Gregory Bodenhamer Mechanicsburg Pa Business Expert Reveals On June 28, 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Austria demanded indemnities from Serbia for the assassination. The Serbian government denied any involvement with the murder and, when Austria issued an ultimatum, turned to its ally, Russia, for help. When Russia began to mobilize its army, Europe's alliance system, ironically intended to maintain the balance of power on the continent, drew one country after another into war. Austria's ally, Germany, declared war on Russia on August 1 and on France (which was allied with Russia) two days later. Great Britain entered the war on August 4, following Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium. By the end of August 1914, most of Europe had chosen sides: the Central Powers — Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) — were up against the Allied Powers — principally Great Britain, France, Russia, and Serbia. Japan joined the Allied cause in August 1914, in hopes of seizing German possessions in the Pacific and expanding Japanese influence in China. This action threatened the Open Door Policy and led to increased tensions with the United States. Originally an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Italy entered the war in 1915 on the side of Britain and France because they had agreed to Italian territorial demands in a secret treaty (the Treaty of London).

The United States in World War I

On June 28, 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Austria demanded indemnities from Serbia for the assassination. The Serbian government denied any involvement with the murder and, when Austria issued an ultimatum, turned to its ally, Russia, for help. When Russia began to mobilize its army, Europe's alliance system, ironically intended to maintain the balance of power on the continent, drew one country after another into war. Austria's ally, Germany, declared war on Russia on August 1 and on France (which was allied with Russia) two days later. Great Britain entered the war on August 4, following Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium. By the end of August 1914, most of Europe had chosen sides: the Central Powers — Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) — were up against the Allied Powers — principally Great Britain, France, Russia, and Serbia. Japan joined the Allied cause in August 1914, in hopes of seizing German possessions in the Pacific and expanding Japanese influence in China. This action threatened the Open Door Policy and led to increased tensions with the United States. Originally an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Italy entered the war in 1915 on the side of Britain and France because they had agreed to Italian territorial demands in a secret treaty (the Treaty of London).

American neutrality. When the war began, President Wilson quickly proclaimed the neutrality of the United States and called on the American people to be “impartial in thought as well as in action.” Absolute neutrality was difficult to achieve. German Americans tended to support the Central Powers, while Irish Americans had strong animosity toward Great Britain, and recent Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe wanted a Russian defeat. On the other hand, the Allies, at least England and France, represented democracy to many Americans; the Allies had strong emotional support in the higher circles of government, especially in the State Department and the White House. Moreover, investors in the United States provided billions of dollars in loans to the Allies, and the balance of American trade with the warring countries was overwhelmingly in favor of Great Britain and France.

Although the United States objected to the British blockade in the North Sea, a much greater threat to American neutrality was Germany's use of unrestricted submarine warfare against shipping in the North Atlantic. In May 1915, Germany sunk the British oceanliner Lusitania, causing the loss of almost 1,200 lives, including 128 Americans. Although the United States strongly protested the incident (even though the ship was carrying contraband to Britain), there were several more sinkings before Germany, through the Sussex pledge (May 1916), agreed not to attack passenger ships without warning and to make provisions for the safety of noncombatants. The sinking of the Lusitania did raise questions about America's preparedness, however, and steps were taken to get the country ready for war. The National Defense Act provided for the immediate expansion of the regular Army to 175,000 men and a maximum of almost 250,000 troops, while the Naval Construction Act instituted a three-year building program for the navy. The Council of National Defense was established to coordinate and mobilize industry, available natural resources, and labor in the event of hostilities with Germany.

In the 1916 presidential election, Wilson faced Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes, a Supreme Court justice. The Progressive Party had nominated Theodore Roosevelt again, but he declined to run and threw his support to Hughes. Wilson campaigned as the peace candidate. Although the slogan “He kept us out of war” proved effective, the election was extremely close, with the vote in California for Wilson determining the outcome. The Democrats also kept control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Before his inauguration, Wilson pressed the Allies and the Central Powers to clearly state their war aims and outlined his own ideas for “peace without victory” and an international organization to guarantee that peace.

These overtures became moot when Germany announced the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on all neutral or Allied shipping, effective February 1, 1917. The United States quickly broke diplomatic relations with Germany. In March, the State Department released the Zimmerman Telegram, a message intercepted from the German foreign minister to the German ambassador in Mexico that proposed an alliance with Mexico in the event of war with the United States. Mexico would reclaim Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona and was expected to persuade Japan to join the Central Powers. The publication of the message did little to enhance Germany in the eyes of Americans. March also witnessed a revolution in Russia that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II and put a democratic provisional government into power. The events in Russia were significant. When Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany in April, largely on the basis of its submarine policy, he could do so with greater justification than before the Russian Revolution, arguing that the purpose of the war was to make the world “safe for democracy.”

The United States enters the war. The weakened condition of the Allied forces in the spring of 1917 made it clear that the United States would have to provide more troops than perhaps originally anticipated. In May, the Selective Service Act was passed, which made all men between the ages of 21 and 30 eligible for the draft; the age range was soon expanded to 18 to 45. Of the almost 5 million men who served in the military during World War I, 2.8 million were drafted. A total of 1.4 million Americans saw combat.

The Selective Service Act did not discriminate against African-Americans, and many were drafted or volunteered. There was a widespread belief in the black community that military service would help break down prejudice and lead to political and economic gains. However, African-Americans served in segregated units under white officers, and an overwhelming majority were relegated to menial jobs far behind the front lines.

Over the objections of Allied commanders, who wanted to use American troops to fill in their own lines, the American Expeditionary Force under General John J. Pershing fought as a distinct component on its own section of the front in eastern France. The first U.S. Army units landed in June 1917, but Americans did not see significant action until the German offensive in the spring of 1918. After initial successes, the Germans were pushed back in several major engagements in which American forces played a decisive role. The battles of Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood (June 1918) blunted the German drive to the west, and the Second Battle of the Marne (July – August 1918) effectively ended the German threat to Paris. The first major American offensive of the war was the attack on the German units at St. Mihiel (September 1918), which was followed by the Meuse-Argonne offensive – (September – November 1918). More than one million American soldiers fought in the Meuse-Argonne and suffered a roughly 10 percent casualty rate, but the battle was the last confrontation of the war. With its military situation rapidly deteriorating, Germany asked for peace on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points, a statement of American war aims that the president had presented to Congress in January 1918. Great Britain and France reluctantly agreed to these terms with the provision that Germany pay reparations for the damages caused by the war. The armistice to end the fighting was signed on November 11, 1918.

