in universities

    • Climate favored economic growth - attracted migrants

New Economics

  • Keynesian Economics (John Maynard Keynes)

    • Made it possible for government to regulate and stabilize the economy without intruding directly into the private sector

    • Varying the flow of government spending and taxation and managing the supply of currency —> cure recession, prevent inflation

    • Called the “New economics” - won official acceptance

  • Fixing poverty by economic growth (not redistribution) -produce enough to raise the quality of life for even the poorest citizens

Politics and Policy

  • Trumans “Fair Deal”

    • Domestic program - social security benefits, raising wages, national health insurance, etc

    • Failed because of increasing conservatism - Republican Party won control of both houses in Congresses

  • Republican congress

    • Reduce government spending and stop New Deal Reforms - deregulate the economy

    • Result: Increasing inflation

    • Refused to give funds to aid education, increase Social Security, etc, tax cuts for high-income families

  • Taft-Hartley Act

    • Made illegal the closed shop (a workplace where no one can be hired unless they were a member of a union)

    • Allowed states to prohibit union shops (Workers must join a union after being hired)

    • Wanted to stop the power granted to unions by the Wagner Act

  • Keynesian Economics

    • Government could regulate and stabilize the economy without intruding directly into private sectors

    • Vary the flow of government spending and taxation, manage supply of currency

      • Stop recession and prevent inflation

    • Called “new economics” - passed after a tax cut was proposed to stimulate economic growth

      • Increased private demand — stimulate economic growth and reduced unemployment

    • Produce more = raise the quality of life for everyone, even the poor

Election of 1948

  • Truman = Unpopular in his party and Democratic Party divisions

    • 2 factions abandoned the party

      • Southern conservatives didn’t like Truman’s civil rights bill

      • Formed the Dixiecrat Party

    • Left Wing formed a new Progressive Party

    • Democratic liberals who didn’t want to leave the party tried to dump the president

      • Americans for Democratic Action -Wanted Eisenhower to try for nomination

  • Republicans nominated Dewey

    • At first, it seemed like he would win

  • Truman wins

    • Wanted to recreate Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition

    • Democrats regained both houses

Truman Presidency

  • Democratic congress did not pass much of Truman’s Fair Deal Reform

    • No progress on national health insurance and aid to education, civil rights, etc

    • Did end discrimination in hiring government employees and stopped segregation in armed forces (Executive Order 9981)

    • Shelly v. Kramer - court could not be used to enforce private covenants meant to bar African Americans from neighborhoods

Communism

  • Republican Party wanted to search for an issue to attack the Democrats

  • House Un-American Activities committee (HUAC) - publicized investigations that caused the Democratic party of tolerating communism

    • Movie industry: Communists had infiltrated Hollywood - jailed a couple of writers and producers

  • Alger Hiss scandal - He passed State Dept. documents to the USSR

    • Response: Truman Administration made a program to review the loyalty of employees

  • McCarran Internal Security Act: Communist organizations have to register with the government

  • Julius and Ethel Rosenburg - accused of sending atomic bomb info to the USSR

  • Anticommunist Hysteria

McCarthyism

  • McCarthy = the dominant figure against communism

  • Accused federal employees and agencies - never had enough evidence but always named to fire people

    • Accused the Democrats of having communist

Eisenhower Presidency

  • Democrats lost popularity (1952) - Eisenhower became president (Nixon VP)

    • Republican control over Congress (again)

  • Republican administration staffed by businessmen - change in perspectives (New Deal welfare)

    • Secretary of Dense: President of General Motors (Wilson)

  • Limit federal activities and encourage private enterprise

    • Reduce federal expenditures, apposed the creation of new social service programs, removed limited wage and price controls, etc

  • No new initiatives in domestic policy but did not dismantle any from the New Deal

    • Extended Social Security system, increase wage, etc

  • Federal Highway Act (1956) - project that built interstate highways

  • He won a second terms but Democrats had control of Congress

  • 1954 = decline of McCarthyism (opposition)

    • Army-McCarthy Hearings: an investigation of McCarthy’s charges after he attacked the Sec. of Army

