america after wwi. recession a poorly planned demobilization resulted in an economic recession...

CHAPTERS 26 & 27

AMERICA AFTER WWI

Recession A poorly planned demobilization resulted in an economic recession

after World War I. As unemployment rose, living standards for all but the richest Americans declined.

Labor unrest Unions staged thousands of strikes for better wages and working conditions. Despite these efforts, unions began to lose strength, and their membership declined.

Red Scare Fear of socialists, communists, and anarchists fueled the Red Scare. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer led raids against suspected subversives, often violating their civil liberties.

Immigration restriction Congress responded to anti-immigrant pressure by restricting immigration. A quota system also limited the number of immigrants from each country.

Back-to-Africa movement African Americans were disappointed that their service to the country in World War I did not reduce racial prejudice. Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement appealed to blacks who had given up hope for equality in the United States.

Discrimination Nativism surged in the postwar years. A revived Ku Klux Klan targeted blacks, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics as un-American. The Anti-Defamation League began in response to anti-Semitism. The American Civil Liberties Union formed to protect freedom of speech.

Ch. 26-Understanding Postwar Tensions Overview

normalcy: the concept of life as it was before World

War I, when the nation could focus on its own domestic prosperity, which Republican candidate Warren G. Harding promoted during the 1920 presidential election campaign and which helped him win the presidency.

A Republican Era Begins

Warren G. Harding- Newspaper owner in Marion, Ohio before going into politics Cheerful, gregarious nature Committed to the free enterprise system: an economic

system that relies on private ownership of property, competition for profits, and the forces of supply and demand to produce needed goods and services and that discourages government regulation; also known as capitalism

Repealed taxes, reduced federal spending With Budget director Dawes he saves the government 1 billion

dollars ( 5 billion total) = surplus fiscal policy: the approach of a government to taxes and

government spending= renewed prosperity Unemployment from 12% to 2%


Harding suffered a heart attack in San Francisco. He died on

August 2, 1923. Calvin Coolidge

Harding’s VP takes office when he dies "Silent Cal," Coolidge was a small man of few words. Americans

saw him as having integrity, hard work, and thriftiness The man who builds a factory builds a temple," he wrote. "And the

man who works there worships there.” Coolidge worked to cut taxes and eliminate unnecessary spending.

He pushed for reductions in corporate taxes, income taxes, and inheritance taxes—taxes on assets received from people who have died. Coolidge even cut his own White House budget

Americans still prospering Decides not to run in 1928


Hoover was an American success story. Born in West Branch, Iowa, in 1874, he was orphaned at a young age. Despite this, he worked his way through college and became a very

wealthy mining engineer. At the age of 40, Hoover decided to leave engineering and devote his

life to public service. During World War I, he headed President Woodrow Wilson's Food

Administration. When the war ended, Hoover gained fame by setting up programs to

feed the hungry in Europe. In 1921, President Harding made Hoover his secretary of commerce. Also believed in promoting business Hoover hoped that as businesses flourished, poverty would

disappear.


The horrors of World War I had left many

Americans yearning for a withdrawal from international affairs, a policy that became known as isolationism- a government policy of not taking part in economic and political alliances or relations with other countries

At heart Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were not isolationists. They recognized that foreign trade connected American farmers and businesspeople to the rest of the world.

Isolationist feeling was strongest toward Europe.

Engaging the World in an Era of Isolationism

American distrust of the League of Nations softened with

time. US wants to be on the world court- by time they get around

to wanting in no one else wants us in Washington Naval Conference: a 1921 international

conference, including representatives of Britain, France, Italy, and Japan and hosted by the United States in Washington, D.C., to discuss naval disarmament and resulting in agreements to discuss power conflicts in the Pacific, to reduce or limit the size of each nation's navy, to regulate submarine use, and to ban poison gas use

disarmament: the process of reducing the number of weapons in a nation's arsenal or the size of its armed forces


Kellogg-Briand Pact: an agreement made among

most nations of the world in 1928 to try to settle international disputes by peaceful means rather than war

At the end of World War I, Great Britain and France owed U.S. lenders $11 billion . With their economies in shambles, these countries

relied on reparations from Germany to make their loan payments.

The German economy, however, was in even worse shape. By 1923, Germany had stopped making reparation payments.


Dawes Plan: developed by banker Charles Dawes,

a plan for Germany to repay reparations after World War I by receiving loans from the United States

American banks would loan money to Germany. Germany would use that money to pay reparations to Great Britain and France. Great Britain and France would then repay what they owed American lenders.

Works for a while but increased the amount of money Germany owed the United States, an issue that would cause problems later.


Isolationist sentiment also had an impact on

U.S. policy toward Latin America. 921, U.S. troops were stationed in Nicaragua,

the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Harding and Coolidge both tried to reduce such entanglements.

Hoover, however, embraced a policy of nonintervention. Immediately after his election in 1928, he embarked on a goodwill tour of Latin America.


Under the economic policies of the Republican

presidents, the post-World War I recession faded away Businesses began to expand. Productivity increased dramatically. Unemployment dropped and wages rose to

double what they had been before the war. By 1929, the United States was producing 40

percent of the world's manufactured goods.

The Republican Boom Years

Henry Ford Pioneers a New Age of Mass

Production The automobile industry's rapid expansion

fueled growth in other industries steel, rubber, and oil. Highways, gas stations, hotels, camping etc. By the mid-1920s, one of every eight American

workers had a job related to the auto industry. Airplanes Plastics


Consolidation- the merging, or combining, of two businesses.

Before 1910, there were hundreds of companies building cars in the United States. By 1929, three automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—built almost 90 percent of the cars on the market

Others saw the stock market as the road to riches. Dow Jones Industrial Average: a commonly used daily

measure of stock prices doubled gross national product: the total value of goods and services

produced in a country in a year Rose by 40% 929, a family of four needed $2,500 a year to live decently. More

than half the families filing tax returns that year earned $1,500 or less.

Farmers and unskilled workers had a hard time, however.


america after wwi. recession a poorly planned demobilization resulted in an economic recession...

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