By the end of the war, U.S. forces had suffered more than 53,000 combat deaths and over 200,000 wounded men. The total number of military deaths was considerably higher due to the worldwide influenza pandemic that struck the United States in 1918. But the end to the fighting on the Western front did not mean the quick repatriation of American soldiers from Europe. In November 1917, the Bolsheviks (Communists) came to power in Russia. In exchange for diplomatic and financial support for their administration, they signed a separate peace treaty with Germany (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) in March 1918 and took Russia out of the war. Ostensibly to protect Allied supplies but more importantly to support the White anticommunist forces fighting the Red Army of the Bolsheviks, the United States and fourteen other countries sent troops to northern Russia in August 1918, and a smaller American force was sent to the Russian Far East soon after. The Allied intervention in Russia did not end until April 1920.

The home front during the war. To ensure support for the war effort, the Committee on Public Information (sometimes known as the Creel Committee after its head administrator, journalist George Creel) organized a propaganda campaign that portrayed Germans as barbarous Huns while stressing that Americans were fighting for democracy and freedom. Anti-German sentiment reached ridiculous heights — many school districts across the country stopped teaching the German language, sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage,” and German measles became “liberty measles.” The freedom to express dissent was also a casualty of the war. The Espionage Act of 1917 mandated imprisonment and fines for persons who aided the enemy or caused insubordination or disloyalty in the military. Newspapers, magazines, and other printed matter deemed as advocating treason were not allowed to be mailed. Under the Sedition Act (1918), it became a crime to make disparaging or profane comments against the government, flag, or the uniforms of the United States. Several thousand people were arrested under these laws, the constitutionality of which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Schenk v. United States (1919). The Court found that limitations on freedom of speech in wartime were legitimate if the speech constituted a “clear and present danger” to the public.

In addition to the Council of National Defense, a number of federal agencies were created to manage the economy. The Fuel Administration allocated supplies of petroleum and coal between industrial and domestic consumption and controlled the prices of these goods while the Railroad Administration coordinated rail traffic. The War Industries Board, under financier Bernard Baruch, converted America's factories to wartime production, directed the allocation of raw materials, and, when necessary, fixed prices. By promoting Victory Gardens and “Meatless Tuesdays,” the Food Administration, headed by future president Herbert Hoover, tried to increase agricultural production and limit civilian consumption. Following an unprecedented number of strikes in 1917, the National War Labor Board was created to arbitrate disputes between management and workers as well as to raise wages and shorten hours. Unions were permitted to organize and enter into collective bargaining for their members if they took a no-strike pledge. In fact, union membership, particularly in the American Federation of Labor, grew significantly during the war.

The nature of the work force also changed. The severe labor shortage caused by the draft and the tapering off of immigration accelerated African-American migration to northern industries from the South. Many young and single women also took on new jobs in the defense plants, although most lost those jobs when veterans returned from the war. The sense of patriotism that was at least partially responsible for bringing blacks and women into the factories in large numbers was also used to sell low-interest government bonds, known as Liberty Bonds, to help finance the war. A sharp increase in taxes on profits, estates, and personal income increased revenues as well.

Wilson and the Peace Settlement

Under the armistice agreement, Wilson's Fourteen Points were the basis for the peace settlement with Germany and the Central Powers. This declaration of American war aims called for open diplomacy (an end to secret treaties), freedom of the seas, removal of trade barriers, impartial adjustment of colonial claims that recognized the interests of indigenous peoples, the application of national self-determination in Central and Eastern Europe (eight of the Fourteen Points dealt with this issue), and the creation of an association of nations that would guarantee the independence and territorial integrity of all countries. This association of nations became the League of Nations and was always considered by Wilson to be the most important of the Fourteen Points.

The Paris Peace Conference. The Paris Peace Conference was held from January to June 1919. Wilson led the American delegation, which did not include any prominent Republicans. This was a major blunder in light of the midterm elections. Even with the fighting still going on, Wilson neglected to build on the support he had during in the war from both Republicans and Democrats. Instead, he actively campaigned for Democratic candidates in 1918 and his partisan strategy backfired — the Republicans regained control of both the House and the Senate, and the Senate would be responsible for ratifying any treaty that Wilson negotiated in Paris.

From the beginning, the peace conference violated the spirit of the Fourteen Points. All the decisions were made by the leaders of the victorious allies, or the Big Four, as David Lloyd George of Great Britain, George Clemenceau of France, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and Wilson were called. Moreover, Britain and France were determined to see that Germany paid a heavy price for the war, while Italy insisted the conference adhere to the territorial changes promised in the secret treaty it had signed with Britain and France. A war guilt clause, which blamed Germany alone for starting the war, was accepted to justify reparations that grew to more than $56 billion. Further, Germany lost all of its colonies and some territory to France and newly independent Poland, and was substantially disarmed. These terms were hardly “peace without victory.” On the other hand, the principle of national self-determination was generally recognized in Europe, even though the countries that lost land — Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia — were not present. National self-determination meant that peoples who shared the same language, history, and territory had the right to political independence. The new nations carved out of the old empires were Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Although Germany's leaders complained strongly that the harsh terms of the treaty violated both the spirit and letter of the Fourteen Points, they had little choice but to sign the treaty (June 28, 1919).

Wilson was willing to make major concessions to ensure that the League of Nations was included in the treaty. Article 10 of the League's charter was, in the President's opinion, key to the success of the new international organization. It called on all member states to respect and preserve the independence and territorial integrity of all member nations through collective action. Mindful of the concerns of Senate Republicans, Wilson agreed to amendments to the charter: The League could not interfere in domestic matters, members could withdraw on two-years' notice, and regional agreements such as the Monroe Doctrine were exempt from League action. These changes were included in the covenant of the League of Nations that was attached to the Treaty of Versailles.

The debate over ratification. The Treaty of Versailles was submitted to the Senate for ratification in July 1919. It was clear from the outset that the Senate was bitterly divided over the League. While Democrats favored immediate ratification, there was a small group of Republican senators known as the Irreconcilables who rejected the treaty entirely. In the middle were moderates who favored participation in the League but wanted further modifications to protect American interests. Led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, these moderates were known as the Reservationists. Some historians divide the Reservationists into two groups — those favoring minor, interpretative changes and those, like Lodge, advocating major changes that required Allied approval. While the Foreign Relations Committee debated the treaty, Wilson impatiently embarked on a nationwide speaking tour in the hope that public opinion would put enough pressure on senators to support ratification. The President gave 37 speeches in just 22 days as he crisscrossed the country by rail, and the trip took its toll. Wilson collapsed on September 25 and suffered a major stroke a week later. For the rest of his term, he remained an invalid, doing only the simplest tasks under the supervision of his wife and physician.

The treaty was presented to the full Senate in November 1919 with 14 amendments, the most important of which limited the obligations of the United States under Article 10 of the League by requiring congressional approval of any American action. Wilson refused to accept the change and ordered the Senate Democrats to vote with the Irreconcilables to defeat the Lodge reservations. Although the treaty did eventually get the support of a majority of the senators, it failed to receive the two-thirds vote needed for ratification. The United States entered into separate peace treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary, and never did join the League of Nations.