    • He was tried and condemned

Social

  • Increased Labor Unrest because of inflation

    • Strikes - John Lewis strike on coal fields —> government seized the mines

      • Truman told mine owners to grant the unions their demands

    • Total shutdown of railroads - 2 major unions went on strike

  • Difficulties for women and minorities who entered jobs

    • Employers fired them to make room for the returning white males

    • High demand among women for paid employment —> moved into other areas of the economy (service) as they were fired

  • The Nuclear age

    • Fear expressed through film noir- The Twilight Zone

    • Schools had air raid drills, testing of emergency broadcast systems, fallout shelters

    • Possibilities - nuclear power = a source of cheap and unlimited electricity

  • Corporate consolidations

    • Corporate mergers - large-scale organizations controlled most of the economic activity

    • Similar in agricultural economy - mechanization reduced need for farm labor and the workforce declined

      • Endangered the family farm - not many could afford to buy and equip a modern farm

    • Business leaders made concessions to unions because they didn’t want strikes to interfere with operations

    • Labor unions and employers developed a new relationships “Postwar contract”

      • Workers had increases in wages and benefits,unions would not raise other issues

  • AFL-CIO merged

    • Corruption in unions - people would misappropriate funds

    • Unorganized workers made little progress

      • CIO tried to organize the unorganized

      • Union membership remained the same- shift from blue collar to white collar jobs, Taft-Hartley Act and “right-to-work” laws =obstacles

Construction of roads and highways

West

  • Tee west profited the most from the economic growth

    • Used to only be a supplier for the East but it became an industrial and cultural center

  • Growth because of federal spending and investment

  • Sub urbanization, improvement of highway systems, growth of oil fields, etc

  • Climate - attracted migrants

Capital and Labor

  • A small number of large organizations controlled most of the economic activity

    • Industries benefiting from government defense spending -Military contracts

    • Consolidation of industries

  • Agricultural economy -another consolidation

    • More technology = reduced need for farm labor

    • Workforce declined after war and many could not afford to buy a modern farm

  • Businesses made concessions to unions (did not want strikes to interfere with operations)

  • Unions and employers had a new relationship called “postwar contract”

    • Workers had increases in wages and benefits and agreed to not raise other issues

    • Strikes became less frequent

  • Creation of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor + Congress of Industrial Organizations)

    • Merged

  • Some corruption because of the success - misuse of union funds

  • Majority of unorganized workers made less advances

  • Union membership remained stable- new obstacles

    • Taft-Hartley Act and “Right-to-work” laws

    • Larger federations tried to organize less organized workers

Technology and Science

  • Medicine

    • Developed antibacterial drugs - treated the untreatable

      • Antiseptics to prevent infection during surgery

      • Sulfa drugs

    • Penicillin against bacterial disease

      • Mass reduction and commercial distribution of it

    • Immunization - vaccine against small pox, typhoid, etc

    • Salk Vaccine

      • Against polio - provided free to the public by the federal government

      • Made into an oral vaccine

    • Infant mortality and death rate declined and average life expectancy rose

  • Pesticides

    • DDT to protect crops from destruction by insects

    • Protect humans from insect-carried diseases

  • Electronics

    • First commercially viable TVs and tech to broadcast programming over large areas

      • Color TV

      • Transistor —> integrated circuitry

  • Computer Technology

    • Used to be designed only for military things but became commercially available

    • UNIVAC

  • Military weapons (Bombs, Rockets, Missiles)

    • Detonated the first hydrogen bomb - fusion bomb

    • Developed unmanned rockets and missiles - struggled with intercontinental ballistic missiles

      • Created solid fuel, guidance systems, etc

      • Creation of the Minuteman missile

  • Space

    • Soviet Union launches a satellite Sputnik

    • Result: America improves scientific education, create more research laboratories, and explore outer space (Explorer 1)

    • Established NASA - Mercury Project, sending people to space

      • The Apollo Program - land men on the moon

      • 1969 first man on the moon

    • Developed the space shuttle - Challenger

Consumer culture

  • Resulted from increased prosperity, variety and availability of products, growth of consumer credit