Politics in the 1920s

With the end of World War I and the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, Americans entered the distinctive 1920s — an era of Republican leadership, nationalistic and fundamentalist movements, and changing social conventions. Electing Republican presidents who favored business expansion rather than regulation, the American public enjoyed apparently unlimited prosperity, while fear of radicals and foreigners combined to almost completely close off America to immigration and contributed to the resurgence of hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Religious fundamentalism revived as new moral and social attitudes came into vogue. Additionally, the first radio broadcasts and motion pictures expanded Americans' access to news and entertainment.

During the 1920s, three Republicans occupied the White House: Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Harding was inept, Coolidge was mediocre, and Hoover was overcome by circumstances he neither understood nor could control. Harding's campaign slogan, “A return to normalcy,” aptly described American politics for the entire period. The nation turned away from the reforming zeal of the Progressive Era and the moral vision of Wilson's wartime leadership toward a government whose domestic economic policies opposed federal regulation and encouraged business expansion.

The Harding administration. Although he was affable and popular, Harding's naivete made him a disaster as president. Mindful of his own weaknesses, he tried to select the best men possible for his cabinet, with Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, Henry C. Wallace as Secretary of Agriculture, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, and Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury. These men were responsible for the accomplishments of Harding's brief administration, which included stimulating business growth, cutting taxes, and negotiating disarmament treaties.

Several of Harding's other appointments left much to be desired, however, and resulted in major scandals that rocked the government. Charles Forbes, for example, headed the newly formed Veteran's Bureau, even though he had carefully avoided the draft. He was convicted of fraud and related felonies involving the agency's hospital construction funds. Meanwhile, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was at the center of the Teapot Dome scandal, in which he secretly leased naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California, to private companies headed by Edward Doheny and Harry F. Sinclair in return for no-interest, noncollateral “loans.” After resigning his office, Fall was convicted of bribery, and the government canceled the leases. The administration was further disgraced when Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty was implicated in a bribery case involving an official in the Alien Property Office and indicted but acquitted for taking money from liquor dealers evading Prohibition. Harding was not directly involved with the corruption, and he died in office (August 2, 1923) before the charges against his appointees became public.

Coolidge and the election of 1924. Harding's vice president, Calvin Coolidge, came to national attention in 1919 when, as governor of Massachusetts, he ended the Boston police strike. Coolidge did not believe the president should take an activist role in government, and he was as opposed to the regulation of business as Harding had been. His famous quip “The business of America is business” summed up the Republican creed of the 1920s. An honest if taciturn man who had no connection with the scandals of his predecessor's cronies, Coolidge was the Republican choice for president in 1924. The Democrats found it harder to choose a candidate.

The two main Democratic contenders mirrored the split in American society that existed during the '20s. William Gibbs McAdoo represented the rural, Protestant, and “dry” (pro-Prohibition) parts of the country, while the urban, immigrant, and “wet” (anti-Prohibition) population supported Alfred E. Smith, the Irish-American, Roman Catholic governor of New York. With neither candidate able to sway enough votes, the Democratic convention compromised on the conservative Wall Street lawyer, John W. Davis on the 103rd ballot. The election picture was complicated somewhat by Robert LaFollette's revival of the Progressive party, which organized a coalition of farm groups and unions, such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Davis was strong only in the South and LaFollette took his own state of Wisconsin; Coolidge won decisively in both the popular and electoral vote.

The election of Hoover. When Coolidge decided not to run for a second term in 1928, the Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover. Even though he had never held elective office, Secretary of Commerce Hoover had a distinguished career in public service and was well regarded for his work with the Food Administration and in relief efforts after the war. The Democrats, operating with a stronger urban wing than in the previous election, nominated Governor Al Smith for a second time. With the country still riding the high tide of prosperity that the Republicans took full credit for, Hoover was nearly impossible to beat, especially with Smith's serious drawbacks as a candidate. The Democratic Party's platform supported Prohibition, but Smith favored the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Additionally, anti-Catholicism remained a factor in American politics. Many Protestant churches, both fundamentalist and mainstream denominations, urged their parishioners to vote their faith. The combination of Prohibition and religion cost Smith several states in the Deep South and contributed to Hoover's landslide victory.

A closer look at the election results gave the Democrats some hope for the future. Although they did not add any electoral votes to his column, Western farmers abandoned their traditional home in the Republic party and supported Smith. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the nation's 12 largest cities that voted Republican in 1924 also switched allegiance four years later. This trend suggested that with a candidate who did not have Smith's obvious weaknesses, the Democrats might be able to forge a winning coalition by holding on to the Deep South and building a stronger base in the urban Northeast and Midwest.

Domestic Economic Policy

Throughout the '20s, the government's pro-business policies were reflected in tax cuts, a reduction in federal spending, and high tariffs. Under Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, who served all three Republican presidents, the maximum rate on personal income was significantly lowered, as were estate taxes and taxes on excess profits. Mellon's tax program directly benefited the rich based on the assumption that they would invest their money and stimulate the economy. The economy was also aided by the decrease in government expenditures; Mellon managed to balance the budget, and his programs helped to lower the national debt by nearly $10 billion between 1919 and 1929. The government also tried to shield domestic interests from foreign competition through the Fordney-McCumber Tariff (1922) which increased rates, removed items from the free list, and raised duties on farm products. However, high tariffs had several unintended consequences. They made it more difficult for Europeans to pay their war debts to the United States, and farmers, while protected from foreign imports, found themselves paying more for their machinery.

Regulatory enforcement was lax during the 1920s, but the government did promote new industries. Civil aviation, for example, was helped by the government's putting U.S. airmail contracts up for private bids (1925). The Air Commerce Act of 1926, which included federal funding for airport construction, also aided the expansion of this new form of transportation.

Agriculture did not share in the prosperity of the rest of the economy. The boom years for farmers came to an end in 1920, when grain and commodity prices fell sharply. The cause of the crisis was the same as it had been in the late nineteenth century — overproduction. The McNary-Haugen Bill, first introduced in 1924, attempted to deal with the problem by proposing that the government purchase farm surpluses of such staples as corn, cotton, and wheat, and either keep them off the market until prices rose or sell them on the world market. Congress finally passed the legislation in 1927, but President Coolidge vetoed it twice. Neither the McNary-Haugen Bill or the more modest Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 provided farmers with incentives to limit production, which later experience would show to be the only way out of the price spiral.

Change and Reaction in the 1920s

The 1920s were a period of dramatic changes. More than half of all Americans now lived in cities and the growing affordability of the automobile made people more mobile than ever. Although the decade was known as the era of the Charleston dance craze, jazz, and flapper fashions, in many respects it was also quite conservative. At the same time as hemlines went up and moral values seemed to decline, the nation saw the end of its open immigration policy, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, and the trial of a Tennessee high-school teacher for teaching evolution.

The Red Scare and immigration policy. In the first few years after World War I, the country experienced a brief period of antiradical hysteria known as the Red Scare. Widespread labor unrest in 1919, combined with a wave of bombings, the Communists in power in Russia, and the short-lived Communist revolt in Hungary, fed the fear that the United States was also on the verge of revolution. Under the direction of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, thousands of suspected radicals were arrested in 1919 and 1920; those that were aliens were deported. Although the Red Scare faded quickly after 1920, it strengthened the widespread belief in a strong connection between foreigners and radicalism. The bias against foreigners was exemplified in the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian-born, self-admitted anarchists who, in 1920, were indicted for robbery and murder in Massachusetts; they were found guilty and sentenced to death in July 1921. Their supporters claimed that they were convicted for their ethnic background and beliefs rather than on conclusive evidence. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in August 1927 after all their appeals were exhausted.

Hostility toward foreigners was also reflected in a fundamental change in American immigration policy. In 1920, the flow of new immigrants approached pre-war levels. Congress responded in 1921 with the Quota Act, which set the maximum number of immigrants entering the United States annually at 350,000, apportioned at 3 percent of each nationality living in the country in 1910 (based on the 1910 census). However, this act still allowed for a significant immigration from southern and eastern Europe, alleged hotbeds of radicalism. Consequently, the National Origins Act of 1924 reduced the total number of immigrants to 150,000 a year, with quotas set at 2 percent of each nationality's population in the United States in 1890. Under this formula, the quota was less than 4,000 for Italy and around 6,000 for Poland, while the quotas for Great Britain and Germany were 34,000 and 50,000 per year, respectively. In addition to limiting immigration as much as possible, the intent of the legislation was to allow the “more desirable” immigrants from northern and western Europe to come into the United States in higher numbers.

The Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, an organization formed by white southerners during Reconstruction, was revived in Georgia in 1915. The new Klan was particularly strong in the Midwest and Southwest as well as in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and Indianapolis. According to its supporters, it stood for law and order, “old time religion” and the moral values associated with it, immigration restriction, and opposed groups who were not 100 percent American — foreigners, Catholics, Jews, and African-Americans. The KKK was open only to native-born white Protestants and drew its strongest support from the working class members of that group who were in competition with blacks and new immigrants for jobs and housing. A potent force in American politics in the mid-1920s with between three and eight million members, the Klan controlled the legislatures in Indiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas and was key to the election of several governors and numerous local officials. The Klan declined rapidly after 1925 due to scandals involving its leadership and the drop in immigration numbers caused by the National Origins Act.

Prohibition was one of the programs the Klan supported. When the Eighteenth Amendment became effective in January 1920, Congress passed the Volstead Act to implement it. Although alcohol consumption in the United States did drop by as much as half during the '20s, people who wanted to drink found it easy to do so either by brewing their own alcohol (which was legal, as long as it was not sold) or by buying “bootleg” liquor in illegal saloons known as speakeasies that had sprung up everywhere. Enforcement of Prohibition was never adequately staffed or funded, and the illicit trade in alcohol contributed to the growth of organized crime. By the end of the decade, many Americans recognized that Prohibition may well have caused more problems than it solved. A national debate was joined during the 1928 presidential campaign when Smith called for an end to the “noble experiment.” Prohibition was finally repealed in December 1933 with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment.

The fundamentalist revival. Fundamentalist Protestants felt their beliefs challenged in the 1920s. Secular culture of the time seemed to have little place for religion, and church attendance was in decline. A movement to defend traditional religion by emphasizing a literal interpretation of the Bible gained momentum in the '20s and especially targeted Darwin's theory of evolution as a symbol for what was wrong in modern society. By the mid-1920s, a number of states had enacted laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The law was challenged in Tennessee by a young high school biology teacher named John Scopes.

Popularly known as the monkey trial, Scopes's trial was the first ever broadcast over radio and became a national event primarily because of the notoriety of the attorneys representing each side. The American Civil Liberties Union brought in Clarence Darrow, the most famous defense lawyer in the country, for Scopes, while the World Christian Fundamentalist Union engaged William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and the former secretary of state, to assist the prosecution. The trial was a clash between these two men and the beliefs they represented. The high point came when Darrow called Bryan, a recognized lay authority on the Bible, as a witness, and Bryan admitted on the stand that it was possible that creation may not have taken place in six, 24-hour days, thereby refuting a literal interpretation of the Bible. Nonetheless, the jury found Scopes guilty of violating the state's anti-evolution statute and fined him $100.

A New Society: Economic & Social Change

A tide of economic and social change swept across the country in the 1920s. Nicknames for the decade, such as “the Jazz Age” or “the Roaring Twenties,” convey something of the excitement and the changes in social conventions that were taking place at the time. As the economy boomed, wages rose for most Americans and prices fell, resulting in a higher standard of living and a dramatic increase in consumer consumption. Although most women's lives were not radically transformed by “labor-saving” home appliances or gaining the right to vote, young American women were changing the way they dressed, thought, and acted in a manner that shocked their more traditional parents. These changes were encouraged by the new mass media that included radio and motion pictures.

Booming economy and consumerism. The American economy's phenomenal growth rate during the '20s was led by the automobile industry. The number of cars on the road almost tripled between 1920 and 1929, stimulating the production of steel, rubber, plate glass, and other materials that went into making an automobile. Henry Ford pioneered the two key developments that made this industry growth possible — standardization and mass production. Standardization meant making every car basically the same, which led to jokes that a customer could get a car in any color as long as it was black. Mass production used standardized parts and division of labor on an assembly line (introduced by Ford before the war) to produce cars more quickly and efficiently. Both innovations had a dramatic impact on price: the Model T that sold for $850 in 1908 sold for $290 in 1924. Ford also created new management techniques that became known as welfare capitalism. To build worker loyalty and blunt the development of unions, Ford paid the highest wages in the industry and established the 5-day, 40-hour workweek. Other companies followed suit, improving working conditions, setting up company unions, offering health insurance and profit-sharing plans, and developing recreational programs. These tactics, along with yellow dog contracts, through which employees agreed not to join a union, worked; union membership dropped by almost two million between 1920 and 1929.

American industry produced thousands of consumer goods in the 1920s, everything from automobiles to washing machines to electric razors. Mass consumption was encouraged through a combination of advertising, which created a demand for a particular product, and installment buying, which enabled people to actually purchase the product. The power of advertising to shape public attitudes had been demonstrated through the Committee on Public Information's use of media to marshal public support during World War I. When peace came, ad agencies used newspapers, mass circulation magazines, and radio to effect consumption patterns. They were able to blur the distinction between “want” and “need” by creating a fantasy world in which love, youth, or elegance was available to anyone who bought a brand of toothpaste, a model car, or a new perfume. The power of advertising even influenced religion. Bruce Barton's 1925 bestseller, The Man Nobody Knows, portrayed Jesus Christ as a master salesman and the spread of Christianity as a successful advertising campaign. Providing the opportunity to buy on credit was also a powerful marketing tool. Businesses exhorted consumers to put a small amount down and pay off the balance in monthly installments, instead of saving money for an item and purchasing it with cash. As a result, Americans' savings rate dropped sharply in the '20s, and their personal debt rose.