    • Prosperity was consumer driven

  • Consumer crazes

    • Hula hoop, products like Mickey Mouse watches and hats (success of Disney Land)

Landscape and Automobile

  • Interstate Highways: Federal Highway Act - gave money for highway construction

    • Reduced time necessary to travel from one place to another

    • Better way to transport goods —> decline of railroads

    • Economic activities (manufacturing) moved out of cities into suburban and rural areas

      • Rapid growth of “edge cities” - outside traditional city centers

    • Families moved into homes further than where they worked

      • People lived in larger houses, garages and amenities were built, etc

    • Motels - Holiday Inn

  • Suburbs - Developer William Levitt

    • Made the Levittown - houses were low priced, help meet the demand for housing

    • Hierarchy of upper-class suburban neighborhoods vs. others

  • Why suburbs?

    • Postwar Americans placed importance on family life and suburbs provided larger houses than in the cities

    • Attraction to living in a community of people of similar age and background —> friendships and social circles

      • Women liked the presence of other nonworking mothers

    • Suburbs restricted to white Americans (cities had a growing population of African Americans)

  • Suburban Family

    • Reinforced women not entering professions - women could afford to stay at home and husbands thought it was demeaning

    • Book about child rearing: Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock

      • Child-centered, not parent-centered

    • Expectations of material comfort rose so many middle-class families needed a second income

      • Number of women working increased (social pressure for them to stay out of the workforce also grew)

Television

  • More television sets being produced —> started from the radio industry

    • industry driven by advertising

  • Replaced newspapers, magazines, and radios, movies as entertainment, etc

  • Images of the American life

    • Mostly white,middle-class, and suburban with enforced gender roles

  • Images of more “unnormal things” like childless families, unmarried professional women,etc

    • Convey them in warm, nonthreatening terms

  • Contributed to division

    • Sense of alienation among groups that did not fit in with the image

Leisure Time

  • Vacation travel became more widespread, interstate highways, increasing affluence of workers

  • Many people went to national parks

    • Fight to preserve Echo Park - wanted to build a dam there but people wanted to preserve it

  • The Sierra Club - leading environmental organization

Increasingly organized society —> changed education

  • More attention to science, math,and foreign languages

  • Need to develop specialized skills

  • Negative impacts of this organization on individuals

    • People were more concerned about winning approval from the larger organization

Youth Culture

  • Beatniks: Critics of middle-class society - usually young Americans

    • Overwhelmed by the limitless possibilities and declining traditional values

    • Encouraged to become rich but experienced obstacles

  • Juvenile Delinquency - people thought youth crime was increasing (it wasn’t)

Rock N Roll

  • Elvis Presley - symbol of the determination to push against borders of conventional and acceptable

    • Dressed in a rebellious style like Urban gangs

    • Popular among Young Americans

  • African American roots-rhythms and lyrics

  • Many people did not want to accept black musicians —> rise of white rock musicians

    • Still, African American bands and singers became popular

  • Innovations in radio and television - played recorded music

    • Disc Jockeys: aimed at young fans of rock music (American Bandstand

  • Payola Scandals: Record promoters made secrete payments to station owners and jockeys to get them to showcase their artists

The “Other America”

  • The Other America (Book) - talked about poverty —> economic expansion reduced, but did not eliminate it

    • Most of them experience poverty temporarily - could move out of it as soon as they found a job —> instability of employment

    • Most of them = elderly, African Americans/Hispanics/Native Americans

  • Rural poverty - decline in national income (less farm population)

    • Declining farm prices because of surpluses

    • Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers (mechanization of cotton picking, reduced demand for cotton)

    • Migrant farm workers (Mex. Americans and Asians)

  • Inner Cities-became poor “ghettos”

    • Growth because of the migration of African Americans

    • Poor Hispanic Neighborhoods (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, etc)

    • Why?

      • “Culture of poverty” - difficulties advancing

      • Declining blue-collar jobs and inadequate support for minority dominate schools

      • Racism

    • Response: “Urban renewal” - tear down the poorest and most degrade areas

      • New public housing that was often worse than before

The Second Red Scare

  • Fear of communist subversion —> Stalin, China, Korean stalemate, etc