The new woman and minorities. One of the most enduring images of the 1920s is that of the flapper, a young woman with short hair, wearing a knee-length dress, rolled-up stockings, and unbuttoned rain boots that flapped (hence the name) when she walked. With a new look came new viewpoints and values, including a more open attitude toward premarital sex. Margaret Sanger, who had first promoted birth control before World War I as a means of sparing poor women from unwanted pregnancies, argued that the diaphragm gave women more sexual freedom. The new woman's mystique was exemplified by the heroines of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Great Gatsby (1925) and film stars such as Gloria Swanson.

But the flapper represented only a small percentage of American women; for the overwhelming majority, life did not change that much. The sharp increase in the number of women in the labor force during World War I ended abruptly with the armistice. Female employment grew slowly in the 1920s, mostly in occupations traditionally identified with women — office and social work, teaching, nursing, and apparel manufacturing — and women who worked were usually single, divorced, or widowed. Even with more women in the workplace, no progress was made on issues such as job discrimination or equal pay. At home, despite claims of creating increased leisure time, the myriad of electrical appliances on the market actually did little to alleviate the amount of housework women had to do. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women's political progress also slowed. When given the vote, for example, women cast their ballot much the same way that men did, basing their decisions on class, regional, and ethnic loyalties rather than gender. Furthermore, although the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1923, and Nellie Ross became the first woman elected the governor of a state (Wyoming) in the following year, there were still parts of the country were women could not hold public office. During the '20s, the Great Migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North continued. The black population of Chicago grew from less than 50,000 in 1910 to almost a 250,000 by 1930. The 1920s were also the time for new political and cultural developments within the African-American community. Marcus Garvey, who advocated black pride and supported a “back to Africa” movement among American blacks, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which espoused black economic cooperation and established black-owned grocery stores, restaurants, and even a steamship company known as the Black Star Line. Although Garvey was arrested and convicted of fraud, the UNIA had more than 80,000 members at its height and was the country's first mass African-American organization. At the same time, New York's preeminent black neighborhood, Harlem, became a magnet for African-American artists, writers, scholars, and musicians. The creative exploration of the black experience by men and women such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Nella Larsen became known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Blacks were not the only minority on the move in the 1920s. Neither the Quota Act nor the National Origins Act limited immigration from countries in the Western Hemisphere, and nearly 500,000 Mexicans entered the United States between 1921 and 1930. Although most of the Spanish-speaking population lived in the Southwest and California and worked as farm laborers, a small percentage found factory jobs in the Midwest and were sometimes recruited by American companies.

Popular culture. Commercial radio began in 1920 when Pittsburgh station KDKA broadcast the results of the presidential election. As the number of homes with radios rapidly increased (from 60,000 in 1922 to more than 10 million in 1929), the airwaves became the medium over which Americans got their news and entertainment. The business of radio was simple and supported the growing consumer culture: local radio stations affiliated themselves with national networks, such as NBC (1926) or CBS (1927), which provided programming underwritten by companies who bought air time for their commercials.

Motion pictures also became a major entertainment industry during the '20s, and the leading stars of the time — Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, and Rudolph Valentino — became popular icons. Studios built theaters that resembled palaces, featuring mirrors, lush carpeting, and grand names such as the Rialto and the Ritz. “Going to the movies” became a social occasion and one of the main activities for young people and turned into an even greater phenomenon with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, the first “talking” motion picture. As the plots and themes of movies grew more suggestive and after Hollywood experienced a series of scandals, government censorship seemed likely if the industry did not “clean up its act.” In 1922, the studios established the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, better known as the Hays Office (after its first president Will H. Hays), to control the content of films.

The print media also expanded during the '20s. The exploits of celebrities were splashed across the pages of the new tabloid newspapers such as New York City's Daily News and Daily Mirror or were covered more sedately in Henry Luce's weekly newsmagazine Time (1923). Reader's Digest, founded in 1921, made it easy to keep up with current events because its contents were condensed versions of articles from a variety of magazines. The Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild, both started in 1926, revolutionized publishing by offering significant discounts on the “best” books that they declared everyone should read. The bestseller lists of the 1920s featured novels that were destined to become classics, such as Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920), a critique of small town life and society, and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926), the story of expatriate Americans in France and Spain after World War I. On the stage, playwrights turned their attention to topics that had not been addressed before. All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924) by Eugene O'Neill dealt with the relations between an African-American man and a white woman; the black actor and tenor Paul Robeson played the male lead.

In This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald wrote that his generation, labeled by writer Gertrude Stein as the “lost generation,” had “grown up to find all gods dead.” Although many of Fitzgerald's disillusioned contemporaries claimed that there were no heroes in post-war America, the '20s actually produced heroes of a new type. Sports figures like baseball's Babe Ruth, boxing heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, and football's Red Grange were household names whose exploits were followed by millions in newspapers and on the radio. Daring feats could also turn people into instant celebrities, as in the case of Gertrude Ederle in 1926 when she became the first woman to swim the English Channel. Richard Byrd's 1926 flight over the North Pole earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he received international renown for his explorations of Antarctica. Similarly, following his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in March 1927, Charles Lindbergh became without question the most famous person in America and perhaps the world.

The Beginnings of the Great Depression

The stock market crash of October 1929 marked the beginning of the worst depression in American history, from which the country did not really begin to rebound until the start of World War II. The human toll of the economic collapse is difficult to calculate. By 1933, more than 13 million Americans were out of work, tens of thousands of business had failed, and the number of farm foreclosures grew. The problems of agriculture were made worse by several years of drought that turned a good part of the Great Plains into a dust bowl and triggered an internal migration of destitute farmers to California. Blamed for the Depression, the Republicans lost control of both Congress and the White House for almost two decades. Elected in a landslide in 1932 for the first of his four terms, Franklin Roosevelt tried to bring the country out of the Depression through a combination of deficit spending and federal programs known as the New Deal.

Even before the stock market crash, there were signs that the prosperity of the 1920s was on shaky ground. As early as 1927, business inventories began to rise as consumer spending declined. The Federal Reserve Board tried to curb speculation by raising interest rates in July 1928, but the banks continued to make questionable loans. Agriculture had been depressed since the end of World War I, and both industrial production and the employment level dipped in mid 1929. The warning signs were there but went largely unheeded by the government and public alike.

The stock market crash. Stocks were bought on credit like many other commodities in the '20s. Millions of investors paid as little as 25 percent of the face value of a stock, and paid off the balance when the stock was sold after the price went up. This practice of buying on margin contributed to the rampant speculation in the market. Americans who had no knowledge of what to do in the market put their money in “investment trusts,” a forerunner of today's mutual funds, and let professionals determine which stocks to buy. Everybody profited as long as prices continued to go up, and the market value of stocks did climb from $27 billion to $87 billion between 1925 and 1929.

Stock prices began to decline in early September 1929, however. On October 24 (known as Black Thursday) prices fell sharply as investors unloaded their stocks. The following Tuesday, 16 million shares were sold — a record at the time — and the market dropped 43 points. Brokers called in their margin debts, which few could pay, and people who had been millionaires on paper (because of the value of the stock they held) became paupers overnight. Stories of ruined men jumping to their deaths from their office windows underscored just how terribly the crash affected investors. Despite pronouncements by President Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, and other business leaders that the economy was fundamentally sound, it was impossible to stem the panic in the market. By the end of October, $30 million worth of stock had vanished.

In the wake of the crash, caution replaced speculation in how people spent their money, which in turn affected the ability of the economy to recover. Installment buying in the '20s had masked the fact that most Americans did not earn enough to purchase the number of goods being produced. As consumer spending declined, companies cut back production and fired employees. Automobiles and construction, two of the boom industries of the 1920s, were among the first sectors of the economy hit. By 1933, about a quarter of the labor force was out of work. The nation's gross national product, the total value of goods and services, fell by more than 40 percent between 1929 and 1932. As borrowers defaulted on their loans, banks were unable to pay off depositors and were forced to close. Millions in savings were lost as a result of the banking crisis. Additionally, farm prices continued their decade-long fall. Wheat that had sold for more than two dollars a bushel in 1919 was worth just over 30 cents in 1932. Even as thousands in the cities stood in bread lines and waited in soup kitchens for food, some farmers burned their crops and poured milk on highways as a form of protest and in a desperate attempt to drive prices high enough to cover their costs.

Hoover's response to the Depression. Direct federal relief to the unemployed ran counter to Hoover's strong beliefs about the limited role of government. As a result, he responded to the economic crisis with a goal of getting people back to work rather than directly granting relief. The President's Emergency Committee for Employment (later renamed the President's Organization for Unemployment Relief) was established in October 1930 to coordinate the efforts of local welfare agencies. As the Depression worsened, however, charitable organizations were simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, and Hoover tried new ideas to stimulate the economy. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) (1932) provided railroads, banks, and other financial institutions with money for loans, and the Glass-Steagall Act (1932) made getting commercial credit easier and released $750 million in gold reserves for additional business loans. The Emergency Relief and Construction Act (1932) provided funds to the RFC to make loans for relief to the states and included additional money for local, state, and federal public works projects.

Despite Hoover's efforts to revitalize the economy, the public blamed him for the Great Depression, calling the tarpaper-shack shantytowns “Hoovervilles” and empty pockets “Hoover flags.” One group that thought it deserved better from the government — World War I veterans — made its opinions known in a dramatic way. In 1924, Congress had approved a cash disbursement to veterans that was due in 1945. During the spring of 1932, 15,000 veterans marched on Washington demanding an early payment of the bonus. When the Senate failed to approve a bonus bill, most of the veterans decided to go home. The 2,000 who remained encamped at Anacostia Flats and were forcibly removed by the Army at Hoover's direction at the end of July. The troops were under the command of General Douglas MacArthur and led by such officers as George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower. The spectacle of soldiers confronting unarmed veterans and their families with bayonets, tear gas, machine guns, and tanks did little for Hoover's popularity or reelection chances.

The election of 1932. With a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, the Republicans nominated Hoover for a second term. The Democrats, confident of victory, chose New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. A distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, FDR (as he was popularly known) had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Wilson and had been nominated as the 1920 Democratic vice-presidential candidate largely on the basis of his name. In 1921 Roosevelt was stricken with polio, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. In 1924 he began his political comeback when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic convention, and in 1928 and 1930 he was elected governor of New York.

During his presidential campaign, although he promised the American people a “new deal,” Roosevelt did not outline a clear and specific program for responding to the Depression. Instead, his message was a combination of vague liberal and conservative principles. Roosevelt talked about helping “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid” and suggested that the government was responsible for a more equitable distribution of wealth. At the same time, he also called for reduced federal spending and a balanced budget. Roosevelt was obviously extremely cautious and, given how unpopular Hoover was, the election was Roosevelt's to win. The results were a Democratic landslide: Roosevelt received more than 57 percent of the popular vote and 472 electoral votes, and the Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress with substantial majorities.

Roosevelt and the New Deal

The Twentieth Amendment, which moved the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20, was ratified in early 1933, making Roosevelt the last president elected under the old system. In the four-month interregnum between the election and the inauguration, the economy deteriorated rapidly. Industrial production fell to its lowest level, more Americans lost their jobs, and banks failed at such an alarming rate that virtually all were closed by the time Roosevelt took the oath of office. With the aid of a group of economic and academic advisors known as the brain trust and a cabinet that included the first woman (Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor), Roosevelt met the devastation of the Depression with a willingness to act and experiment. Through his speeches and famous radio addresses (popularly called “fireside chats”), he encouraged Americans to have confidence in the future.

The Hundred Days. The Hundred Days refers to the almost frantic period of legislative activity initiated by the White House between March and June 1933 to deal with the immediate economic crisis and the country's long-term recovery. On March 5, Roosevelt declared a four-day bank holiday. All financial institutions in the country were closed and, under the Emergency Banking Reform Act (March 9), only those that were fiscally sound were allowed to reopen. Roosevelt's quick action did much to restore faith in the banking system. The Glass-Steagall Banking Act (June 16) boosted confidence even further by setting up the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which guaranteed bank deposits up to $5,000. The Civilian Conservation Corps (March 31) addressed unemployment and provided work for young men between the ages of 18 and 25 in national parks and on road building, reforestation, and flood-control projects. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), headed by social worker Harry Hopkins, provided money to states and municipalities for direct relief through massive public works projects.

During the Hundred Days, the administration also implemented a regional planning program. In preparing for war in 1916, the federal government had developed hydroelectric-power and nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. After the war, the future of the Muscle Shoals plants was caught up in the struggle between private utilities and public power. An advocate for public power while governor of New York, Roosevelt supported the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), established May 18. Building dams and power plants and stringing transmission lines, the TVA brought electricity, flood control, and recreational facilities to the seven states through which the Tennessee River flowed, substantially improving the economy and daily lives of the people in one of the poorest regions of the country. As useful as much of the Hundred Days legislation was, however, the two most important and controversial acts passed in that period dealt with agriculture and industry.

Changes in agriculture. The New Deal significantly enlarged the role the federal government played in agriculture. Its emphasis was on those who were severely hurt by the Depression, and it had significant success in restoring a measure of prosperity to agriculture even before the start of World War II. The Farm Credit Act (1933) protected farmers against foreclosure on their property, while the Commodity Credit Corporation extended loans to farmers on their crops. The loans made to electrical cooperatives through the Rural Electrification Administration (1935) doubled the number of farms receiving electricity by 1941. Meanwhile, agencies such as the Soil Conservation Service (1935), the Resettlement Administration (1935), and the Farm Security Administration (1937) were committed to improving farming techniques as well as the lot of migrant farm workers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers, and the rural poor.

The most important New Deal program aimed at helping agriculture, however, was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), passed on May 12. The purpose of the AAA was to get at the root of the farmers' dilemma — whenever prices fell, farmers increased production, which caused a market glut and depressed prices further. Through the AAA, farmers were paid to reduce their crops, either by plowing them under or by not cultivating a certain amount of acreage. The targeted commodities were wheat, cotton, corn, tobacco, rice, milk, and hogs (young livestock were slaughtered). The cost of the program was assumed by a tax on middlemen and food processors, such as grain elevator operators and meatpacking companies. The goal was to restore parity, or to give the American farmer the same purchasing power he enjoyed in the boom years between 1909 and 1914. By 1934, the production of several staple crops had decreased and farm prices, as well as farm income, rose accordingly.

The overall upward trend in farm prices and income was helped, ironically, by several years of drought in the mid 1930s that turned much of the topsoil of the Great Plains farmland into dust and made producing crops in these regions impossible. The farmers living in the drought-stricken areas watched their crops, grass, and livestock slowly die. Although some impoverished families migrated to California in the hope of finding work, the majority of farmers remained on their land and endured the dust storms and hardships of the drought until it broke in 1939.

Industrial recovery. The New Deal also expanded the government's role in industry. Passed on June 16, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) suspended antitrust laws and instituted codes of fair competition in each industry. The legislation recognized the right of workers to organize and engage in collective bargaining, and the labor provisions of the fair-competition codes established the 40-hour week, set a minimum weekly wage, and prohibited child labor under the age of 16. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) pushed the drafting of codes by rallying public support behind the program; shops, stores, and business that complied with the codes in their industry were encouraged to display the “Blue Eagle” symbol of the NRA and consumers were expected to patronize those establishments. The codes seemed to encourage increases in both wages and prices, but critics claimed the NRA actually limited competition and encouraged monopoly. The NIRA was ultimately declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.

The NIRA also earmarked $3.3 billion for public works through the Public Works Administration (PWA). The purpose of the PWA was to “prime the pump” — in other words, government spending would provide jobs that would both increase consumer buying power and provide industry with a much needed stimulus. Under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, who also served as the head of the PWA, the effort focused on permanent and socially useful projects, including the first federal housing program, support for public power through reclamation projects in the West, and a range of public improvements from bridges to lighthouses.

The Second New Deal

The impact of the early New Deal programs was mixed at best. While the gross national product did inch upward between 1933 and 1935, about ten million Americans remained out of work. Public support for Roosevelt remained strong, however. The 1934 congressional elections broke tradition and resulted in the Democrats actually increasing their numbers in the House and the Senate. The period after the midterm elections, often called the Second New Deal, had a stronger focus on social reform. It was also the time that the president's policies faced challenges from the left and the right, as well as from the Supreme Court.

Challenges to the New Deal. Although an early supporter of the president, Senator Huey Long of Louisiana was seen as a potential rival for Roosevelt in 1936 or a strong candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1940. Long developed his own economic recovery program, known as Share the Wealth, which called for giving every American family $5,000 to buy a house, car, and radio, plus a guaranteed annual income of $2,500. Long was assassinated in 1935, but his ideas on the redistribution of wealth remained popular. Dr. Frances Townsend, a retired physician, responded to the plight of the elderly with a plan to give $200 a month (raised from a tax on business transactions) to every American over the age of 60 who was retired or agreed to retire. Townsend believed that early retirement would open up jobs for younger workers and that the requirement for all the money to be spent within the month would stimulate the economy. By 1936, Townsend Clubs across the country boasted 3.5 million members, making senior citizens a potent political force. On the extreme right, the Detroit-based Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin founded the National Union of Social Justice and used his weekly radio program to blame the country's economic woes on a conspiracy of bankers and Jews. His anti-Semitic diatribes reached 30 to 40 million listeners.

The Supreme Court also challenged Roosevelt, declaring key elements of the New Deal unconstitutional. The NIRA was struck down in 1935 in Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States, popularly known as the “sick chicken case.” The plaintiffs were accused of violating the NRA fair-competition codes for selling chicken that was unfit to eat. Additionally, the Court found that the legislation gave too much power to the executive branch in drafting the codes and went beyond the Constitution by attempting to regulate intrastate commerce. In the following year, the AAA was invalidated due to the processing tax on middlemen in United States v. Butler. New laws were enacted, such as the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act (1936) and the Second Agricultural Adjustment Act (1938), to maintain the program of reducing production while meeting the objections of the Court.

New federal programs. In April 1935, Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act with the largest portion of its funding earmarked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over the next eight years, the WPA provided 8.5 million Americans with jobs building highways, parks, bridges, and airports. The new agency also expanded the definition of relief to include men and women in the arts who were on welfare. A series of programs provided employment to writers (Federal Writers' Project), actors (Federal Theater Project), artists (Federal Art Project), and musicians (Federal Music Project). The WPA was renamed the Works Projects Administration in 1939.

Roosevelt's answer to the Townsend Plan was the Social Security Act (August 1935), which has proved to be the most enduring legislation of the New Deal. Its key feature created a pension fund for retired people over the age of 65 and their survivors that was financed by a small payroll tax paid by both workers and employers. Payments were initially quite small ($22 a month in 1940), and the administration emphasized that social security was intended to supplement other sources of retirement income. The act also established an unemployment compensation program with the states based on an additional payroll tax paid by employers. The Social Security Act also provided money to states to help them meet the cost of their own pension plans and helped to fund state old-age assistance, dependent children and child welfare, and public heath programs. However, the Social Security Act had several drawbacks — farm workers, domestics, and the self-employed were not covered, and the payroll tax, in addition to reducing the income of the working poor, took a considerable amount of money out of circulation at a time when spending was needed to improve the economy.

The labor movement won a significant victory with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (1935). Popularly known as the Wagner Act after its chief sponsor, Senator Robert Wagner of New York, the law restored the protections given to workers under the NIRA, such as the right of unions to organize and to enter into collective bargaining agreements. The National Labor Relations Board was established to supervise union elections, to certify the results, and to investigate alleged unfair labor practices by employers. The Wagner Act led to a growth in union membership, as did the Committee for Industrial Organization (1935) that attracted unskilled workers in industrial unions. Originally part of the American Federation of Labor, it was reorganized as a separate and competing group as the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1938. The CIO had success in unionizing both the automobile and steel industries through several major and occasionally violent strikes in 1937.

Minorities, women, and the New Deal. African-Americans were hard hit by the Depression, and although the social programs of the New Deal helped many, discrimination persisted. The CCC camps were segregated, the administration's agricultural policies had the effect of driving black farmers (often tenants or sharecroppers) off the land, and relief payments for blacks were significantly lower than for whites in the South. However, African-Americans were employed in New Deal agencies and more were appointed to jobs with the federal government than ever before. Mary McLeod Bethune, for example, served on the advisory committee of the National Youth Administration and was a leader of the so-called “black cabinet” that met in her home. But the president was not a civil rights advocate. Because he needed the southern vote, Roosevelt supported neither anti-lynching legislation nor a bill to abolish the poll tax. Eleanor Roosevelt, on the other hand, openly supported African-American causes. When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow the black singer Marion Anderson to use Constitution Hall, the First Lady resigned her membership in the organization and arranged for Anderson to give a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Depression and the Roosevelt administration affected other minorities as well. Beginning during World War I and continuing into the 1920s, a large number of Mexicans were recruited for jobs in factories and on farms in the United States. As industrial unemployment soared and the depression in agriculture intensified, the response on all levels of government was to deport or “repatriate” workers and their families, including American-born children who were U.S. citizens, back to Mexico. According to one estimate, the Spanish-speaking population of the country declined by half a million during the 1930s as a result of this policy. A significant change in policy toward Native Americans also occurred during the Roosevelt years. Under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier, the assimilationist goals of the past were abandoned in favor of a new respect for tribal culture. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 provided for tribal control over the land, removed Native Americans from the jurisdiction of the state courts, and supported reviving old customs and traditions. The reforms met with a mixed response from the tribes themselves.

The New Deal also created employment opportunities for women, including bringing more women into the federal government. The appointment of Frances Perkins to the cabinet was an important milestone, and Perkins, in turn, placed women in key positions in the Department of Labor. Under Roosevelt, the first women also served as ambassadors and on the federal bench. Even though no women worked in the CCC, about 500,000 did find employment through the WPA, albeit at lower wages than men. This discrepancy is not surprising since the NRA codes for industries that had a large number of female workers (for example, clothing manufacture) also set their minimum wages lower. Although Eleanor Roosevelt was certainly a positive role model, the perception of women in the 1930s as primarily housewives and mothers did not change dramatically.

The election of 1936. Roosevelt accepted the nomination for a second term and considered the election a referendum on himself and his policies. The “New Deal coalition,” which included immigrants (including second and third generation Catholics and Jews), urban voters, Southerners, Midwest farmers, and labor organizations, supported him. Additionally, African-Americans, who had traditionally voted Republican since Reconstruction, switched to the Democratic Party in significant numbers for the first time. The results of the election were never in doubt. Roosevelt defeated Governor Alf Landon of Kansas with 523 electoral votes to 8 and almost 28 million popular votes to Landon's less than 17 million.

The End of the New Deal

Roosevelt began his second term confident that the election results gave him a strong mandate from the American people to continue making sweeping changes. However, he quickly ran into problems with his plan to reorganize the federal judiciary and faced a serious downturn in the economy in the late summer of 1937. Dealing with these issues slowed the momentum of the administration's legislative agenda. Moreover, with war clouds gathering over Europe and the Japanese threat in the Pacific, the president was increasingly forced to turn his attention to foreign policy.

“Packing” the Supreme Court. The key element in Roosevelt's proposal to reorganize the federal judiciary focused on the Supreme Court. The Court had already invalidated two major pieces of New Deal legislation, the AAA and the NIRA, and other laws were under legal challenge. Roosevelt wanted the authority to increase the size of the Court from 9 to 15 by appointing one new justice for each justice over the age of 70 who did not retire. This power would have allowed him to immediately appoint members who were sympathetic to the New Deal. The ploy fooled no one, and Congress, many Democrats included, rejected the proposal at the cost of considerable political capital for Roosevelt. Ironically, the president got what he wanted anyway. The Court upheld a number of programs of the Second New Deal, including the Social Security and Wagner Acts, and retirements and deaths allowed Roosevelt to appoint his own justices: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and William O. Douglas.

The recession of 1937. Although unemployment remained high, the economy had steadily improved from 1933 through the first half of 1937. In the late summer of 1937, however, the country entered a deep recession that lasted almost a year. This major slump was caused by the sharp cuts in federal spending that the administration thought were necessary to control the growing deficit and by a reduction in disposable income due to Social Security payroll taxes. Industrial production declined, the number of people out of work grew, and stock prices fell. By the spring, Roosevelt reversed course and called on Congress to pass a massive public works spending program. The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act (June 1938) created more jobs through the WPA and made more money for direct relief and government loans available. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board adopted an easier credit policy.

Roosevelt's attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court combined with the recession to undercut the New Deal. Politically, Roosevelt faced a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats willing to exercise its muscle. When the president called Congress into special session in the fall of 1937 to enact a broad range of legislation, including the reorganization of the executive branch, the coalition prevented the passage of all the bills. The two major accomplishments during this period of the president's second term were the Second Agricultural Adjustment Act (February 1938) and the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the Wages and Hours Act (June 1938). The Second AAA provided for the storage of surplus crops in government warehouses and made loans to farmers in years of overproduction to compensate for lower market prices. The Wages and Hours Act phased in minimum wage and maximum hour (40 hours per week) requirements for businesses that engaged in or were affected by interstate commerce, and provided time-and-a-half for overtime work. The statute also prohibited labor by children under the age of 16 and restricted those under 18 to non-hazardous work. Although the Democrats retained their control of Congress in 1938, the Republicans gained seats in the House and the Senate for the first time since 1928. In the wake of the elections, Roosevelt did not offer any new domestic programs in his State of the Union address (January 1939) but focused instead on the threat that aggressor nations posed to international peace.

American Foreign Policy in the '20s

The Senate's repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I is often seen as ushering in a period of isolationism in American foreign policy. It was impossible for the United States to withdraw completely from world affairs, however, because American possessions stretched from the Caribbean to the Pacific and because the First World War had transformed the country into the world's leading creditor nation. As the threat of war grew in the 1930s — with the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Japanese aggression in China — Congress tried to insulate the United States from potential hostilities through neutrality legislation. While public sentiment remained strongly in favor of staying out of a European conflict, isolationism became increasingly difficult after war broke out in Europe in September 1939.

Although the United States did not join the League of Nations, it did cooperate with international agencies throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s on such matters as trade and drug trafficking. The United States also headed efforts to advance diplomatic talks on limited disarmament, to resolve the tangled questions of war debts and reparations, and to maintain international peace, all while remaining deeply involved in Western Hemisphere affairs, particularly in Central America. American foreign policy was far from isolationist in the '20s.